A Space for Science, Simon Schwartzman, 1991, chapter 2

A Space for Science - The Development of the Scientific Community in Brazil

Simon Schwartzman

The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991

Chapter 2

THE HERITAGE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The European Heritage

Major Themes

The New Universities

Portugal and Modern Science

The Counter reform

The Pombal Reform

State, Church, and Education in Brazil

Projects for a Brazilian University

Notes

The European Heritage

At the beginning, science as practiced in Brazil was no more than a pale image of European science, as reflected by Portugal. The structures, institutions, and social forces that gave life to science in the Old World were missing, and whatever scientific achievements are found in Brazil in the past must necessarily be related to European, not Brazilian conditions. Until the nineteenth century, the institutional history of European science can be told as the history of experimental science's gradual con quest of a central position in Western man's culture and world view. Experimental science developed outside the traditional universities, and it was only in the nineteenth century that an intimate connection between science and university, now taken for granted, took root. A brief outline of this history is necessary in order to see developments in Brazil in their proper perspective.

A landmark of the long process of legitimation and ascendancy of modern science in Europe was Galileo's attitude of defiance, his questioning of the way in which important truths should be established according to the authority of Aristotle and Ptolemy, seconded by the church, or guided by empirical observations and carried on according to rational procedures.⁽¹⁾ Galileo's case stands as the last attempt by that era's religious and intellectual establishment to subordinate the findings of physical science to dogma and to the products of a priori reasoning. Thereafter, scientific research prospered, congruent with the individualist ethic of that era's burgeoning capitalism and Protestantism. From its most important seedbed, Italy, modern science was transplanted to soil where it would bear more fruit, France and England; and with the appearance of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in the nineteenth century, it was the biological sciences' turn to confront the religious dogmas of their time.

Science as developed in these nations did not begin in the universities. The venerable, prestigious European universities, such as Oxford, Cam bridge, and Paris, were traditional centers for classical studies and for education in law, medicine, and theology; empirical science was relegated to a secondary role. In England the meeting place for scientists was the Royal Society, established in 1660. According to its founders, the Society's original purpose was highly practical, experimental, and technical.⁽²⁾ This declaration of purpose was not entirely faithful to reality, though. Few of the Society's main figures were inventors of "useful things," and it was the search for a new and original way of knowing the world, embodied in experimental science, that really served as the force behind the movement to support and encourage scientific research. An entirely new view of nature and of the methods by which it should be approached was being forged, in contrast with the traditional culture then prevailing in universities.

Created in 1666 by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the French Académie des Sciences had the explicit (and highly practical) goal of allowing for the expansion of France's industry and commerce. Unlike the Royal Society, it was not a society of amateurs but an institution of professionals: twenty scholars supported by the government to solve problems brought forth by the royal ministers. The immediate predecessor of the Paris Académie was the Montmor Académie, which brought together such scientists as Pierre de Fermat, Pascal, and Pierre Gassendi, who corresponded with Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes. Initially, the creation of the Académie des Sciences as a practically oriented government institution was an attempt to save the Montmor Académie, confronted as it was with financial difficulties. At that point, as it was to happen so often in the following centuries, scientists managed to persuade the government that they could be useful, that the nation needed then; and they received the support they sought.

The academy's success appears to have been inversely proportional to the conviction with which its initial purposes were maintained. Colbert apparently did no more than provide the academy with general guide lines. Camille Letellier Louvois, his successor, gave the academicians practical tasks, such as designing fountains for the royal palaces or inventing games of chance to entertain the court. The academy suffered during this period, but it was again activated and expanded by Jean-Paul Bignon after 1699.

In both England and France, therefore, the appearance of scientific institutions was clearly aimed at the development of practical and applied knowledge, at the service of the elites. In both cases, there was also a group of eminent scientists who struggled against the traditional culture entrenched within the old universities. The science being created, then, was not intended to serve as a neutral tool, free of moral implications, but was accompanied by a world view that saw science as the best road to a more precise philosophy, a better understanding of people and nature, and a better society. This new Weltanschauung, which students of the period refer to as "scientistic ideology," was not an isolated event but was a part of the social, economic, and political transformation of European society that we now know as the Industrial Revolution.⁽³⁾ The high point of seventeenth-century science came with the publication of Sir Isaac Newton's most important work: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The Principia synthesizes and caps the entire pro cess of conceptualization and observation under way at least since Galileo and Kepler began to apply modern mathematics to Copernicus' under standing of the universe. The title of the work attests to an intention of Newtonian science that went far beyond simply explaining certain natural phenomena empirically and for utilitarian purposes. What Newton sought - and achieved - was a new understanding of the universe in which reason combines harmoniously with systematic empirical observation. Thanks to the Newtonian synthesis, modern science consolidated its preeminence over the old scholastic culture in its own language and its own style, asserting its claim of independence and superiority with respect to applied knowledge. It was not by chance that many perceived an analogy between the preestablished harmony of the Newtonian universe and the ideals of justice and social wealth, to be created in the years to come through individual initiative and the extensive use of empirical knowledge.

Just as it reached its apex, however, English science seemed to lose its impetus. In 1698, Leibniz and John Wallis (by then the only survivor of the old Philosophical College) were asking themselves about the causes behind the decline they noted in scientific research or, as they put it, "the cause of the present languid state of Philosophy."⁽⁴⁾ It is possible that Newton's own work, so apparently perfect, had a paralyzing effect on experimental science, much like a great tree whose shadow hinders the growth of vegetation beneath it. Or perhaps the incipient Industrial Revolution was drawing England's best talent toward other activities.

In agriculture; in the textile industry; in the use of coal as fuel; in mining, transportation, and iron and steel production; and above all with the creation of the steam engine, English technology expanded and diversified. This process coincided with the progressive decline of the Royal Society, which gave way to the "nonconformist" institutions beginning to appear in Great Britain's more industrialized centers: Birmingham's Lunar Society, the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, the Edinburgh Philosophical Society. Created in 1831, the British Association for the Advancement of Science eventually became the main institution of the British scientific community.

