Indagação e convicção: Fronteiras entre a ciência e a ideologia

Abstract

This essay defends the researcher's need to be attentive to the differences between inquiry and conviction. Science and ideology are situated in different domains - those of inquiry (production of knowledge) and those of conviction (political action). In the Social and Human Sciences the frontiers between these two planes are frequently questioned, either by denying them or by affirming them. Assuming the difficulty in drawing these frontiers, this essay defends the need to preserve the distance between the two domains. In the scientific field, curiosity and inquiry  - the rational scrutiny of reality - are the researcher's legitimate motive. After indicating some questions that result from the transit between ideology and science in educational research, the essay ends by indicating problems that derive from present academic policies.