Title

Some Linguistic Difficulties in Thermodynamics Theory & Teaching 

Abstract Course

Generally speaking, a scientific activity consists in observing phenomena of nature, quantifying the observations, measurements & modelling data, eventual theory would be birth. Each of these steps is based on a vocabulary, more or less specific to the relevant discipline, and depends on a critical way, and making use of oral-and-written scientific expressions; partially within natural language. Nevertheless, if some scientific words correspond, generally speaking, to words used in the daily life-natural language, it does not mean scientific concepts are discussed. The reasons for which physics is universally regarded as hard go beyond the inevitable difficulty of its concepts and its association with the mathematics. In fact, all the textbooks present semantic problems: imprecise definitions or even contradictory, differences in the statements of principles, which normally should no longer be a subject of disagreement. Thus, pedagogical difficulties, or even a large part, are also located in scientific language used. Therefore, the role played by language in science should be largely taken into account. Among all the vocabulary difficulties we will address some concerning the field of thermodynamics.

Contact

abdelkader.anakkar@univ-lille1.fr