‘A Time for Engineers and a Time for Geologists’: Scientific Lives and Different Pathways in the History of Portuguese Geology

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Mota ◽  
Ana Carneiro
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Scientific Biography ◽  
History Of

For quite a while, scientific biography was relegated to a subordinate status in the history of science. In the last two decades, however, it has seen a revival, which can be explained both by its popularity among general audiences as it conveys a closer image of scientists and scientific practice, and science historians' reappraisal of biography as a literary genre and as a source for their research. When writing scientific biographies or using them as a source, however, historians have to contend with complex questions, such as the extent to which a particular biography is representative of larger patterns, and they face a variety of problems associated with the use of sources such as oral testimonies and obituaries. In this paper, the scientific lives of Joaquim Filipe Nery da Encarnação Delgado (1835-1908) and Francisco Luís Pereira de Sousa (1870-1931), both engineers working at the Portuguese Geological Survey, and Carlos Teixeira (1910-1982), a leading geologist working in the academia, will be analysed. Through this comparison, the authors aim to characterize the development of Portuguese geology in different contexts in the period spanning from the mid-nineteenth to the twentieth century.

scholarly journals The French Roots of Duhem’s early Historiography and Epistemology

2017 ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Stefano Bordoni
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pierre Duhem ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

Pierre Duhem can be looked upon as one of the heirs of a tradition of historical and philosophical researches that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century. This tradition opposed the naïve historiography and epistemology of the positivist school. Beside the positivists of different leanings such as Littré, Laffitte, Wyrouboff, and Berthelot, we find Cournot, Naville, and Tannery, who developed sophisticated histories and philosophies of science focusing on the real scientific practice and its history. They unfolded elements of continuity and discontinuity in the history of science, and enlightened the complex relationship among experimental, mathematical, logical and philosophical components in scientific practice. In Pierre Duhem we find a systematic and vivid interpretation of these meta-theoretical issues, and a meaningful development of a cultural tradition that re-emerged in the second half of the twentieth century.

The Dawn of Scientific Biography

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
Michael Segre
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Scientific Biography ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Model

Abstract This article endeavors to contribute to a better understanding of the literary contexts of early biographies of scientists written during the Scientific Revolution. To what extent are these biographies influenced by stereotypes that are an inadequate fit for modern history of science? Its claim is that there was, indeed, a literary model for biographies of scientists, and that this model had deep roots in Biblical and classical literature. While the model was similar to that used in Renaissance biographies of artists, it did not fully emerge until as late as the seventeenth century.

scholarly journals Linguistics Then and Now: Some Personal Reflections

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Chomsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Online Publication ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Theory Of Computation ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Explanatory Depth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Reflections

By mid-twentieth century, a working consensus had been reached in the linguistics community, based on the great achievements of preceding years. Synchronic linguistics had been established as a science, a “taxonomic” science, with sophisticated procedures of analysis of data. Taxonomic science has limits. It does not ask “why?” The time was ripe to seek explanatory theories, using insights provided by the theory of computation and studies of explanatory depth. That effort became the generative enterprise within the biolinguistics framework. Tensions quickly arose: The elements of explanatory theories (generative grammars) were far beyond the reach of taxonomic procedures. The structuralist principle that language is a matter of training and habit, extended by analogy, was unsustainable. More generally, the mood of “virtually everything is known” became “almost nothing is understood,” a familiar phenomenon in the history of science, opening a new and exciting era for a flourishing discipline. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Gender and the historiography of science

1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludmilla Jordanova
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
Logical Reason ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
Intellectual Maturity

