Ana Simões

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE EUROPEAN PERIPHERY: SOME HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REFLECTIONS

In less than twenty years a number of developments have dramatically reshaped much of what was considered as common (historiographical) values among members of the established communities of historians of science and technology. The intense discussions concerning a number of theoretical issues, and the subsequent re-thinking of foundational historiographical problems, took place within a context characterized by the impressive scholarship produced by a continual increase in the number of scholars working in the history of science and technology, and also in the expanded range of themes to be studied. Relevant to this was an increase in funding, the establishment of new research centres, the availability of new academic positions, the consolidation of professional bodies, and the launching of many well-funded programs. Concomitantly, the proliferation of book series together with the access to a variety of new sources, and the implementation of a multitude of projects involving the digitalization of standard archival and bibliographical collections, all played a major role in defining the contours of the professional community of historians of science and the scope of the discipline. During the same period major transformations took place in both the actual study and the institutional contexts of the history of science and technology in a number of countries of the European periphery. On the whole, the developments which took place within the more established communities of historians of science and technology Hist. Sci., xlvi (2008)

Fragility curves for old masonry building types in Lisbon

AbstractImproving the seismic resistance of traditional buildings is essential for preserving cultural heritage and increasing their safety. This is especially important for old masonry buildings in Lisbon (“Pombalino”, “Gaioleiro” and “Placa”), which are still used for housing and services. Taking this into account, this paper is focused on the seismic assessment of these three types of buildings. The buildings were modelled based on the equivalent frame model approach, their dynamic characteristics were determined and non-linear static (pushover) analyses were performed. Furthermore, for the seismic demand of Lisbon, the seismic performance of such building classes was defined and compared. Finally, with the aim of supporting seismic risk and loss estimation studies, a probabilistic assessment was carried out and the fragility curves for each building type derived.

Quantum Chemistry qua Applied Mathematics. The Contributions of Charles Alfred Coulson (1910-1974)

Charles Alfred Coulson est un chercheur britannique qui a largement contribue au developpement de la chimie quantique au XX e siecle et a au developpement des mathematiques appliquees

Constructing Knowledge: Eighteenth-Century Portugal and the New Sciences

The high point of Portuguese science is associated with the Portuguese geographical discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A period of decline ensued, which according to some historians continued until the middle of the eighteenth century. The revival of science associated with the modernisation of the Portuguese economy was linked to two events: the 1772 reform of the University of Coimbra implemented by the Marquis of Pombal (1699-1782) and the creation of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon in 1779, during the reign of Queen Maria I. Long before Pombal’s reforms, however, there was an awareness of the “new sciences.” In the final decades of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century, some Portuguese showed interest in modern ideas, thereby starting a process which came to full fruition in the second half of the eighteenth century. The introduction, dissemination and consolidation of the Scientific Revolution in Portugal took a considerable time; it extended throughout the eighteenth century, covering the reigns of King Joao V (1707-1750), King Jose I (1750-1777) and Queen Maria I (1777-1792)1. Although they all shared an Absolutist political framework, there were considerable fluctuations in the political and religious orientations of the different monarchs.

Preparing the ground for quantum chemistry in Great Britain: the work of the physicist R. H. Fowler and the chemist N. V. Sidgwick

In this paper we will discuss some of the issues related to the attempts of Ralph Howard Fowler and Nevil Vincent Sidgwick to create a legitimizing space for quantum and theoretical chemistry in Britain. Although neither Fowler nor Sidgwick made original contributions to quantum chemistry, they followed closely the developments in the discipline, participated in meetings and discussions and delivered lectures, talks and addresses, where methodological topics, ontological questions and implicity the problem of autonomy of the new discipline vis-a-vis both physics and chemistry were taken to be pressing issues. In particular, they encouraged young people to work within the nascent discipline. Viewing quantum chemistry as a branch of applied mathematics became an emblematic characteristic of the practice of the new discipline in Great Britain.