Despite the dynamic energy shown by Scottish scientific research, scholars studying this era seem to agree that France had become the hub of international science by the middle of the eighteenth century. There, in contrast to events in England, the social revolution that accompanied the Industrial Revolution was not to be bloodless. In France there was an official version of science that posed as neutral and technical and that was embodied in the French Académie There was also an intellectual and cultural movement surrounding science, a burgeoning "scientistic" ideology that would become known historically as the Enlightenment. Published between 1751 and 1777, Diderot and d'Alambert's Encyclopedie Francaise stands as the great work of French science during that age. Compared with similar works from that time, it proved to be highly theoretical and cultural, not technical and applied. Lavoisier was then the central figure of French science, and the influence of such social thinkers as Saint Simon, Proudhon, and Rousseau bears witness to the political and social leanings of the French intellectual and scientific movement. (In contrast, England was then distinguished mainly by the presence of a very important economic school, led by Adam Smith.) The French Revolution takes Lavoisier to the guillotine, partially a result of obscurantism ("The Republic does not need scientists," the official who condemned him reportedly stated) and partially because of his connection with the ancien regime's tax collection system. But French science did not take long to recover and to carve out a preeminent position in the Western world during the Napoleonic Restoration.

Major Themes

With the Newtonian synthesis established, science at the end of the eighteenth century found itself lacking any central problem. On the other hand, there was a model to follow and, besides, the eighteenth century was a time of vast economic expansion, of taming the wilder ness in newly discovered worlds, and of the progressive establishment of new technology.

It is worth listing, albeit briefly, the various areas of interest within science at that time. The naturalists stand out, with their concern to describe and (insofar as possible) systematize the objects found in nature-plants, animals, and minerals. Linnaeus pioneers the fitting of these natural objects into a general classification system and is especially successful within the field of botany. Initially developed as a way to organize information, the Linnaean system soon appears on the French intellectual scene, serving as the basis for Buffon's ambitious Histoire naturelle, an attempt to classify all phenomena according to rational principles. The continuation of extensive research and of efforts at systematization pave the way for Charles Darwin's theories of evolution, appearing in the nineteenth century and still exerting their influence today.

The observation of natural objects led inevitably to theories about the development of the planet Earth, also taking inspiration from the principles of a preestablished universal harmony. Confronted with the theories of the "catastrophists," who could not help but note existing signs of great upheavals and dramatic events on the face of the Earth, the former conception was defended under the "uniformitarian theory" of Scotland's James Hutton, whose work, made popular by Sir Charles Lyell in the nineteenth century, contributed toward Darwin's evolutionary synthesis. Opposed on one side by conservatism (which found decisive support in the Newtonian idea of celestial harmony) and on the other by geological catastrophism (which endured until recently as a semi-clandestine philosophical and theoretically-interpretive stream of thought), evolutionism is perhaps the clearest example of the inextricable links between science, empirical observation, and the mundane views of the material, social, and political world.⁽⁵⁾

Evolutionism contains the idea of a "natural history," within which archeological observations of geological, zoological, and botanical diversity are brought together. The idea of evolution and progress was not repugnant to the German intellectual environment of the day; yet, the philosophy of nature that prevailed took more inspiration from philosophers and poets Leibniz and Goethe-than from the mechanistic models of Descartes and Newton. This philosophy presupposed the development of the universe from archetypes, primary monads that contained within themselves all principles of life and movement. Not only was this idea the basis of iatrochemistry which was to develop within Germany in proximity with alchemy-it also prepared the way for morphological research, where the contributions of Lorenz Oken stand out. From Oken on, a mechanical model of the organization of nature was no longer used, having been replaced with a specifically organic model. The study of biological forms was to merge with the empirical analysis of tissues, pathology, anatomy, and physiology, all of which are closely associated with the development of medicine, thus completing the picture for biology.

In the eighteenth century too, modern chemistry laid its foundations. Lavoisier introduced quantitative research methods within the field, established the concept of elements, and opened the way for the atomic theory of matter, later to be delineated by John Dalton. This was the time of the first studies on heat and energy, immediately applied in the construction of steam engines in England and later fully consolidated by a new branch of physics, thermodynamics, whose roots lie in the works of the Frenchmen J. B. J. Fourier and Sadi Carnot. It was also the time of the first studies concerning electricity and magnetism, when the experimental results obtained by Stephen Gray, Charles L Dufay, Benjamin Franklin, Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, and others still had not reached the synthesis that would be attempted with Michael Faraday's electromagnetic induction and James Clerk Maxwell's magnetic field theories in the following century.

The New Universities

The end of the eighteenth century also saw profound transformations in the Western worlds main centers of higher education: England, France, and Germany. The last-mentioned were to dominate the nineteenth century and would heavily influence the U.S. higher education system, which would reach its high point during the following century.

Until the nineteenth century, higher education was still based primarily on the classical tradition. Latin, Greek, and the study of logic and philosophy served as preparation for the main professional careers of that time: medicine, law, and the ministry. During the eighteenth century, however, the development of empirical science had begun to show that an education based entirely on the classics was insufficient. Individuals who had obtained their knowledge outside traditional education began to dispute the privileges and professional monopolies claimed by those few who had a classical education.

Already during the eighteenth century some institutions had begun to offer a much more specialized and technical type of education than that which was offered in traditional universities. Among these, the best known were the Scottish universities (for medicine) and the French École Nationale de Ponts et Chaussees and the Gergsakademie in Freiburg (for engineering). Around the turn of the century, it seemed clear that the cultivated professions catered to by the more traditional universities and distinguished by their prestige were about to disappear, taking with them the whole system of guilds that had prevailed for centuries and that had been bolstered by the ideal of classical education.⁽⁶⁾

This new view of higher education responded to two types of pressure: (1) the need to incorporate new knowledge produced by burgeoning experimental science and (2) the need to do away with the special privileges of the older professions and guilds, making room for new professions, new schools, and new teaching and learning methods, thus substituting one elite for another.

