Ana Maria Alfonso-Goldfarb

Raízes históricas da difícil equação institucional da ciência no Brasil

This article outlines the history of the institutionalization of the sciences in Brazil, highlighting, at different periods, the existence (or non-existence) of the four fundamental components necessary to institutionalize any area of knowledge: teaching, research, dissemination, and application of knowledge.

Raízes do vitalismo francês: Bordeu e Barthez, entre Paris e Montpellier

This article analyzes several French eighteenth century physiological theories that later on were classified as vitalist. The overall background is set by the tradition of Montpellier medical school, in particular by the physiological and medical ideas of Theophile de Bordeu. Paul-Joseph Barthez was initially trained in this setting, however, his conception of the autonomy of life was also heavily influenced by the circle of Paris encyclopedists. For this reason, Barthezs elaboration shows elements of continuity and discontinuity regarding both the notion of human being as represented in the classification of sciences of the Encyclopedie, and the typical Montpellier.

From Shelves to Cyberspace: Organization of Knowledge and the Complex Identity of History of Science

History of science as a formal and autonomous field of research crosses over disciplinary boundaries. For this reason, both its production and its working materials are difficult to classify and catalog according to discipline-based systems of organization of knowledge. Three main problems might be pointed out in this regard: the disciplines themselves are subject to a historical process of transformation; some objects of scientific inquiry resist constraint within rigid disciplinary grids but, rather, extend across several disciplinary boundaries; and the so-called digital revolution has replaced spatial with temporal display sequences and shifted the traditional emphasis on knowledge to user-oriented approaches. The first part of this essay is devoted to a conceptual analysis of the various approaches to the organization of knowledge formulated over time, whereas the second considers the new possibilities afforded by a faceted model of knowledge organization compatible with user-oriented relational databases to the research materials and production of history of science.

Chemical Knowledge in Transit.

This special issue of Ambix began with “Crossing Oceans,” a conference held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in August 2014, jointly organised by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC); the Centre Simao Mathias (CESIMA), Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo (PUC-SP); and the Centre for Logic, Epistemology andHistory of Science (CLE), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). This conference marked several important milestones. It celebrated the twentieth anniversary of CESIMA, one of the world’s largest and most successful centres for research in the history of science, together with colleagues from CLE, an equally important centre in the philosophy of science. This was also the first time that SHAC had sponsored a major event outside Europe or North America. Yet this conference marked neither an ending nor a beginning: the groundwork for the meeting was laid on exchanges of scholarship (and scholars) between Brazil and the United Kingdom over the past decade, and which we hope will continue for many years to come. It is therefore fitting that, in preparing this special issue, we should take up the theme of “transits” of chemical knowledge—whether of theoretical aspects, practices, materials, instruments, or apparatus. This theme leads us to ask how the science of material transformation was itself transformed through local, regional, and global exchanges. As is well known, early attempts to understand the spread of science and technology were based on to the so-called “centre–periphery” model, according to which global exchanges are characterised by an unequal relationship extending from economic and political cores to dependent, subordinate areas. Full taxonomies of spatial

O universo cultural e científico valenciano durante os séculos XIII e XIV e a contextualização da obra de Arnaldo de Vilanova

The present article focuses attention on the singularity of Arnau de Vilanovas medical thought in comparison with that predominating among his thirteenth-century contemporaries on the European continent. Moreover, it propounds that such peculiarities were a result of Arabic influences upon this Christian thinker during his youth, in his native city of Valencia, and which continued to prevail even after his studies at the Montpellier School of Medicine. That is why the study first draws a sketch of Valencias cultural and scientific universe, and then goes on to analyze well-known aspects of Arnau de Vilanovas medical ideas, where the enduring preponderance of the Valencian environment is evident, even in his later years.