Humphry Davy: figura literária e filósofo químico

• Autor(a) principal: Godinho, Guilherme Kasmanas
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_SP
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.pucsp.br/jspui/handle/handle/25963
• topic: CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::HISTORIA::HISTORIA DAS CIENCIAS; História da Ciência e techné; Autobiografia; Davy; Humphry; Grã-Bretanha (séc. XIX); História da química; History of Science and techné; Autobiography; Davy; Humphry; Great Britain (19th c.); History of chemistry

During the end of the decade of 1820s and the start of 1830s, a national British movement preached the scientific readership as universal remedy for social and political turbulences, and educational reforms undertook the containment of what became known as the “Decline of Science” controversy. In this context, discourse about science in Great Britain became an élite aristocratic subject, and a series of notable books reflected on the nature of its power and social transformations it occasioned. One of such books, by natural philosopher Humphry Davy, is the semiautobiography Consolations in Travel, posthumously published in 1830 as an article of a collection of works accomplished in retirement and voluntary exile in picturesque sceneries, including long orations on contemplative and metaphysical themes. Subject to a meteoric career as tenured official at a scientific society funded by techno-industrial patronage, he participated in the destiny and deliberation of a new form of practicing science with political visibility, specially towards, at the Royal Institution, the realization of public performances of chemical and technological experiments. For the public sphere, Davy’s singular contribution elucidated the vocation for science along a process of visible technoscientific progress. However, in the private sphere, his relation to radical scientists and the poetic generation of British Romanticism nuanced his persona, as formed by an autobiographical book. Therefore, this work is conducted with the investigation of a transitional figure of a new professional of science in combination with a philosopher and thinker about the national destiny of the politics of science, as well as the contemplation of scientific discoveries and their potential permanent legacy for man, illustrated by the dire consequences of their indiscriminate usage as products, through epistemological probes and conscience expanding experiments, and the resolution of scientific enigmas