In search for a perfect shape of polyhedra: Buffon transformation

For an arbitrary polygon consider a new one by joining the centres of consecutive edges. Iteration of this procedure leads to a shape which is affine equivalent to a regular polygon. This regularisation effect is usually ascribed to Count Buffon (1707-1788). We discuss a natural analogue of this procedure for 3-dimensional polyhedra, which leads to a new notion of affine $B$-regular polyhedra. The main result is the proof of existence of star-shaped affine $B$-regular polyhedra with prescribed combinatorial structure, under partial symmetry and simpliciality assumptions. The proof is based on deep results from spectral graph theory due to Colin de Verdiere and Lovasz.Comment: Slightly revised version with added example of pentakis dodecahedro

CONSTRUINDO O RELEVO TERRESTRE: OS PRIMÓRDIOS DA GEOMORFOLOGIA NAS OBRAS DE BURNET, BUFFON E HUTTON

O estudo das formas da superfície terrestre possui raízes nas cosmosgrafias dos séculos XVII e XVIII e passa gradativamente a um estágio cada vez mais científico com os trabalhos desenvolvidos no contexto da história natural dos séculos XVIII e XIX. Esta é a ideia que se defende e que se tenta demonstrar neste trabalho a partir das concepções sobre a origem e estruturação da superfície da Terra de Thomas Burnet (1635 - 1690), Buffon (1707 - 1788) e James Hutton (1726 - 1797).The study of landforms has roots in the cosmographies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and gradually goes to a stage more scientific with the works undertaken in the context of the natural history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is the idea that defends and tries to show that this work, from the conceptions about the origin and structure of the surface of the Earth by Thomas Burnet (1635 - 1690), Buffon (1707 - 1788) and James Hutton (1726 - 1797)

Entre lo histórico y lo filosófico. Reflexiones sobre la historia natural en Buffon y Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire

Partiendo de la distinción foucaulteana entre "lo histórico" y "lo filosófico", se analiza la tensión entre ambos órdenes de conocimiento en dos de las obras más representativas de la historia natural francesa de los siglos XVIII y XIX: la de Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon (1707-1788) y la de Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844). En dichas obras se hace patente un cuestionamiento sobre los alcances del conocimiento del mundo natural en términos puramente descriptivos e históricos, a la vez que se expresa la necesidad de introducir lo filosófico, la especulación, las ideas no empíricas, en todo intento de dar orden y sentido al mundo natural

Indexing nature: Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and his fact-gathering strategies

Early modern naturalists were faced with what has been termed the ‘first bio-information crisis’. A key figure in resolving this crisis was the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1788). This paper will focus on Linnaeus’s day-to-day working routines on the basis of manuscript material held at the Linnean Society(London). What this material shows is that Linnaeus had to manage a conflict between the need to bring factual information into a fixed order for purposes of retrieval, and the need to integrate new information into that order. A way out of this dilemma was to keep information on particular subjects on separate sheets, which could be reshuffled and complemented by additional sheets. It is only very late in his life, however, that Linnaeus realized the full potential of this technique, by inventing what look like index cards. What we thus hope to show in this paper is that one of the main cognitive advantages commonly assigned to writing – the possibility to abstract words and statements from their context and rearrange them freely in lists,tables and filing systems – had to prevail over considerable practical and psychological obstacles. What seems an obvious thing to do in hindsight, e.g. to work with something like index cards, had to be learned through an incessant, painstaking process of experimentation, fact-gathering, and reorganization

Buffon (1707–1788) et la Pologne. Actes du colloque franco-polonais à l’occasion du 300e anniversaire de sa naissance tenu à Paris le 8 juin 2007, Varsovie–Paris : Académie polonaise des sciences, 2007, pp. 162

Thirty years ago, at the occasion of the tercentenary of the birth of Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788), one of the leading figures in French science and literature of the Enlightenment, a volume devoted to the relationships between him and Poland was published. Still today, it is one of the few contributions to the study of the circulation of knowledge and ideas between France and Central and Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century. Here, we analyze its contents, and, more generally, we outline a reflection on the historiography of Buffon’s relations with the European culture of his time. We briefly examine the different agents of diffusion and their role in the (often biased) transmission of scientific texts and conceptions from one country to another, and the ways these agents have been studied by historians in Buffon’s case, in particular by the authors of Buffon (1707–1788) et la Pologne. Certainly, this work did not attempt to bring general conclusions, but it contributed to give a first sketch of the complex networks of relationships between French and Polish naturalists in the late eighteenth century. It would be valuable, nevertheless, to develop a more comprehensive approach of these processes, to consider multipolar rather than bilateral exchanges, and to take into account the role of other (German, Russian…) cultural zones.Ce volume, paru il y a maintenant treize ans, faisait suite à un colloque tenu au Centre de l’Académie Polonaise des Sciences à Paris à l’occasion du tricentenaire de la naissance du naturaliste français Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788). Consacré aux relations entretenues par le grand naturaliste français des Lumières avec la Pologne, il constitue une rare contribution à l’étude des circulations de savoirs scientifiques entre la France et l’Europe Centrale et Orientale au xviiie siècle. Le parcourir, treize ans après sa publication, nous invite à évoquer l’historiographie relative à Buffon et à ses rapports avec la culture de son temps

Race in Early Modern Philosophy

The ethos of Justin Smith’s Nature, Human Nature, & Human Difference is expressed in the narrative of Anton Wilhelm Amo (~1703-53), an African-born​ slave who earned his doctoral degree in Philosophy at a European university and went on to teach at the Universities of Jena and Halle. Smith identifies Amo as a time-marker for diverging interpretations of race: race as inherently tethered to physical difference and race as inherited essential difference. Further, these interpretations of race are fastened to the discourse of science and human diversity within modern Europe. Smith’s thesis maintains that the rise of the concept of race in philosophy begins with a divorcing of the soul from human nature and a movement to a naturalistic classification of human beings through taxonomies (e.g. botany, mineralogy and zoology), which dissolved into this dichotomy: an essential difference between people of reason and people of nature

Histoire naturelle des oiseaux

Copia digital. Madrid : Ministerio de Cultura. Subdirección General de Coordinación Bibliotecaria, 200

Primera edición del curso divulgadores de ciencia

Descubrir, analizar y comprobar cómo el conocimiento científico ha sido transmitido, cómo ha evolucionado y quiénes han sido sus protagonistas son los principales ejes del Curso Divulgadores de ciencia, organizado por el Observatorio de la Comunicación Científica (UPF) y patrocinado por el Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, y cuya primera edición se ha desarrollado durante los meses de noviembre y diciembre. El curso, con carácter semipresencial, ha recorrido la vida y obras de esos grandes científicos que, además, han sido grandes sembradores de ideas e inquietudes científicas

Charles Wesleyana

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