Abstract

LOPES, Maria Margaret. Culturas das ciências naturais. Ciência educ. [online]. 2005, vol.11, n.03, pp.457-470. ISSN 1516-7313.

This paper provides insights into the teaching of the History of Science, especially the field of the History of Natural History and Natural Sciences. Although not claiming to be a complete historiographic review of these areas of knowledge about the natural world, it outlines the general traits of the long process of definition of disciplines that were shaped from the Renaissance to the end of the XVIII century. It encompasses various cultural and historiographic traditions that contributed to our present understanding of how Renaissance Natural History abandoned its ancient conceptual frameworks and assumed new practices and shaped itself in the tradition of XVIII century Natural History. The paper comments on these processes by which Botany, Zoology and Mineralogy were individualized as knowledge supported by local practice and global collections, beyond their subordination to medical use. It deals also with their organization as areas of knowledge arising from questioning the origins and historicity of natural beings and processes, due to advances in the realms of ordering and classification and discussions about temporality.

Keywords : History of Science; Natural History; Nature Sciences; Historiography.

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