In no nation did this transformation occur more dramatically than in France. There the Revolution at first abolished the old university, replacing it entirely with professional schools.⁽⁷⁾ Later, though, a gradual resumption of the older forms of education took place, as part of the post-revolutionary Restoration. For in France, as elsewhere in Europe, there were professional and intellectual groups strong enough and sufficiently well organized to force a good deal of their principles and ideologies on society at large and on the new organizational forms of the university system. As much as they may have wanted to establish new forms of teaching, which would separate the technical from the cultivated professions and eliminate the special privileges of professional groups, the rulers of that period could not fight the monopoly of excellence such professional groups exercised almost by definition.⁽⁸⁾

In reality, the grandes écoles created under the Napoleonic system to train the main technical cadre for the state were transformed into centers for the training of the new French intellectual elite. Such schools (the École Politechnique, the École de Mines, the École Normale Superieure) began to offer a concentrated, high-level education to an elite, while a mass education system was being developed for the rest of the population at a lower level. Under the new system, specialized learning was seen as a form of intellectual enhancement and improvement of the mind, making its students educated citizens of a new type.⁽⁹⁾

In England there was also a trend toward professionalization of education, although never so strong as in France. Traditional English universities (Oxford, Cambridge) held on to the notion that more specialized study was to be valued not as a way of acquiring practical skills, but as a better way of educating the mind as an end in itself. This insistence made it possible for these universities to maintain an ideal of liberal education not directly oriented toward professional careers while recruiting as professors competent scientists and scholars who were specialists and professionals within their particular fields. In this way, the English system held open an option for a more generic kind of learning, focused simply on general education. Later this would take on more complete form in the college system that became generalized within the United States.⁽¹⁰⁾

It was Germany, however, that was to bring scientific research to the nineteenth-century university and become the model that would influence all others. The reform of the German education system (or Prussian, to be more precise) had its beginnings with the creation of the University of Berlin in 1809. The general context seems to have been set by the existence of an "intelligentsia" that developed under the protection of the state, which meant to guide Prussia down the road to modernization while leaving no room for new social groups or for a plurality of economic and political interests.⁽¹¹⁾ University activity became one of the few means of access and participation open to these intellectuals, who saw the creation of a modernized university as a way of guaranteeing their presence and importance. This led them to resist the complete professionalization of higher education and to work to ward maintaining an integrated learning system through a philosophy of naturalist orientation, the Naturphilosophie, which had a much more humanistic and romantic component than the positivist philosophy then spreading from France to the rest of Europe. In 1817, under the leadership of Lorenz Oken, the journal Isis was founded in Germany, followed in 1822 by the creation of the Deutsche Naturforscher Versammlung, an association of German-speaking scientists and doctors. The latter group would be responsible for unifying the German scientific community, decades before the political unification of Germany was to be achieved, and would also serve as the inspiration for the British Association for the Advancement of Science.⁽¹²⁾

It is this integrated educational system, directed and guided by professors and intellectuals, which for the first time brings about an effective union of teaching and research. This union takes place initially in the teaching of chemistry, pharmacy, and physiology (which by the nineteenth century had already been sufficiently systematized to allow for coherent and integrated teaching) and in the humanities. The existence of several independent universities competing for talented individuals and drawing their prestige from their professors. Academic achievements seems also to have been fundamental. Students who wished to become professors had to learn to do research in order to compete in the professional marketplace; doctors, chemists, and pharmacists, along with future teachers, could now learn how to carry out scientific research as part of their general education.

The idea of a necessary link between teaching and research spread to other countries, despite the obvious difficulties it presents. There is a natural tension between teaching, which transmits what is already known, and research, which searches for what is not known. This tension can be bypassed in some historical moments and eras; but in Germany, as in a few other nations, it led to the creation of a specific system for scientific research, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (later to give way to the Max Planck Institutes). When the North American system later incorporated the idea of bringing together teaching and research, it did so with an important innovation: through graduate schools and regular doctoral courses, it recognized research activity as a profession like any other. In the new graduate programs, research was no longer an auxiliary activity within professional learning, nor a simple teaching method used by the professors; rather, it had its own ends and for the first time assumed primacy within the university. In contrast, doctoral degrees in Europe have generally served mostly as a tool for evaluating and accrediting the scholar, commonly as part of his or her career as a professor and not necessarily linked to a specific research activity. It is against this European background that developments in science and higher education in Portugal and in Brazil must be viewed.

Portugal and Modern Science

At first, Portugal played a pioneering role in the transformations that began shaking Europe as of the Renaissance. It would later assume a marginal role, with profound effects on the cultural heritage Brazil was to receive.⁽¹³⁾

The development of navigation, especially during the fifteenth century, played a significant part in laying down the foundation for a new understanding of nature, crowned at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Newton's work. Prior to these fifteenth-century advances in navigation, the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula had already taken to the seas in their fights against the Arabs. One result was Portugal's 1415 conquest of Ceuta, guaranteeing safe navigation through the Strait of Gibraltar and closing off the Continent to further Arab migration. In 1418 Pope Martin V gave his blessing to the Portuguese conquests, bestowing on them the characteristics and functions of a crusade, by an edict known as Sane Charissimus. During this period, significant progress was made in shipbuilding. In a revolutionary move, Portugal abandoned the use of galleys, replacing them with caravels.⁽¹⁴⁾

At the close of the fourteenth century, King João I initiated a new Portuguese dynasty, the Avis dynasty, and around 1420 one of his children, Prince Henrique, organized the Sagres School, dedicated to perfecting nautical instruments and ships and to training navigators and sailors. Portugal's future leadership in the conquest of new lands has been attributed at least partially to Prince Henrique's farsighted initiative in bringing specialists of many nationalities to his school.

