THÊMATA, A SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATION

• Main Author: Mihai ŞLEAHTIŢCHI
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Academy of Sciences of Moldova 2018-01-01
• Series: Akademos: Revista de Ştiinţă, Inovare, Cultură şi Artă
• Subjects: thêmata; scientific thinking; common sense thinking; social representations
• Online Access: http://akademos.asm.md/files/128-131_Themata,%20gandirea%20stiintifica%20si%20reprezentarea%20sociala.pdf

Right from the beginning, what was implied by thêmata were those preconceptions in science that involve dyads or triads such as: atoms/continuum, simplicity/complexity, evolution/involution, analysis/synthesis or steadfastness/evolution/catastrophic change. Such an approach, according to specialists, seems to be in a proper relationship with the dialectics of the investigative approach, dialectics which, at all times, was seeking consensus between two or more opposing ideational constructions. In time, it was found that thêmata is strongly anchored not only in the field of the scientific thinking, but also in that of common sense. However, psychosociologists say that „common sense is, by its nature, profoundly antinomic, and the antinomies that form the mental activities of humans, such as the formation of concepts, language meanings and images, can be present in human thinking for a very long time”. Examples of such antinomies in the common sense are the ones like we/they, freedom/oppression, human/anti-human or fear/hope. Ultimately, thêmata must be seen in the form of taxonomies of opposing nature that directly influence both scientific thinking and non-scientific/naive/street thinking, opening or blocking their evolutionary paths.