Márcia H. M. Ferraz

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.

A produção do salitre no Brasil colonial

This article discusses the processes inherent in the production of salpeter in Colonial Brazil. In the main, the texts seen here present recipes accompanied by chemical explanations of the processes which denote a knowledge of science at the time. Various difficulties confronting the authors, however, prevented an effective contribution to the development of techniques for the production of salpeter. Consequenttly, at the end of the Nineteenth Century, Brazilian rulers are still facing many problems to obtain this precious material.

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.

LOST ROYAL SOCIETY DOCUMENTS ON 'ALKAHEST' (UNIVERSAL SOLVENT) REDISCOVERED

Although historians have recently shown a great deal of interest in the early-modern search for the liquor alkahest or universal solvent, early Royal Society discussions of that legendary substance have been ignored, probably because the papers associated with them seemed to have been lost. Three of them have recently been rediscovered in the Societys archives. This article reproduces them for the first time in photographic facsimile with a description and commentary placing them in their contemporary context.

A rota dos estudos sobre a cochonilha em Portugal e no Brasil no século XIX: caminhos desencontrados

For imparting an intense and long-lasting red to fabrics, cochineal remained in high demand during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This period witnessed, accordingly, several initiatives aimed at producing the precious dye: publication of specialized texts, cultivation of the cactus and the insect from which the dye is extracted, and, also, attempts to obtain the secrets of production through espionage. The present paper analyses certain aspects of the measures adopted by the Portuguese government towards Brazil in this field. The work shows how people sought to take part in the network of cochineal production (yet they were unsuccessful most of the time).

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