The Difference Between the Abstract Concepts of Science and the General Concepts of Empirical Educational Research
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11575/jet.v25i1.44292Abstract
Empirical educational research may be that there is a fundamental difference between the general concepts used therein and the abstract concepts used in the natural sciences. To make clear the contrast between generalization and abstraction, the work of Galileo and Newton is discussed. It is shown how success is achieved through their ability to penetrate behind the flux of observable empirical phenomena to reach universal conceptual abstractions and relations between these. As well, two pieces of modem empirical educational research are discussed. It is argued that such studies make use of general concepts rather than abstract concepts of the scientific sort, general concepts which lack the possibility of the precise manipulation used in science as demonstrated in the work of Galileo and Newton.
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