The production of big pictures is arguably the most significant sign of the intellectual maturity of a field. It suggests both that the field's broad contours, refined over several generations of scholarship, enjoy the approval of practitioners, and that audiences exist with an interest in or need for overviews. The situation is somewhat more complicated in the history of science, since the existence of big historical pictures precedes that of a well-defined scholarly field by about two centuries. Broadly conceived histories of science and medicine were being written in the eighteenth century, when such an all-encompassing vision was central to the claims about the progress of knowledge upon which Enlightenment ideologues set such store. The Plato to Nato style histories, characteristic of the earlier twentieth century, were written largely by isolated pioneers, and while these were used in teaching as the field was becoming professionalized, recent scholars have preferred to concentrate on a monographic style of research. Despite the existence of the series started by Wiley, and now published by Cambridge University Press, it is only in the last ten years or so that more conscious attempts have been made to generate a big-picture literature informed by new scholarship. It is noteworthy that most of this is addressed to students and general readers, although there is no logical reason why it should not tackle major theoretical issues of concern to scholars. My point about maturity still holds, then, since as a designated discipline the history of science is rather new; it is still feeling out its relationship with cognate disciplines. Big-picture histories have an important role to play in these explorations since they make findings and ideas widely available and thereby offer material through which ambitious interpretations can be debated, modified and transformed.

Scientific Biography: History of Science by Another Means?

Isis ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
pp. 322-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Jo Nye
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Biography ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals Biografias Científicas com vistas à Inserção Didática: aportes da História e da História da Ciência

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Juliana Mesquita Hidalgo ◽  
Daniel De Medeiros Queiroz
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Educational Context ◽  
Scientific Biography ◽  
History Of ◽  
Disciplinary Area

ResumoO presente trabalho visa contribuir com a fundamentação teórica para a escrita de biografias científicas com fins didáticos. O gênero biográfico é um legítimo foro de “humanização” do conhecimento científico, um dos papéis centrais da inserção didática da História da Ciência. Recortes biográficos que não representem os cientistas com caráter sobre-humano, escritos não como absoluta verdade, e sim como história interpretada, podem ser úteis no contexto educacional. Sugerimos a escrita de recortes biográficos destinados à educação científica que considere os novos aportes do gênero, isto é, à luz de fundamentos historiográficos atualizados. São apresentados subsídios da área disciplinar História, a exemplo da perspectiva de história-problema, e subsídios da História da Ciência, em objeção às biografias laudatórias.Palavras-chave: Biografia Científica; Gênero Biográfico; Historiografia.AbstractThis paper aims to contribute for the theoretical foundation concerning the writing of scientific biographies for didactic purposes. Biographical genre is a legitimate forum “to humanize” the scientific knowledge, one of the central roles of the didactic insertion of the History of Science. Biographical fragments not representative of scientists as “superhuman” and written as interpreted history, may be useful in the educational context. We suggest the writing of biographical fragments for science education that consider the new contributions of the genre, in other words, in light of historiographical foundations currently accepted. Subsidies from the disciplinary area History are presented, such as the perspective of history as problem, and subsidies from History of Science, in objection to laudatory biographies.Keywords: Scientific Biography; Biographical Genre; Historiography.

scholarly journals La vida imaginaria del científico. El caso del cómic ‘Los Proyectos Manhattan’

2015 ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Francisco Sáez de Adana Herrero
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Manhattan Project ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Book Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

This article analyses the Manhattan Project comic-book series, which recounts an alternative ending to the Second World War, where the Manhattan Project hides another mission more closely related to science fiction. Here we discuss how the concept of the so-called «imaginary life», a term coined by Marcel Schwob, has been applied to the history of science in the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Similarities, Differences, and Missed Connections between Thomas S. Kuhn, Gaston Bachelard and the Continental Historiography of Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-111
Author(s):  
Alberto Fragio
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
European History ◽  
Gaston Bachelard ◽  
Historical Turn ◽  
Michael Friedman ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Object

AbstractAccording to the American philosopher, Michael Friedman, while triggering the so-called “historical turn,” Kuhn reinstated the history of science as perhaps the most important object for the philosophy of science. In this paper, I show that this reinstatement is rather a rehabilitation of the philosophical and epistemological uses of the history of science, something already present in the continental historiography of science in the first half of the twentieth century, and especially in Gaston Bachelard’s work. In this sense, I undertake a review of the European history and philosophy of science during that period, paying special attention to Gaston Bachelard as one of the leading representatives of the French historical epistemology of the 1930s. I conclude with the late and quite problematic reception of Bachelard’s thought in the early work of Thomas S. Kuhn. My thesis is this strand may help to outline what is continental history and philosophy of science.

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