Abstract
Epistemological considerations of philosophers and scientists from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century guided Brazilian physiologist Miguel Ozório de Almeida (1890-1953) in formulating his researches and participating in national and international scientific debates. With his siblings, Álvaro Ozório de Almeida and Branca de Almeida Fialho, he participated in debates on Brazilian educational and scientific system’s reform and in international organizations. The family’s residence in Rio de Janeiro housed a laboratory that became a reference in experimental physiology researches in Brazil. This article aims to present Miguel Ozório de Almeida’s conception of science, constructed mainly within the private laboratory’s sociability, providing new aspects of scientific work production in Brazil in the early twentieth century. I argue that Ozório de Almeida’s stand as an internationalist physiologist in national and international contexts was related to his reading of texts by Ernest Mach, Pierre Duhem, Henri Poincaré and William James.
Highlights
Scientists have doubts about their scientific practice; they have certainties, or it would be better to say: bets
Drafts, articles and books written by Brazilian physiologist Miguel Ozório de Almeida (1890-1953) contain fundamental questions of a scientist who reflects on his practice: What is science? How is scientific knowledge produced? Why? By whom? These are epistemological and moral questions that followed the physiologist throughout his life
1953) at Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (Oswaldo Cruz Institute). Together with his siblings Álvaro Ozório de Almeida and Branca de Almeida Fialho, he actively participated in the debates on the reform of the country’s scientific and educational system conducted by Academia Brasileira de Educação (Brazilian Academy of Education) and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
Summary
Scientists have doubts about their scientific practice; they have certainties, or it would be better to say: bets. They were engaged in the debate on the enhancement of the country’s scientific research They sought to establish direct contact with scientists in other countries (especially France) and ensure the recognition by their peers abroad of the scientific knowledge produced in Brazilian laboratories. Miguel Ozório de Almeida was very active at Instituto Franco-Brasileiro de Alta Cultura (French-Brazilian Institute of High Culture) (created in 1923), and was indicated to give lectures under its auspices at the Sorbonne He participated in several intellectual and scientific societies in Brazil and abroad; in 1933 he was granted the Einstein Prize by the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, and in 1936 he received the Sicard Prize from the Faculté de Medicine de Paris (Faculty of Medicine of Paris) for his work on the theory of excitation. The scientist was a great mathematician and a voracious philosophy reader, of
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