doctoralThesis
Ilustrações científicas e a classificação do mundo natural no século XVIII
Date
2021-10-29Registration in:
VITOR, Fernanda Cavalcanti. Ilustrações científicas e a classificação do mundo natural no século XVIII. 2021. 160f. Tese (Doutorado em Ensino de Ciências e Matemática) - Centro de Ciências Exatas e da Terra, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, 2021.
Author
Vitor, Fernanda Cavalcanti
Institutions
Abstract
We intended to carry out a historiographic study of scientific illustrations, exploring their
historic and sociocultural context of production and their role in eighteenth century’s Natural
History, especially in the period of the “Philosophical Journey”, headed by the Brazilian
Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, as well as to present a description of the characteristic elements
of this type of visual representation of the nature of the signaled time. We observe that there is
a gap, mainly in Brazil, in this type of investigation, which considers scientific illustrations as
historical sources of research and proposes an articulation between this type of visual image
and science teaching, in the interface with history of science and the nature of science through
“themes” and “questions”. Thus, the general aim of this study was to investigate the importance
and the meaning of the use of scientific illustrations in the process of classification of the natural
world in the Enlightenment period, particularly, in the context of the “Philosophical Journey”
to Brazil, pointing out the contributions of the understanding of this historical process and its
meanings to the teaching of natural sciences. It is, therefore, a bibliographic and qualitative
work, interdisciplinary and based on the literature of contemporary historiography of science,
in the field of Cultural History of Science, focusing on the scientific practices and on the visual
culture of the eighteenth century. We defend that a scientific illustration is configured in a
specific type of visual representation of nature, which was essential to identify distinctive
structures and characteristics of the specimens and disclose the taxonomic knowledge of plants
and animals in the eighteenth century, and that, from its historical and sociocultural context, we
can reflect about the relevant aspects of the nature of science, such as “the role of naturalists
and artists in the production of knowledge in eighteenth century”, “the relation between nature
studies and society”, “the different means of production and dissemination of knowledge”, “the
organization of scientific expeditions and the participation of colonies in this type of
entrepreneurship”, among others.