Travels and science in Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Knight,David Marcus
• Data de Publicação: 2001
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: História. Ciências. Saúde-Manguinhos
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-59702001000500001
• topic: Natural History; collections; discovery; banks; Bates; Darwin; Wallace; Trail

Bearing in mind the distinction between the universally-curious explorer and the scientist with a theory to test, we shall ask three questions as we look at scientific travellers coming to Brazil in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These questions are: Why did they come? What did they notice? and What were the consequences of their work? In the early days, visitors were chiefly impelled by curiosity about the world and especially by the tropical abundance of Brazil. In the nineteenth century, naturalists arrived with theories to test and noticed unexpected phenomena, such as the mimicry among butterflies on the Amazon. Colonial authorities were suspicious of visitors, who might find out too much and try to seize the products of Brazil for themselves. Besides, economically-oriented botanists were also becoming interested in Brazilian rubber and the possibility of cultivating it elsewhere. Perhaps colonial officials were wise to be suspicious.