Ethnophysics and language

Abstract

Ethnophysics Knowledge relates to a special class of workers: the craft masters, that is, professionals who have extensive expertise in mobilizing scientific knowledge in fundamentally practical occupations. Our interest is in canoes builders. One question to answer is: how they use language to express their knowledge in science and math? The objective is to investigate the relationship between language and ethnophysics know in the context of building canoes. Specifically we intend: to investigate how the canoes builders express their knowledge about the concept of buoyancy; relate this knowledge to what is learned in textbooks and propose educational guidelines intended to use the ethnophysics in the classroom. We did an ethnographic case study with structured interview a master of a municipality from Pará-Brasil. Initial results show that he uses in his practice the same physical principles of density and buoyancy that would use an engineer or teacher to think about buoyancy; however, the language games mentioned in the interview seem 'to mask' the scientific techniques developed in the practice of their craft.