{"id":69354,"date":"2007-10-20T15:21:23","date_gmt":"2007-10-20T17:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=69354"},"modified":"2012-12-20T15:22:55","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T17:22:55","slug":"star-gazing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/star-gazing\/","title":{"rendered":"Star gazing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published in August 2007<\/em><\/p>\n

An episode that took place 125 years ago gave rise to the first debates\u00a0 regarding\u00a0 investment in science in Brazil. In common agreement with the emperor Dom Pedro II, the minister of the Navy, Bento de Paula Souza, asked Parliament for funds amounting to 30 contos<\/em> to finance three scientific expeditions which would\u00a0 observe the passage of Venus over the solar disc. The observations, on December 6, 1882, would help to determine the distance between the Earth and the Sun.<\/p>\n

One of the expeditions was to\u00a0 Olinda, Pernambuco. However, the main ones were concentrated\u00a0 on the Island of Saint Thomas in the Caribbean and in Punta Arenas, in southern Chile. \u201cThese two sites formed the base of a giant triangle with one of its vertexes touching the planet Venus\u201d, explains Marcomede Rangel, physicist at the National Observatory, the institution that coordinated the expeditions on that occasion in the name of Imperial Observatory of Rio de Janeiro. \u201cBecause of the\u00a0 triangular similarity one arrived at the distance of the Earth to Venus and of Venus to the Sun.\u201d Several other countries dispatched teams to conduct observations at several points around the globe.<\/p>\n

The request of the emperor and of his minister gave rise to protests in the Chamber and in the Senate and to cartoons in the press, especially in the Revista Ilustrada (Illustrated Magazine)<\/em>, designed and edited by Angelo Agostini. \u201cIt became one of the liveliest debates on the use of elementary science\u201d,\u00a0 states\u00a0 Ronaldo Rog\u00e9rio de Freitas Mour\u00e3o, researcher at the Museum of Astronomy and Correlated Sciences (Mast) a scholar on the subject<\/p>\n

In the Senate, Silveira da Mota, contrary to the concession of the funds, complained: \u201cThe population wants other things, it is not interested in astronomical observations (…) the population wants railways,\u00a0 plenty\u00a0 of coffee,\u00a0 tobacco, a lot of individual liberty, very thrifty and moral governments (…) the people want all this, and they are not eager to know what goes on in the stars \u2026 that\u00a0 is a luxury\u201d. In the Chamber, representative Ferreira Viana seconded the senator. The politicians did not understand the benefits that the expeditions might bring to the population.<\/p>\n

Result: Parliament did not grant the 30 contos<\/em>. Nevertheless, to comply with the Emperor, counselor Le\u00e3o Velloso managed to obtain the funds from two rich farmers and the expeditions were carried out.<\/p>\n

The controversy\u00a0 with regard to Venus represented an isolated fact for the times, according to Lilia Moritz Schwarcz an anthropologist at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo and author of the book \u201cAs barbas do imperador\u201d<\/em> (Under the nose of the Emperor<\/em>)\u00a0 (Companhia das Letras, 1998). In 1882, scientific activity was still in its early stages\u00a0 and the one most interested in practicing it, even as\u00a0 an amateur, was precisely Dom Pedro II.<\/p>\n

Dom Pedro was a patron of the arts, literature and science. Apart from wanting\u00a0 to give independence\u00a0 to the local cultural elite, the emperor also wanted to distinguish himself from other sovereigns, including\u00a0 those from the past. \u201cIn those times, to be considered illustrious, kings and queens had to be scientists\u201d, states Lilia. Another aspect that helped to avoid scientific controversy\u00a0\u00a0 at that time was the fact that Dom Pedro practiced science privately \u2013 he was an amateur astronomer and owned an observatory at the S\u00e3o Crist\u00f3v\u00e3o Palace. There was also the Emperor\u2019s Museum, which housed\u00a0 the mummies given to him\u00a0 by Egypt, ethnographic material and Leopoldina`s gem collection. \u201cAccess there was granted only to\u00a0 scientists\u00a0 he invited.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The request for funds to observe Venus gave rise to discussions","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[],"coauthors":[104],"class_list":["post-69354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospect"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69354"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}