During the fifteenth century the Portuguese discovered and colonized the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores, explored the western coast of Africa, and discovered a new sea route to the Orient. In 1498, Vasco da Gama's expedition made its way around the Cape of Good Hope to India. Shortly after that, in 1500, Brazil was discovered.

Through navigation, the Portuguese formulated a new geographic view of the world, a view that was in direct conflict with the Mediterranean view of the planet that Ptolemy had developed at the beginning of Christianity.⁽¹⁵⁾ It is often asked whether the Portuguese worried about bringing this set of empirical observations together into a synthesis. For Antônio José Saraiva, such an outcome was inevitable:

"As the southbound caravels opened up the Atlantic, navigators went about substituting their traditional empirical heritage point by point, adapting it to the diverse conditions facing them according to a set of rules that were still empirical but that had been developed from new experiences and with the collaboration of the theoretical science of the astronomers. The direct and systematic observation of nature tended to override the simple empiricism of the navigators. Voyages were full of consequences, which must necessarily be considered when studying the evolution of Portuguese culture until the Renaissance."

Saraiva was drawn to this conclusion because "the most striking tendency that took root during Portugal's expansionist development, and that in certain sectors was linked to Portugal, was the active criticism of experience, and this was the criterion of truth." Portuguese thought was heading toward an integration of its new knowledge through a concept that could restore its culture with "the unity and balance that it had lost because of the navigations."⁽¹⁶⁾

In support of this hypothesis, peninsular culture could boast of the presence of philosophers considered to be in the forefront of modern thought, such as the Jesuit thinkers Pedro da Fonseca and Francisco Suarez, who addressed problems considered "modern" that would later be taken up by Descartes. In his search for a suitable alternative to Aristotle, Suárez exerted great influence during the seventeenth century, especially in the Protestant nations of Central Europe. His works were studied by Leibniz's masters. As for lay culture, there was Francisco Sanches, a Portuguese from Braga who taught in Montpelier and Toulouse. In his book Quod Nihil Scitur, first appearing in Lyons in 1581, then republished in Frankfurt (1628) and in Rotterdam (1649), Sanches combats Aristotelianism and calls for a direct examination of natural phenomena, with experimental data being submitted to the scrutiny of critical judgment.

It was not in Portugal, however, that these precursors of modern philosophy - Pedro da Fonseca, Francisco Suárez, and Francisco Sanches - were to find their greatest welcome. Winds were already blowing in another direction.

The Counter reform

Around the end of the sixteenth century, Ignatius of Loyola's Society of Jesus, created in 1534, overcame its initial vacillations and opted for the preservation of traditional heritage, as expressed in the Aristotelian Thomist doctrine. An abrupt reorientation of Portuguese culture was to be fostered by the Jesuit order-averse to contemplation, rigidly hierarchical, militant, devoted, and active. Two tools were used to reach their objectives: the Ratio Studiorum and the Inquisition.

The Ratio Studiorum⁽¹⁷⁾ synthesized the Jesuits' pedagogical experience and assumed its definitive form at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It laid down the rules for the courses, programs, methods, and disciplines used in the society's schools. Through a set of explicit rules of teaching, it set the norms not only at the so-called lower level but also at the university level. Knowledge was seen as fully systematized; and at the apex of the pyramid stood theology taught according to Thomas Aquinas, followed by philosophy taught according to Thomist Aristotelianism.

The overriding goal was to preserve established knowledge and to prevent any possible epistemological innovation. The Jesuits were not opposed to new information or techniques; but they would not tolerate the broader philosophical views and innovative intellectual institutions that had arisen in some parts of Europe. The questions that teachers were to raise and the texts that students were to read were subject to strict control. Obedience to religious authorities was to be paid in all matters of discipline and study; no reference was to be made to unauthorized books or authors when giving explanations; no new teaching or discussion methods were to be introduced. No one was to be allowed to introduce new questions, nor to present an opinion that was not that of a qualified author, unless duly authorized.

Student access to books was limited to St. Thomas's Summa Theologica, Aristotles philosophical works, selected commentaries, and books that were aimed at a cultivation of the humanities. The Aristotelian doctrine was jealously guarded against any interpretation not approved by church officials, an attitude that contrasted sharply with the openness and flexibility of such luminaries as Suárez in previous years.

This pedagogical doctrine was not used just to preserve the integrity and purity of a single religious order but was made a norm for the entire Portuguese nation. The Jesuits assumed control of education at all levels. In the Universidade de Évora this took place directly; at the Universidade de Coimbra, it was achieved through the Colégio das Artes, which all students had to attend and where the Jesuits taught the propaedeutic disciplines. In addition, this doctrine permeated the state administration.⁽¹⁸⁾ The result was an impenetrable barrier around Portugal, totally isolating it from modern culture.

The control the Jesuit order exercised over the pedagogical system was aided by the Inquisition. Officially entitled the Tribunal do Santo Ofício, the Inquisition had the responsibility of safeguarding the integrity of the holy Catholic faith. To carry out this task, it was granted broad powers over personal freedom and was even allowed to extract confessions under torture. At the end of the fifteenth century, the Inquisition's activities almost came to a halt in Europe. As part of the Catholic church's struggle against Protestantism, however, those activities were renewed in Portugal in 1540 and were expanded at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Portuguese historians have been unable to reconstruct the activities of the Inquisition in their entirety. Each case generated a file, and although many have been lost, there remain 36,000 files to be searched. By 1732, according to Saraiva, repenters totaled some 23,068. The number of individuals condemned by the Santo Ofício is estimated to have averaged 120 to 160 per year. Nor were the Inquisition's repressive measures limited to its direct victims. It drove into a state of panic all who were associated with the victims themselves and anyone who aspired to a modicum of free thinking. One of the few existing surveys on the social origin of those condemned between 1682 and 1891 illustrates this well: about 57 percent were from upper or intellectual classes; thirty percent were artisans ("mechanical tradesmen"); and only 12 percent were common laborers. It thus seems reasonable to conclude that the preferred targets were those segments of the population which might oppose the monolithic culture and the cordon sanitaire that protected it from counter influences from abroad.⁽¹⁹⁾ Most victims were former Jews, or cristãos novos (new Christians), who remained under suspicion and surveillance long after changing their family names to Portuguese denominations of plants and animals, no matter how much they tried to be true to the official faith.

