PHYSICS IN THE FACE OF THE ABSURD: ALBERT CAMUS, EPISTEMOLOGY, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PHYSICS TEACHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This article analyzes references to science and the physical description of nature in Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, seeking to discuss their potential contributions to the epistemology of physics and physics teacher education. It argues that Camus’s critique is not directed at the validity of scientific knowledge, but rather at the extrapolation of its explanatory capacity: describing phenomena, establishing regularities, constructing models, and making predictions do not amount to providing a complete intelligibility of the world or answering existential questions of meaning. Drawing on passages in which Camus invokes concepts such as the atom, electron, planetary system, and law of gravitation, the article discusses the distinctions among description, explanation, model, and reality. These issues are then brought into dialogue with classical problems in the epistemology of physics and with scientific transformations of the early twentieth century, while preserving the distinction between what is explicitly stated in Camus’s text and the interpretative connections proposed in this study. It is argued that this discussion has formative potential for pre-service physics teachers by problematizing naïve conceptions of science, particularly immediate representational realism, determinism, scientism, and the identification of models with reality. Finally, a didactic approach is proposed based on the problematizing reading of excerpts from The Myth of Sisyphus in courses on the History and Philosophy of Physics, Epistemology, and teacher education. It is concluded that Camus can contribute to a more epistemologically critical science education, in which recognizing the limits of an explanation does not diminish science, but rather enables a more precise understanding of its scope. The study uses a qualitative, theoretical-bibliographic approach, with a thematic selection of passages and conceptual analysis in dialogue with relevant literature.