Different Legacies and Common Aims: Robert Mulliken, Linus Pauling and the Origins of Quantum Chemistry

When referring to the different approaches to the question of atomic bonding nearly all textbooks and research papers project two such methods: the Heitler-London-Slater-Pauling valence bond method and the Hund-Mulliken method of molecular orbitals. Elsewhere we have argued that the views of these protagonists about theory building and the role of theory in chemistry form a set of criteria which justifies a different classification: the Heitler-London approach versus the Pauling-Mulliken approach.1 Walter Heitler (1904–1981) and Fritz London (1900–1954) shared a common approach to the problem of chemical bonding. The theory they attempted to develop was, in effect, an instantiation of Dirac’s reductionist view so clearly expressed as an agenda for chemists in 1929:2 the underlying laws governing the behavior of electrons were known and, hence, to do chemistry meant to deal with equations which were in principle soluble even though in practice they may only produce approximate solutions. Linus Pauling (1901–1993) and Robert Sanderson Mulliken (1896–1986) thought differently on how the newly developed quantum mechanics could, in practice, be applied to problems of chemistry and, more specifically, to the problem of the chemical bond. They felt that a reductionist agenda was, in practice, useless to the chemist, and by making ample use of semi-empirical methods they developed their respective approaches and whose only criterion for acceptability was their practical success. And, most significantly, they both shared a common outlook on how to construct their theoretical schemata, on the character of the constitutive features of their theories, on what the relation of physics to chemistry should be and on the discourse they developed to legitimate their respective theories.

Mechanical Characterization of Masonry Walls With Flat-Jack Tests

The results from an experimental campaign on old masonry buildings from Lisbon are presented and discussed. The tests aim at the evaluation of the masonry deformability properties in compression and the shear strength parameters based on flat-jack testing technique. Tests were carried out in both internal brick masonry walls and external rubble limestone masonry walls. The evaluation of the shear parameters was done according to a new testing technique—shear tests onmasonry walls with flat-jacks—involvingmore than one masonry unit. One of the goals is the calibration and development of this testing technique and to show its first application to the test of rubble stone masonry walls. For that, the experimental technique is fully explained in this paper, and the results of some in situ tests are used to discuss the calibration procedure. Because of the characteristics of the walls, in particular, the great heterogeneity and thickness of the external masonry walls, the application of the flat-jack testing technique involved some uncertainties that are described and debated in this work.

Travels of Learning

Travels have without doubt been a perennial source of attraction not only to ordinary people but also to scholars in different fields, ranging from history, geography, anthropology, and literary studies to the history of science and technology. In the latter case travelling has played a prominent role in the context of colonialism and imperialism, but historians of science have seldom looked at travels within the European space, stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to the Balkans and the Scandinavian countries. This book will help to fill in this gap, by offering various case studies, which focus on travels of learning from some regions considered as peripheral to other regions recognised as centres of expertise. Before presenting the chapters in the volume, a general overview of the different types of travels and their respective backgrounds is provided, based on a review of the historical literature on travels, and the contributions to this volume.

Moving Localities and Creative Circulation: Travels as Knowledge Production in 18th‐Century Europe

In recent historiography of science, circulation has been widely used to weave global narratives about the history of science. These have tended to focus on flows of people, objects and practices rather than investigating the spread of universal patterns of knowledge. The approach has also, to a great extent, concentrated on colonial contexts and treated ‘European science’ as a more or less homogeneous knowledge realm. Furthermore, these studies of circulation have usually been tied to a contextualist view of knowledge formation in which locality is taken as a set of specificities linked with particular locations. In this article we redirect the focus of the discussion on circulation to Europe, and reference spaces that are often absent from other scholarly accounts. We will ground our discussion on a comparative study of three travelling actors from the European periphery through whom we will introduce the notion of ‘moving locality’ in order to depict circulation as a knowledge production process per se.

The eclipse, the astronomer and his audience: Frederico Oom and the total solar eclipse of 28 May 1900 in Portugal

Summary This study offers a detailed analysis of an episode of the popularization of astronomy which took place in Portugal, a peripheral country of Europe, and occurring in the early twentieth century. The episode was driven by the 28 May 1900 total solar eclipse which was seen on the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain). Instead of focusing on one of the ends of the popularization process, we analyze the circulation of knowledge among scientists and the public, contrast the aims of the various expeditions, professional and amateur, which took place on Portuguese soil, analyze their repercussions in the Portuguese astronomical landscape, and the different ways used by the Portuguese political elite and astronomical community to successfully appropriate this astronomical event to serve their varied agendas, political, social and scientific. In this episode of public enthusiasm for science, a central figure emerged in the network of the official commission, professional and amateur communities and the ‘general public’: Frederico Tomás Oom (1864–1930), an astronomer of the Lisbon Astronomical Observatory. This paper aims to illustrate the different layers of the circulation process, and at proving that the popularization of science was not a unidirectional process from scientists to lay people nor did it serve only a particular agenda, be it political, social or scientific.