In Portugal, the Inquisition was under the control of the Dominicans; the Jesuits took care of education. Jesuits and Dominicans acted in unison to ensure that their way of thinking would dominate throughout the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth. Although the Dominicans held "great repressive power," in the words of Mário Domingues, the Jesuits held "most of the institutes of learning, where they molded the spirits of rulers; as it is well known, they were also the confessors and spiritual guides of the royal family and most of the nobility."⁽²⁰⁾ During the eighteenth century, notably under King João V, it is believed that a tendency arose within the court to encourage rivalry between the religious orders, in the hopes of reducing their power. The Congregação do Oratório (Congregation of the Oratory) was to play a central role in this process.⁽²¹⁾

It was only at the end of João V's long reign (1706-50) that some light found its way into Portugal through the dark curtain of totalitarian control. This illumination was made possible thanks to certain diplomats who, upon returning to Portugal after having socialized at the Paris and London courts, realized just how backward Portugal had become. At least one of these, Alexandre de Gusmão, rose within the government and was made responsible for some initiatives that were later to bear fruit. Notable among these was granting the Congregation of the Oratory the right to prepare candidates for university entrance. No longer was it mandatory for those who graduated to attend the Colégio das Artes. Thus, the Jesuit monopoly over an essential sector was effectively brought to a close.

With respect to modernization, the most significant event was the publication in 1746 and 1747 of the Verdadeiro método de estudar (The True Method of Studying). Its author, Luis Antonio Verney, was a prominent figure in the Congregation of the Oratory.⁽²²⁾ The book comprises a series of letters, published without the signature of their author, who was in Rome. Those letters, addressed to an imaginary interlocutor, provide a complete and thorough criticism of the Jesuits pedagogical system. After nearly two centuries of silence and apathy, the Portuguese intellectuals had entered a debate that made them conscious of the need for reform.

Between 1748 and 1756, twenty books and pamphlets were published in defense of or in disagreement with the Verdadeiro método. The fiercest opponents demanded an auto-da-fé and destruction of the dangerous text.⁽²³⁾ This time, though, the books were not burned. The reform that was so highly recommended by Verney was to affect all courses taught in Portugal, from Latin and the humanities to technical and professional training. The essence of his message was focused on a radical break with Thomist Aristotelianism. Pointing Portugal down the road to empiricism, Verney argued that authentic philosophy is "knowing what really makes the water rise into a syringe." When Pombal expelled the Jesuits in 1759 and set out to implant a new mentality, he found the ground had already been laid by Verney.

The Pombal Reform

Those who had lived abroad in the service of the king, or for some other reason, and had returned with the intention of rescuing the nation from continued medievalism, of introducing it to modern times, were known in Portugal as estrangeirados, or "foreignized." The most illustrious of the estrangeirados was Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, later named the Marquis of Pombal. In 1738 he had been appointed ambassador to London, where he lived for several years. After the death of King João V in 1750 and King José I's subsequent ascent to the throne, Sebastião de Carvalho e Melo was invited to join the government, finally becoming the highest authority and de facto ruler. Pombal viewed England's success as stemming from the application of scientific knowledge to productive activities. This was the concept he would try to apply in Portugal.⁽²⁴⁾

In 1771, Pombal founded Lisbon's Colégio dos Nobres, a boarding school where a hundred students from the nobility were taught not only the classics but also mathematics, physics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, drawing, and architecture, all under the strictest discipline and by instructors imported from France and England. The goal was to build a modern nobility that would remain faithful to King José and his powerful minis ter. But this initiative did not produce the desired results, apparently because of the reigning atmosphere of denunciations and spying. A few years later, Pombal decided to reform the Universidade de Coimbra itself.

The 1772 reform of Coimbra amounted to the founding of an entirely new university. Schools, institutions of practical training, study programs and methods, disciplinary measures and sanctions, buildings, textbooks all this was at least deeply remodeled and renovated, if not created anew. Most professors were chosen and appointed by Pombal himself, who recruited renowned professors from abroad, especially Italians. Two new schools, Mathematics and Philosophy, were created, the latter being chiefly concerned with what was then known as "natural philosophy," though focused on applied knowledge. Secondary education underwent a total change. The university gained a botanical garden, a laboratory of physics and chemistry, a pharmaceutical dispensary, and a laboratory of anatomy.⁽²⁵⁾

Modern scientific thinking had to coexist with autocracy. Pombal wanted

"to civilize the nation while enslaving it, to spread the light of philosophical sciences and to transform royal power into despotism. He stimulated the study of natural, international, and universal law and provided them with chairs at the university; but he did not realize that he was giving lights for the people to see that the government had to serve the nations, not the prince's well being and had to be bounded in its powers." ⁽²⁶⁾

Modern science, in other words, came without its philosophical and ethical dimensions, a feature that could be traced, according to some authors, to the time of the discoveries and that would explain, in the end, Iberia's historical lack of participation in the development of modern science. And so it reached Brazil.⁽²⁷⁾

After Pombal's death, a restoration movement known as the viradeira (turnabout) destroyed much of what he had accomplished. Antonio Sérgio believed that Pombal's reforms gained substance by the continuous work of the Portuguese Academy of Sciences and through the fellow ships that provided for studies abroad in the following years.⁽²⁸⁾ The French invasions would bring this process to a halt, but at the end of the century Portugal already boasted a significant number of naturalists, mineralogists, metallurgists, and botanists, some well known in the rest of Europe.

