“Vital flow of atoms” as an approach to materiality in Science Teaching
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22600/1518-8795.ienci/2026v31n2p238Keywords:
Anthropocene, Chemical pollution, Chemistry teaching, Interdisciplinarity, Process OntologyAbstract
Under a complex context of anthropogenic multiple environmental crises on a planetary scale, a new conceptual framework for approaching living corporeal matter is proposed with a view to basic education. By understanding the living being in terms of the exchange of atomic flows with its surroundings, the entity "atom" is positioned as an articulator and carrier of fundamental meaning. In analogy to the concept of the genome, the recent terminology "elementome" is used alongside the association between living corporeality and biogeochemical cycles. The collective connection of living beings and the material incorporation of different historical temporalities (geological, biological, and human) allowed for the proposal of concepts such as the vital flow of atoms and planetary atomic descent. Furthermore, from the perspective of a new "interdisciplinary literacy" (Povinelli, 2023), we ethically implicate the human when addressing the global crisis of chemical pollution in conjunction with the "permeability" of the living body through concepts such as transcorporeality (Alaimo, 2010) and the "chemical regime of life" (Murphy, 2008). Finally, by creating a pedagogical alternative that inverts the traditional approach in the Natural Sciences of the submicro as an explanation for the macro, we point to a more ethical, horizontal, complex, and open vision of interdependence among living beings.References
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