History and Epistemology of Science in the Classroom: The Synthesis of Quinine as a Proposal

The history of the quinine synthesis can be used as a case study to emphasize that science is influenced by social and historical processes. The first efforts toward the synthesis of this substance, which until recently was the only treatment for malaria, were by Perkin in 1856 when, trying to obtain quinine,,. he synthesized mauveine. Since then, the quest for the total synthesis of quinine involved several characters in a web of controversies. A major step in this process was made in 1918 by Rabe and Kindler, who proposed the synthesis of quinine from quinotoxine. Twenty-six years later, after obtaining the total synthesis of quinotoxine, Woodward and Doering announced the total synthesis of quinine. However, the lack of experimental details about Rabe and Kindler's process, associated with Woodward and Doering's failure to reproduce it, raised a series of doubts about the synthesis. Stork and colleagues questioned the veracity of the experimental data and even the scientific reputation of the involved researchers. Doubts remained alive until 2008, when Williams and Smith reported, not without reservations, the reproducibility of Rabe and Kindler's protocol. The scientific knowledge as a social and historical development, its legitimating process, and the absence of neutrality in science constitute aspects that can be discussed from this case study, providing significant contributions to science education, in particular, to the initial or continued training of chemistry teachers.

NOTES ON THE FREUDIAN CONCEPTION OF ANXIETY

NOTES ON THE FREUDIAN CONCEPTION OF ANXIETY This article belongs to the field of history and epistemology of psychoanalysis, specifically to research on the conceptual genealogy pertaining to the construction of Freudian metapsychology of anguish. It aims to present the main arguments that allow us to discuss that theories contained in Freud's work on anxiety are not exclusive and may be considered, as a whole, a single explanatory model that would encompass the various stages of production on anxiety This paper intends to examine the barriers that can be seized in the Freudian formulations, under what is conceived, since Freud, as a "second theory of anxiety".