State, Church, and Education in Brazil

The previous discussion helps dispel the notion that Brazil was historically a rural, traditional, and deeply Catholic society which then evolved gradually into modernity, a myth that has not resisted modern historiography.⁽²⁹⁾ As a mercantilist and seaborne empire, Portugal never shared the feudal experience of decentralized power that was dominant in most countries of Western Europe. Its centralized, bureaucratic, and patrimonial administration was transplanted to Brazil-first with the establishment of a general government in 1548 and, much later, with the migration of the whole Portuguese court to Rio in 1808. When Brazil was made independent in 1822 by a member of Portuguese royalty, the line of continuity was never completely broken, and this fact is important for an understanding of the stable institutionalization of the Brazilian government during the colonial period and during the second half of the nineteenth century, in sharp contrast with most of the continent. From this perspective, the republican decentralization of 1889 can be seen as just a pause in a trend that would be taken up again in 1930.

This centralizing tendency explains why, contrary to what is usually thought, Brazil was never a country where the church held undisputed control and authority, even though - or because - the intimate relations that always existed between Church and State in Portugal were brought to the Brazilian colony⁽³⁰⁾ and continued to exist in the Brazilian Empire. It is true, though, that Brazilians would usually declare themselves to be Catholic, and the church did provide the only legitimate ethical and moral code available to the population. The church also had a monopoly over the principal rites of passage that defined one's place in society baptism, marriage, burial-and to be outside the church meant that one did not enjoy the rights of citizenship such rituals symbolized. More than symbols were involved: throughout the nineteenth century, a Catholic oath was required in order to graduate from the state faculties, to work as a public employee, or to be a member of the legislature.⁽³¹⁾ The state was linked to the church through an agreement known as the padroado, whereby the state had the right to approve all documents generated by the Roman church before they could be enacted in Brazil; in addition, the civilian authorities participated in the nomination of all Brazilian bishops. This intertwining of church and state meant that, in practice, religious questions were often treated as merely political, and religion was often used to further the political goals of the state. If Brazil were a deeply religious society, this arrangement would have brought into being a theocratic regime; the church hierarchy would have fully controlled both state and society. What happened was almost the opposite: dominance belonged to a secular state, and the church had to play a minor role, accepting without question civil authority and the not-so-Christian mores of the people in exchange for some measure of authority and power.

The consequence of this arrangement was that, for most Brazilians, Catholicism became above all a set of conventional behaviors instead of a deeply felt commitment to religion. More intense forms of religiosity emerged, and still do today, at the bottom of society, independent from and often outside the control of ecclesiastical authority: syncretic cults, millenarian movements and, more recently, Spiritualist and Protestant fundamentalism.

There was also a deep distinction within the church between the religious orders (notably the Jesuits) and the secular clergy working in parishes throughout the country. The Jesuits were hierarchically organized along military lines, and their organization went beyond national frontiers. They controlled most forms of education in the Portuguese Empire until their expulsion in 1759, and they clearly were involved in a project for secular power that extended from doctrinaire control of the Universidade de Coimbra to the political, economic, and military organization of South American Indians in the Missões region, where the Portuguese and the Spanish empires met. The sheer grandiosity and ambition of this project explains the conflict between the Jesuits and the Portuguese crown and, in the end, the order's expulsion from the Empire.

The secular priesthood was quite another matter. A priestly career was often the only choice for men of obscure social origin who could not expect to attend the Universidade of Coimbra or the faculties established in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Recife, and Salvador in the nineteenth century.⁽³²⁾ Working in small towns or in the countryside, the secular priests survival depended mostly on the protection and support of the local elite. He would perform the expected rituals and teach religion and the alphabet to the children of the richest families of the region. In the eyes of the political authorities, then, the secular priest not only did not challenge the regime. He contributed to its stability.

Religious education also had two completely different meanings. For the Jesuits, it was perceived as an instrument for controlling society and keeping the civilian authorities under their authority. For the secular priest, it was just a traditional way of raising the children and imbuing them (especially the girls) with Christian virtues. This distinction was perceived clearly by the Portuguese and later the Brazilian authorities. They fought against the Jesuits and when necessary clashed violently with the organized church, but they never ceased to declare themselves Catholic and to bring the children to the church for their education.

When the traditional priests tried to move away from their expected role, they also often moved away from the established church. The best example was probably the intellectual fermentation of the Olinda seminar, headed by Azeredo Coutinho and described as "perhaps the best embodiment of the Brazilian enlightenment - both religious and rational, realist and utopian, mixing the influence of the [French] philosophers with clerical vigilantism."⁽³³⁾ This seemingly incongruous combination of ideas made sense from the peculiar condition of these "liberal priests," who were to play an important role in the movements toward independence in the eighteenth century; who joined the Freemasons, and who even tried to convince the Brazilian Empire to decree the end of celibacy for Brazilian priests, which would be tantamount to the establishment of a national church.

Political independence from Portugal would only strengthen these tendencies. The Empire would keep Catholicism as the official religion, the institution of padroado, and the delegation of civilian rituals to the church. It was, however, a weak church, infiltrated by the Enlightenment and without the strength of the Jesuits, and made weaker by the strong influence of naturalist and scientific ideas among the country's better educated elites. In the nineteenth century no religious educational institution ever had the prestige and appeal of the professional schools established by the civilian authorities in the main cities. If this subordination of the church could create fermentation among the low clergy, it was never enough to challenge the strength of the civilian state. When this challenge did occur, in an episode that became known as the "religious question" at the end of the century, it was an attempt to reestablish the conservative power of the church's hierarchy rather than something coming from enlightened intellectuals.⁽³⁴⁾

We can now understand why the Portuguese never created in Brazil universities like the ones established by Spain in its American colonies. It was too late for Catholic universities in the traditional sense but too early for modern ones.

