Repositório RCAAP

Contemporary web-based technologies have enabled torrents of information to arrive at our doorstep. Much of this information documents the here and now and most of it disappears leaving little trace. It services our need for news and may help people feel connected to the world in which they live. This knowledge of the present also synchronizes communities and creates webs of relationships critical for functional and operational effectiveness. However, it is argued, that this synchronic mapping is not sufficient to enable communities to work effectively through time. In addition to the present, communities need knowledge of their past - a diachronic mapping of what went before. These mappings provide contextual frameworks against which current and past events can be understood. They provide places where meanings can be explored and reasons discovered. Whether it is managing radioactive waste or dealing with the consequences of out-of-home care, communities need access to resilient and reliable information about their past. This paper explores the necessary conditions for building web-based long-lasting public knowledge places.

After being formulated by John Dalton (1766‑1844) in 1803, and published in his New System (1808), the chemical atomic theory was further developed by Jöns J. Berzelius (1779‐1848) in the 1830s, exerting great influence on contemporary scientists. Based on a series of experimental facts, some chemists opted for the theory of equivalents, which they deemed to be more trustworthy. By mid‑19th century, the confusion in this regard was so rampant that the chemists felt the need to meet and clear up the differences between both theories. That meeting took place in Karlsruhe, Germany, in September 1860, and as a result, the concepts of molecule and atom were clarified. Ramón Torres Muñoz de Luna (1822‑1890) was the only Spanish representative at that meeting. The main aims of the present article were to describe some features of Torres’ biography and publications, analyse his participation in the Karlsruhe Congress, and discuss the influence that the latter and the atomic theory had on Torres’most relevant works.

The aim of the present article is to make clear the role of the Latin writer of comedies Plautus in the conceptions about the spleen upheld by the seventeenth and eighteenth-century man of letters and physician Richard Blackmore in his “An Essay upon the Spleen”. To better appraise the comedist’s relevance among other Classical thinkers, first some of the various functions formerly attributed to this organ will be reviewed. Next, after briefly considering the impact on the ideas about the spleen occasioned by the discovery of the circulation of the blood, the aim of this article shall be contemplated.

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The focus of the present paper is on work MILK – A National Problem, written by the doctor, journalist and professor Francisco Pompêo do Amaral, which earned the National Academy of Medicine 1955 award, and was then published by José Olympio Editora in 1957. The reason of our interest is the presence of memory hints relevant for the history of chemistry and dietetics, such as scientific instruments and iconographic and bibliographic documents deposited at Memory Center, Carlos de Campos State Technical School, São Paulo, Brazil. To elucidate the process of management of this work, we describe the studies conducted from the 1940s onward at Superintendency of Professional Education of the State of São Paulo, involving the dietitian staff, namely teachers at course for “Food Assistants or Dietitians”, which was the be first devoted to diet and nutrition in Brazil, established by Pompêo do Amaral in 1936. The aforementioned studies mention dietary surveys conducted with students at the female and male professional institutes of São Paulo, as well as teaching practices recorded in books and scientific journals from 1940 to 1955, which provide information on the use of scientific instruments in chemical laboratories via the iconographic records of the Institutes and exhibited at Diet and Nutrition Visiting Technical Reserve.

The presented study focuses on analysing the pictorial decoration of realistic forms of architecture named by quadrature, whose origin in Luso-Brazilian universe dates from the first half of the 18th century. This text approaches a theme scarcely studied and investigated in the historiography of Brazilian and Portuguese art, with the exception of stylistic studies of Baroque and Rococo as a whole, but, rarely, the false architecture painting has been examined isolatedly. This subject aims to link the study of the painting of Baroque period with the science of Perspective. The analysis of representations of false spaces in perspectic “break-ins” combined with the evolution of the theoretical conception inserted in foreign treatises diffused in Portugal is another important aspect, without, however, neglect the Portuguese writings. Beyond the particular attention devoted to the painting itself, another concern was the relation between the real and the falsely built space. It is well known that the illusionistic painting constitutes an essential modality in the creation of rich interiors, for it is presented as a type of formal contamination in which Painting and Architecture mutually interpenetrate and simulate in audacious scenographic effects.

