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of interactions, and it may very well be the abstract source (in the form of the schemas or gestalts) of our notions of causation. It contains such elements as agonist and antagonist, causing, letting, balance, resistance, etc. The system gave rise to notions of a class of image schemas of force discussed by Johnson (1987, Chapter 3; see also . The upshot of this research and of much that has been done since on these issues 3 is this: Human reasoning appears to be grounded in some abstract schemas that are provided by the sensorimotor system. It seems that most if not all basic schemas are universal and independent of culture. If these schemas actually are what they are claimed to be, we should find them in every field of human activity and reasoning, including the formal sciences. I maintain that this is the case (see Section 2). Naturally, to make sense in other fields, the schemas must be projected onto other experiences, otherwise they remain restricted to the phenomena of direct sensorimotor experience. Metaphor is a process that provides this important transfer (see below). adds the dimension of individual development in early childhood to research on cognition in general and on image schemas in particular. She and her co-workers have demonstrated over the years how conceptual systems start forming long before a child develops a language, and that concepts grow out of the very first image schemas that are built up in the child. Importantly, Mandler argues that early concepts are general, encompassing, and abstract, rather than specialized, detailed, or concrete.

The term primary understanding is used here in a dual sense. It means early education in elementary school, or even kindergarten, when children create their primary understanding of the world around them using the primary cognitive tools of the mythic mind. It also refers to the understanding of concepts of science which may rightly be called primary: the concepts associated with forces of nature such as water, air, fire, cold, light, motion, electricity, food or mineral resources, to name a few obvious and important ones.

In this talk, I will continue the theme of the schematic and narrative structures of the human mind that I started two years ago at this conference . Today I would like to discuss the development of science beyond mythic thought and its consequences for science education. I will review the idea of the mythic basis of our perception of forces of nature, talk about some examples of mythic structures in science created through the centuries, and then ask what it takes to create modern science. The following three aspects are identified as being crucial for the development of an understanding of physical science: romantic realism, theoretic thought, and the concept of space. I conclude that story telling should be continued as an important tool for learning and can be evolved into more formal narratives for the task of creating models of natural processes. Stories can be used to deepen our understanding of the gestalt of forces and its aspects while helping to motivate a romantic engagement of the human mind with nature. Tools of theoretic thinking are best developed in a narrative approach to model building. The concept of space is an expression of the growing distance between the experience of self and its unconscious. We need to know this if we want to understand the meaning of microscopic models vis-a-vis models of forces of nature.

Natural science as taught in schools is difficult and formal and we commonly assume that the best a child can achieve is some superficial learning. As a consequence, we either do not teach any science worth that name in primary and secondary school, or we create simplified formal representations which a young person has no chance but to try to master by rote learning. By the time we reach adolescence or young adulthood, most of us have an understanding of natural processes ranging from very shaky to completely useless and our view of science learning has forever been tarnished.

In order to overcome the limitations of the linear-quadratic model and include synergistic effects of heat and radiation, a novel radiobiological model is proposed. The model is based on a chain of cell populations which are characterized by the number of radiation induced damages (hits). Cells can shift downward along the chain by collecting hits and upward by a repair process. The repair process is governed by a repair probability which depends upon state variables used for a simplistic description of the impact of heat and radiation upon repair proteins. Based on the parameters used, populations up to 4-5 hits are relevant for the calculation of the survival. The model describes intuitively the mathematical behaviour of apoptotic and nonapoptotic cell death. Linear-quadratic-linear behaviour of the logarithmic cell survival, fractionation, and (with one exception) the dose rate dependencies are described correctly. The model covers the time gap dependence of the synergistic cell killing due to combined application of heat and radiation, but further validation of the proposed approach based on experimental data is needed. However, the model offers a work bench for testing different biological concepts of damage induction, repair, and statistical approaches for calculating the variables of state.