Projects for a Brazilian University

In colonial Brazil there was no organized higher education; very little teaching beyond elementary classes offered by the church took place at all. As an ally of England, Portugal was invaded during the Napoleonic wars by French troops led by General Junot in 1808. The Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil under protection of the English fleet. Be cause of the transfer, Brazil was promoted to the "United Kingdom of Portugal," and Rio de Janeiro became the real capital of the Portuguese Empire.

The Portuguese court brought the colony many innovations. Over the next ten years Brazil would establish courses of higher learning in engineering and medicine and training courses for various professions. The creation of a university was only to he entertained at the end of this period; the initiative is associated with José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, who had studied in the reformed Universidade de Coimbra during the last decades of the eighteenth century.

Andrada e Silva came from a well-to-do family of recent Portuguese descent that had made its home in Santos, Brazil. Sent abroad to study at Coimbra in the early 1780s. he completed his course at the Faculdade de Filosofia in 1787 and at the Faculdade de Leis the following year. He preferred a career as a naturalist to teaching, and in 1785 he was made a free member of Lisbon's Academia de Ciências. Already the following year he presented the academy with an essay on whale fishing and oil extraction. In 1790 the Portuguese government sent him on a scientific mission to the rest of Europe, specially to pursue new knowledge in mineralogy.⁽³⁵⁾

During part of 1790 and 1791, Andrada e Silva studied chemistry and mineralogy in Paris. In 1792 he left Paris for Freiburg, where he joined the laboratory of Abraham Werner, who is considered the founder of systematic mineralogy. During the following years he dedicated himself to mineral research in various European nations. These activities earned him admittance to several European scientific institutions, such as London's Geological Society and Jena's Mineralogy Society, and to the corresponding associations in Paris, Berlin, and Edinburgh. He returned to Paris at the end of 1800. Later, Andrada e Silva held important positions within the Portuguese administration. In 1801 he was appointed director of the mining bureau, where he was to be responsible for managing coal mines and reforming the iron processing plants. He also became head of a laboratory for chemical and metallurgical experiments, took over the chair of metallurgy at Coimbra, and remained active in the Portuguese Academia de Ciências, where he served as secretary years later. He returned to Brazil only in 1819.

In the three decades following his graduation from Coimbra, Andrada e Silva remained faithful to the understanding of science that prevailed in Pombal's reform of the Portuguese university, namely that science's end goal is its application.⁽³⁶⁾ Moreover, success was assured only when scientific knowledge and productive activity interacted.⁽³⁷⁾

It is believed that Andrada e Silva returned to Brazil at the invitation of King João VI to head the Instituto Acadêmico, the type of university that the Portuguese were considering founding in Rio de Janeiro. Appointed in 1821 to write the instructions to the Sao Paulo representatives to the Portuguese Parliament in Lisbon, he returned to the idea of a Brazilian university, taking much of his inspiration from the Pombal model. No one knows just what led to the postponement of this undertaking, but we do know that a little more than a year after he returned to Brazil to reside in Santos, Andrada e Silva played a central role in the events that led the court to return to Portugal and to the declaration of Brazil's independence in 1822.

The university conceived of by Andrada e Silva would be made up of three schools: philosophy, jurisprudence, and medicine. The school of canons and theology that had been retained under the Pombal reform was omitted, apparently showing that lay thinking had advanced since then. The school of philosophy would be divided into three areas: natural sciences, rational and moral philosophy and mathematical sciences. This structure, in which mathematics was to be placed within philosophy, was a denial of the autonomy of the school of mathematics granted under the 1772 reform. The teaching of natural sciences would be centered on the study of natural history, chemistry; physics and mineralogy, the latter examined as thoroughly as possible. Hopeful about Brazil's mineral potential, particularly given its large territory, the course would educate individuals who could take charge of this exploitation.

The project never materialized. But even if it had, it most likely would not have succeeded in blending teaching, research, and professional education as in the European universities that underwent modernization in the nineteenth century. The European universities managed in different ways to combine and reconcile the more traditional characteristics of guilds with pressures exerted by burgeoning professional groups bearing the banner and creed of empirical science and the ideals of rationality. In Europe, university autonomy was identified with self-government by a community of scholars and scientists.⁽³⁸⁾ In the Luso-Brazilian experience, however, the notion of university autonomy tended to be identified with university control by the clergy against a modernizing state. In opposing this autonomy, the Portuguese and Brazilian elites were left with only one of the two key ingredients of modern European universities, namely the education for the professions, but missed the other, their tradition of self-rule and free inquiry.

In short, both Portugal and Brazil lacked a deeper social movement that could look for a renewed university as an instrument of social mobility and affirmation. The transformations that took place were attempts from the top down to create technically skilled individuals to manage state affairs and discover new wealth. As we will see later, this was partially achieved, but there was no space for scientific activities to bear fruit. In assuming an independent path, Brazilian culture incorporated only one component of that days modern idea of science, the one related to its application. A key component was missing: broad sectors of society that saw in the development of science and the expansion of education the road to its own progress.

Notes

1. See Burtt 1951:70.

2. In the language of the time, "to improve the knowledge of natural things. and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanick practices, Engynes. and Inventions by Experiments (not meddling with Divinity, Moralls, Politicks. Grammar, Rhetorick. or Logick)" (quoted in Mason 1975:259).

