Posts com a Tag ‘HARTZ Thiago (Org d)’

Scientists are often interested in the history of their own fields. Physicists are no exception. When did the apple fall on Newton’s head? What did Galileo mumble after his absolution? Did Einstein write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt? Who invented the calculus, Newton or Leibniz? How did Archimedes solve the problem of King Hiero’s crown? These are questions that every physicist already heard. The standard answers, usually provided in classrooms as part of their cultural education, are anecdotes, chronologies, or verdicts about priority disputes. From those stories comes a sense of belonging to a community, and the young apprentice’s identification with the heroes that embodied the values of that community.

Scientists also often write about the history of their own fields. Some classical examples are Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s entries in the Encyclopédie, Joseph Priestley’s book about electricity, the éloges historiques of Bernard de Fontenelle, Isaac Newton’s biography by Jean-Baptiste Biot, Pierre Duhem’s several historical books, and John Desmond Bernal’s Science in History. Each of these narratives was written with a purpose in mind. To organize the human knowledge, to educate the new generation, to praise the deceased scientists, to support a specific worldview, to better characterize the meaning of the scientific enterprise, and to show the deep connections between science and society. Leia Mais