Conceptual engineering in physics education*

A hallmark of engagement in scientific inquiry is students’ pursuit of coherent, mechanistic models of natural phenomena (Hammer & Van Zee, 2006; Russ *). An articulation of the construct of mechanistic by Russ et al. (2008, p. 512) emphasizes the importance of identifying entities, their properties, and their organization such that they can be said to causally produce the phenomenon being modeled. However, the entities and phenomena that populate scientific models are rarely physical objects that are objectively noticed, categorized and employed in causal stories (e.g., the first billiard ball strikes the second billiard ball), but theoretical constructs (e.g., work transferred kinetic energy). Such theoretical constructs are all but inescapable in scientific models: “entropy causes solubility to rise,” “boojum nucleation … stabilizes the metastable configuration,” and “penguin diagrams generate a local strangeness-changing interaction.” Entities in scientific models, then, are not so much physical objects that are readily identified as they are theoretical objects that are carefully engineered to meet the demands of emerging theories, and their development, implementation and acceptance by the scientific community represents a significant accomplishment in the development of scientific models. 

Over the past few years, this activity has received focused attention under the term “conceptual engineering” within philosophy. The goal of this talk is to describe the concept of conceptual engineering and its relevance to physics education. The second goal is to show that, far from being rare, conceptual engineering can be common (almost inescapable) in student thinking and discourse, and that students - at least in the context of an undergraduate inquiry course - are not only capable of such engineering, but that it arises almost spontaneously and meaningfully.