Biografia como gênero na história das ciências – O caso do físico David Bohm (1917-1992)

Neste artigo, analisamos os desafios historiográficos relacionados à produção de biografias no âmbito da História da Ciência. Em especial, discutimos as ideias apresentadas pelo historiador francês Jacques Le Goff (1924-2014) em seu livro São Luís, publicado em 1996. Essa análise, de natureza teórica e metodológica, é cotejada com o esboço panorâmico da biografia do físico norte-americano David Bohm (1917- 1992), recentemente publicada sob o título David Bohm – A Life Dedicated to Understanding the Quantum World. O tema tem relevância também para a história da ciência no Brasil, uma vez que nosso personagem lecionou na Universidade de São Paulo (USP) entre fins de 1951 e início de 1955.

John Hadji Argyris (1913–2004) and the Computational Structural Analysis in the British Aircraft Engineering in the Mid-20th Century

This work deals with the context of formation of Professor Dr. John Hadji Argyris (1913-2004) in Germany during the 1930s and Switzerland during the 1940s. Using primary documentation, we elucidate publications with scientific theories of structural analysis made during his job as a member of a secret Commission in the Royal Aeronautical Society, in England. We explore the content of the serial publication of the Theorems of Energy and Structural Analysis of the Aircraft Engineering Journal, from 1954 and 1955, from Argyris’s lectures at Imperial College, London, where he was a professor and director of the Department of Aeronautical Structures. The goal of this research is to analyze the systematic method of calculation of Argyris, starting from the theory of Computational Simulation. From this point of view, the conceptual mathematical model would be a computational model based on the unification of the concepts of Elasticity Theory and Energy Theorems formulated in matrix mathematics for communication with the computer.

O Infinito Atual em Or Hashem de Hasdai Crescas (1340 -1411)

This article focuses on the concept of the "infinite in act" of the medieval Jewish philosopher Has-dai Crescas (1340–1411), formulated in the book Or Hashem (1410) to Maimonides' first three propositions, as set out in the second part of the Guide of the Perplexed. Maimonides' theses aim to deny the possibility of the current infinite as an immaterial or material magnitude, as an infinite set of finite beings and as an infinite series of cause and effect. After a brief exposition of the trajectory of the concepts of infinity in the different Jewish wisdom traditions received in the Middle Ages, we indicate how the argument for the current idea of infinity in Crescas dialogues with them. From this dialogue, the concept of the infinite emerges as a singularity updated parallel to the real as an infinite vacuum, a place of coexistence of infinite universes, and as an actual divine infinite like Kavod, Glory, which fills the infinite universe and as an immanent cause of the infinite series of cause and effect that constitutes the eternal existence of contingent beings. In the critique of the third Maimonidian proposition, the first cause is described as an ontological and immanent cause of the infinite series of causes and effects. In this discussion, Crescas points to an idea of God very different from that developed by Maimonides. Here we have the medieval Jewish debate between defenders of divine transcendence and defenders of immanence. This theme is important for the understanding of the reception of Hasdai Crescas' work by Picco Della Mirandolla, Bruno and Espinosa.