If we accept temperature and entropy as primitive quantities, we can construct a direct approach to a dynamical thermal theory of spatially continuous and uniform processes. The theory of uniform models serves as a simple entry point for learners of modern thermodynamics. Such models can be applied fruitfully to an understanding of (the dynamics of) thermoelectric processes and devices. Entropy, temperature, charge, and voltage allow us to describe the role of energy concisely, and constitutive quantities can be given their natural entropic interpretation. In this paper, aggregate dynamical models of a Peltier device will be created and simulations will be compared to non-steady state experimental data. Such overall models give us a simple image of the transport of charge and transport, production, and storage of entropy and can be easily extended to the spatially continuous case. Process diagrams for a uniform model can be used to visualize these processes and the role of energy. D...

Narrative in science learning has become an important field of inquiry. Most applications of narrative are extrinsic to science-such as when they are used for creating affect and context. Where they are intrinsic, they are often limited to special cases and uses. To extend the reach of narrative in science, a hypothesis of narrative framing of natural and technical scenes is formulated. The term narrative framing is used in a double sense, to represent (1) the enlisting of narrative intelligence in the perception of phenomena and (2) the telling of stories that contain conceptual elements used in the creation of scientific models of these phenomena. The concrete case for narrative framing is made by conceptual analyses of simple stories of natural phenomena and of products related to modern continuum thermodynamics that reveal particular figurative structures. Importantly, there is evidence for a medium-scale perceptual gestalt called FORCE OF NATURE that is structured metaphorically and narratively. The resulting figurative conceptual structure gives rise to the notion of natural agents acting and suffering in storyworlds. In order to show that formal scientific models are deeply related to these storyworlds, a link between using (i.e. simulating) models and storytelling is employed. This link has recently been postulated in studies of narrative in computational science and economics.

This is a theoretical paper in which we describe the motivation for and the design of a novel primary physics course for student teachers at kindergarten and primary school levels that uses cognitive tools such as metaphor, analogy, and narrative. The course has been taught in the master's program in teacher education at three Universities over the last 5 years. It is based upon a model of the experience of forces of nature that draws upon four existing frameworks in physics, narratology, cognitive linguistics, and a theory of the development of cognitive tools. In short, the course is created upon the foundations of an imaginative, metaphoric and narrative, approach to physical science in general and to forces of nature in particular. Student teachers who learn science based upon this model can more directly relate to how children themselves experience nature and become confident narrators of stories of forces of nature. We describe the notion of Force of Nature ("The Gestalt of Force of Nature") and explain what we mean by cognitive tools ("Cognitive Tools: Tools of Imagination") before showing in what sense modern macroscopic physics is both metaphoric and narrative at its core ("An Imaginative Approach to Physical Science"). In "A Systemic Imaginative Approach to Primary Physics", we give an outline of what is needed in order to apply the approach to a course for primary physics for student teachers. In the final section, we will discuss some questions and challenges raised by this approach and show that it is a viable avenue to bringing together science and the humanities, both for research and for teaching.

System dynamics provides for a general and user friendly approach to the modeling of dynamical systems, irrespective of the field of application. Although SD modeling – as it is practiced in areas from economics to ecology – is hardly known in physics and physics education, physics is particularly suited to the methodologies and tools of system dynamics and systems thinking. In this talk, examples of modeling and the direct comparison to experimental data will be discussed. Examples range from simple (draining of a tank, heating of a body, charging capacitors, muffin cups falling in air) to larger case studies (the circulatory system of mammals, thermoelectric cooling). The examples have been developed for and used in introductory university physics for engineering students. As described here, SD modeling is an element of an integrated learning environment where experiments, modeling, and simulation blend with the learning of the formal aspects of our science. The talk describes pra...