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This paper discusses the role of online encyclopaedias as a specific component of the scientific infrastructure, using the example of the Croatian encyclopaedistics. The functionalities of digital media generated new epistemic characteristics of encyclopaedias by transforming them into the active platforms for dissemination and generation of new knowledge. Thanks to their role in synthesis, networking and generation of knowledge, online encyclopaedias might be applied to history of science and technology research, in which multi-layered, interdisciplinary approach is obligatory. The recently initiated open-access Croatian Encyclopaedia of Technology and its role in elaborating the field’s knowledge are described. This encyclopaedia is the framework for the development of the Portal of Croatian Technology Heritage, which will serve as a platform for networking and sharing information from various sources. The portal will contribute to the development of research in history of technology, but also to the revalorisation and the sustainability of the national technology heritage and the positioning of Croatian technology in the global context.

With more resources becoming freely available online through the digitisation projects and the publication of online public knowledge resources, the possibilities for connecting previously separate pieces of information have increased and some of the untold stories in the history of science can emerge. However there can be problems in relying on external knowledge services to connect pieces of the story. There are also gaps in the scientific biographies of many notable people, which may be filled by resources from other. This paper will explore some of the possibilities and challenges associated with producing and sustaining online knowledge resources.

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HDS) covers the history of humankind in the geographical area of today's Switzerland from the very beginning in Paleolithic times up to the twenty-first century. The HDS comprises articles in four broad categories: biographies (35%), articles on families and genealogy (10%), geographical entries (30%) and articles on thematic contributions (25%). The HDS was published in parallel in each of the three major Swiss national languages German, French, and Italian from 2002 to 2014. Each edition comprises 13 volumes of about 10,000 pages. In 1997, the HDS Board of Trustees decided to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Swiss Confederation in 1848 with an internet publication of the HDS, which was simultaneously being published and which will now be augmented by multimedia and linked data (cf. www.hls-dhs-dss.ch). Our contribution describes the complex editorial processes of the whole subject area of mathematics and natural sciences in the HDS—covering about 1,200 biographies and approximately 40 thematic articles—supervised by the author and his working group in the years 1994−2014. As a trained mathematician and historian of science, and as scientific advisor for the HDS’s entire subject area of mathematics and the natural sciences, I wrote this article with the aim of sharing my experiences in representing the history of science in a general historical encyclopedia. The processes described below may perhaps be useful to other natural scientists or proper historians who intend to undertake similar projects.

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Ludwig Binswanger (1881-1966) was one of the pioneers in the approach of the psychiatric psychopathology and the phenomenological philosophy field. A panoramic historiographical review of the author reveals the methodological development of his phenomenological work in three phases of distinct philosophical inspirations. The first one is the Husserlian phase with the application of the concept of intentionality of consciousness; the second one is the Daseinsanalytic of the Heiddeguerian inspiration phase, followed by the last phase, which is the return to Husserlian thought in his late writings. The present study will focus on the analysis of dialogues and the articulations between the phases of Binswanger’s thinking, proposing the hypothesis of a continuous axis in the methodological itinerary of his work, with the objective of creating a scientific epistemological framework for the field of psychiatry.

In this paper we argue that the motif underlying Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-1962) scientific endeavors was eugenics and the notion of differential fertility. Fisher’s contribution to Neo-Darwinian synthesis and the development of several basic concepts of modern statistics, among others, derived from his interest in providing sound grounds to the hypothesis that the reproduction of the ‘well-born’ ought to be encouraged, while individuals “unfit for civilized society” were to be financially and socially discouraged from bearing children. Fisher believed that all striving notwithstanding, all human societies were doomed to decadence and collapse due to purely biological reasons, being eugenics the only approach likely to prevent such sorry fate. In Fisher’s work statistics, evolution theory, genetics and eugenics form one single logical structure, since all of them directly concern a more general problem, i.e., the biological improvement of humankind. Eugenics did not disappear after the end of World War II, but was reframed at least partially as present-day genetics, including clinical genetic counseling.

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