ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Brazilian Naturalia: Actors, Spaces, and Practices of Natural History in the Global Networks of Scientific Collecting in the First Half of the 18th-Century

• In Event: Collecting Amazonian Knowledges

English Abstract

In recent decades, the History of Science has undergone profound epistemological transformations, looking at the natural world from broader, more plural, and inclusive perspectives. In this process, where science is established as the result of different encounters, we have observed a multitude of actors connecting to an increasingly dense, extensive, and diverse network. Based on this concept, this paper aims to analyze the dynamics of scientific collecting in the first half of the 18th century, using Brazilian nature as a guiding thread. Seeking to understand how a collection was formed and kept active and updated with samples of Brazilian naturalia, it will be reflected on the role played by agents whose participation, once overlooked, was essential not only for the collecting activity but for the proper functioning of the networks as a whole. In this sense, will be discussed the importance of adopting a less rigid methodological approach, one that traverses different layers in a more fluid way, capable of capturing the flexibility and dynamism of these performances – and, thus, breaking away from a history still marked by hierarchies and dichotomies.

Author

• Julianna Morcelli Oliveros