The goal of this chapter is to introduce the fundamental quantities and concepts of thermodynamics. We shall motivate the generic laws of thermal physics which we are going to use throughout this book. Constitutive laws will be introduced on an informal basis when needed for getting answers to some special problems. They will be treated in great detail in the following chapters. First, we will discuss hotness and the measurement of temperature. Following this, we will study the properties of heat in some detail. Finally, the relationship between heat and energy has to be dealt with. We shall motivate this relationship by considering the principle of operation of heat engines. Paired with the law of balance of energy, we will be able to address some practical problems which are of general interest to engineers and others concerned with energy problems. First however, let us take a look at what kinds of images and concepts can be formed about heat and hotness from our everyday knowledge of thermal processes.

environment. However, with the exception of one approach 2 , none of the developments stress explicit modeling; and none have questioned the very structure of the physics to be learned. Here we present results of didactic developments which began in Winterthur some 15 years ago 3 , and which are culminating today in the creation of an Integrated Systemdynamics Learning Environment (ISLE) for introductory physics. We have redesigned the physics curriculum using continuum physics as the guiding metaphor. 4 The result is a physics of spatially homogenous dynamical systems 5 which includes completely novel developments such as a theory of thermal dynamical processes 6 and makes use of didactic developments known as the Karlsruhe Physics Course. 7 The subject matter is brought across by explicit use of system dynamics modeling 8 that employs simple yet powerful modeling (and simulation) tools. 9 Lately we have begun to combine our modeling oriented approach with computer based laboratory...

There exists a view of how nature operates—originating in classical continuum physics—which conforms completely to the core concepts of system dynamics. Simply stated, in the Continuum Physics Paradigm, physical processes are pictured as the result of the flow, the production, and the storage of some fundamental and easily visualized quantities—such as fluids, electricity, heat, and motion. If we base our teaching of physics on this paradigm, content matter (physics) and methodology (system dynamics modeling) form an organic unit. Unlike with the conventional mechanistic view of physical processes—where system dynamics must remain a method artificially superimposed on a non- systemic science—physics will itself have a systemic structure, and in return will help foster systems thinking in other fields. Moreover, the Continuum Physics Paradigm can be used for physics instruction at virtually any level of students' maturity or formal sophistication, ranging from primary school to g...

An introductory college physics course has been designed, implemented, and taught for several years which combines the continuum physics paradigm with systems thinking and system dynamics tools for modeling and simulation of dynamical processes. In short, it provides an explicit general modeling strategy applicable to all fields of physics and even to fields outside of this science, allowing for student centered (learner directed) learning. The funda-mental ideas of continuum physics can be cast in the form of a simple graphical image which is borrowed from the flow of water at the surface of the Earth, and which can easily be translated into system dynamics models of processes. This unified approach to physical processes significantly revises the standard model of physics courses, adds an important methodological dimension not commonly used in physics instruction, and places physics beyond its own borders togeth-er with other sciences, engineering, and social studies. It makes use ...

Traditional courses treat thermodynamics in a form unlike anything else known in physics. In particular, we are told that it is a theory of the equilibrium of heat and not of how and how fast things happen in real life. This combines with the conceptualization of heat as energy (or a form of energy) and thermal processes as the result of the motion of little particles. The result is a theory that uses strange d’s in its equations, does not produce initial value problems as we know them from the rest of physics, and introduces concepts such as exergy, enthalpy, free energy, and Gibbs free energy, we are hard put to distinguish from energy and entropy and from each other.

An introductory college physics course has been designed, implemented, and taught for several years which combines the continuum physics paradigm with systems thinking and system dynamics tools for modeling and simulation of dynamical processes. In short, it provides an explicit general modeling strategy applicable to all fields of physics and even to fields outside of this science, allowing for student centered (learner directed) learning. The funda-mental ideas of continuum physics can be cast in the form of a simple graphical image which is borrowed from the flow of water at the surface of the Earth, and which can easily be translated into system dynamics models of processes. This unified approach to physical processes significantly revises the standard model of physics courses, adds an important methodological dimension not commonly used in physics instruction, and places physics beyond its own borders togeth-er with other sciences, engineering, and social studies. It makes use ...