Renan Springer de Freitas

Whoever Could Get Rid of the Context of Discovery/Context of Justification Dichotomy? A Proposal Based on Recent Developments in Clinical Research

In his Art and Illusion, art historian Ernst Gombrich argues that the emergence and development of styles of pictorial representation depend on the availability of certain schemata, which can be documented. He himself documents the schemata responsible for the emergence and development of several styles. Nothing of this kind has been done as far as the growth of scientific knowledge is concerned. In this article we discuss whether is it possible to document something analogous to Gombrichs schemata that can be of crucial relevance for the development of clinical research.

A falácia da interpretação da cultura como texto

This article discusses the merits of Clifford Geertzs Interpretative Project, the central claim of which is that culture should be viewed as a text. Revisiting Geertzs own examples, it is argued that they are better understood by the conventional science that Geertz rejects.

A saga do ideal de boa ciência

The collapse of the Baconian ideal of good science, the subsequent failure of the empiricists of the Vienna Circle in establishing a substitute ideal, and the pertinence of Pierre Duhems criticism to the rationalist ideal have led the reflection on what is good science to either submit itself to a naturalistic analysis of the process of knowledge acquisition or, simply, dissolve itself into some kind of socio-psychology of knowledge. The article suggests that none of these forms of capitulation is necessary. A reflection on what good science is, or, to use a more familiar term, methodology, can find its way again by taking the position it has always been entitled to, namely that of the very guide of the history of science. The article both claims that methodology has been led to the deepest part of a well from which it will not be able to leave unless it takes a vertiginous leap, and discusses the viability of this leap.

Migrações, cultura científica e empreendedorismo: lições do desenvolvimento industrial inglês do século XIX

Ao reconstruir o processo que no seculo XIX levou a economia inglesa a ampliar sua capacidade de producao industrial e agricola em escala nunca antes vista, Max Weber incidentalmente chamou a atencao para o fato de ter se estabelecido, entao, um inedito vinculo entre a atividade industrial e a atividade cientifica. Tanto o modo como esse vinculo se estabeleceu quanto o papel crucial que ele veio a desempenhar sao hoje temas estudados pelos historiadores economicos sem que se de, entretanto, a devida atencao ao peso decisivo da presenca de imigrantes no cenario cientifico ingles. O estabelecimento desse vinculo e usualmente atribuido ao fato de a Inglaterra ter desenvolvido, desde o inicio do seculo XVIII, uma cultura cientifica peculiar. Argumento que foi em razao da presenca de “homens de ciencia” alemaes e escoceses que a Inglaterra foi capaz de desenvolver, somente no seculo XIX, a cultura cientifica condizente com seu desenvolvimento industrial. Meu foco recai sobre a importância do quimico alemao Justus Von Liebig e do reformador educacional escoces Henry Brougham.

Some Current Developments in Brazilian Sociology of Crime: Towards a Criminology?

This paper discusses the directions taken by sociology of crime in Brazil ever since its appearance, in the dawn of the 1970s, as well as the factors that prevented the development of a true criminology in the country, similar to that already found in North America. It is herein argued that while, on the one hand, Brazilian sociology was indeed able to develop an agenda of research on the processes that account for the criminalization of poorer segments of the population, on the other hand, for not having paid due attention to an entire consolidated body of knowledge available in order countries, it failed to explain rises and declines in criminality rates, and likewise failed to prescribe effective related public policies.

On Darwin, Knowledge and Mirroring

When, in the eighteenth century, David Hume proposed that it is crucial for people to believe in what no reasoning or evidence can lead them to believe, he could not surmise that in the twentieth century this proposal would become the embryo of a widely endorsed naturalist project, which has come to express itself in the view that there is nothing to be said about knowledge except what can result from an investigation on the formation of beliefs, whether it be of a sociological, psychological, or biological character.

Em busca da Sociologia não paroquial

The article argues that the Wittgensteinian sociology of knowledge, which has been developed in the last thirty years, since Thomas Kuhns seminal work, and has in such authors as David Bloor and Bruno Latour its main exponents, entails two untenable assumptions. First, that one can say something specially important about knowledge by investigating how people obtain (or fail to obtain) agreement on what one is justified in believing. Second, that the important thing regarding scientific theories is the fact that there are some people which are convinced of their validity. Such assumptions take ones attention away from the very important fact that scientific theories exhibit a trajectory in the course of time, which can be rationally reconstructed.

Resultados Experimentais, Problemas Conceituais e Progresso Científico

If we affirm that scientific knowledge advances, we are implying there is some degree of continuity between given experimental results and given solutions to conceptual problems. This raises two questions: how does such continuity come about, and under what circumstances does scientific progress depend upon experimental results and/or the solution of conceptual problems? In an effort to respond to these questions, the article examines how certain piecemeal conceptual schemes find their way into certain theoretical frameworks, prompting changes in these. Recent advances in the area of artificial intelligence applied to medicine serve as an empirical basis for the discussion.