3. Ben-David 1971; Bernal 1971; Mason 1975; Cardwell 1972; Merton 1970: Gilpin 1968; Crosland (ed.) 1976.

4. Quoted in Mason 1975:280.

5. See Gould 1977

6. Ben-David 1977:36

7. Writes Ben-David: "The new system that began to emerge in 1794 consisted of a series of professional schools for teachers, doctors, and engineers needed by the state. Scientific studies and scientistic philosophy were to inherit the central place that had been occupied by the classics in both secondary and higher education. Eventually, under Napoleon, the scientific orientation was weakened, the emphasis on the new scientistic philosophy was completely abolished, and classical learning was restored to its former importance in secondary schooling. But higher education remained identified with specialized education for various professions" (Ben-David 1977:15-16).

8. "Rulers, however, could effectively control the transmission only of specific techniques. They could preempt the esoteric services of clock repairers or gun makers, but they could not control higher learning. which teaches more than techniques, and which provides scope for intellectual virtuosity and originality. . . . Rulers could grant or deny charters to universities and could buy their support, but they could not control them as they could control a workshop in which masters trained apprentices. Higher learning remained a monopoly of the learned class" (Ben-David 1977:35-36).

9. Gilpin 1968.

10. Ben-David 1971:75-78, 103-6.

11. Rosemberg 1966; Ringer 1969.

12. Mason 1975:578.

13. See Sérgio 1972 for an insightful view of Portugal's history.

14. "The heavy and sturdy carracks designed by the Portuguese did not disintegrate anymore in storms on long soujourns at sea; the wood of which they were built and the way they were careened made them stronger than waves and tides All sorts of wind directions, instead of slowing the ships down, were turned into allies by a unique combination of lateen and square rigs. This combination allowed a smaller crew to man a larger ship which made crew members less vulnerable to malnutrition and plagues, and captains less vulnerable to mutinies. The bigger size of the carracks made it possible to embark bigger guns, which in turn rendered more predictable the outcome of all military encounters with the many tiny pirogues of the natives. The size also made it practical to bring back a bigger cargo" (Latour 1987:221).

15. A Portuguese text from the end of the fifteenth century noted: "That which has been written here should he affirmed in spite of that which was stated by the illustrious Ptolemy, who wrote many good things about the division of the world, but who nonetheless failed here. For he divides the world into three parts: the first. populated. located in the middle of the world; and the North he declares as unpopulated owing to excessive cold; and the equator. he also declares as uninhabited, owing to extreme heat. And all of this we found to be the opposite. because the arctic pole, as we have seen, is inhabited, even to the very top, and the line of the equator is also inhabited, by Negroes, where the number of peoples is so great that it is difficult to believe And I can truthfully state that 1 have seen a great deal of the world" (Diogo Gomes, As relações do descobrimento do Guiné e das ilhas dos Açores, Madeira e Cabo Verde, quoted in Saraiva 1955,2:455).

16. Saraiva 1955, vol.2. chap. 4.

17. Franca 1952.

18. One Jesuit priest described the situation thus: "Not anywhere in Europe, or in either of the two hemispheres, was there any nation where our society was more esteemed. more powerful, or more firmly established than in Portugal, and in all of the nations or kingdoms subject to Portuguese rule. . . . We were more than just guides of the consciences of princes and princesses of the royal family, for the king and his ministers requested our advice on all matters-even the most important-and no position in the government of the state or within the church was filled without first consulting us or without our influence. The high clergy. the powerful. and the people thus fervently fought for our protection and favor" (Anais da Sociedade, quoted in Domingues 1963:109).

19. Saraiva 1955.2:79-82.

20. Domingues 1963:264-65.

21. "The Congregação do Oratório had been founded in Rome in 1550 by Philip Neri and introduced in France by the Cardinal of Berulle in 1611 and in Portugal in 1688 by initiative of Father Bartolomeu do Quental, preacher and confessor at the royal chapel. The Congregation was known in France for its liberalism and for its cultivation of mathematics, physics, the natural sciences, history. and the national language. Malebranche, a disciple of Descartes, was an Oratorian, and the priests of the Congregation always leaned toward Cartesianism" (C. Magalhães 1967:173).

22. Verney 1949/50.

23. "Whenever the true author does not come forward, his writings themselves should be made to pay, serving as a statue of the author. Praise the Lord! How long it has been since Portugal has seen one of these bonfires or has offered Christian charity and the public peace the smoke of this holocaust, more precious to it than any incense" (Cândido de Lacerda, in 1749, quoted in J. de Carvalho 1950.17).

24. See Falcon 1982 for a scholarly account of Pombal's enterprise.

25. The relevant statutes sought to implant a new pedagogical style: "Instill the students with the scientific spirit: this point is continually stressed. Instead of useless scholastics, knowledge of the Newtonian laws set out in natural philosophy is prescribed. All theoretical reasoning will be derived from principles fully proven by any of the basic subjects physics, mathematics, chemistry, botanics, pharmacology, and anatomy." In ex plaining how a healthy body works, "the professor will describe the part in question, no changes being made by the imagination but rather according to the anatomy: likewise, the movement of fluids will be studied, without hypotheses or fantasies but as shown in experiments, through anatomic injections, animal dissections, everything being explained as far as possible in relation to the laws of physics, mechanics, hydraulics. Medical theory requires caution herein, as well as a strong awareness of its limits . Never should it be insinuated that illness is cured through speculation" (quoted in Cidade 1969, 2:210).

26. Ribeiro dos Santos, quoted in Sérgio 1972:76.

27. See M. B. N. Silva 1988.

28. Sérgio 1972:105-8 8

29. Faoro 1958; Schwartzman 1973.1975, and 1982; Velho 1976; E. P. Reis 1979.

30. Lacombe 1960.

31. Barros 1962:330.

32. J. M. Carvalho 1980.

33. Souza 1960:102.

34. The issue in the "religious question" was whether the Bishop of Olinda. Dom Vital (and later also the Bishop of Belém. Macedo Costa). held the right to) expel the members of religious brotherhoods who were also Freemasons or to close these brotherhoods if they resisted their orders. The difficulty was that these brotherhoods were not just religious associations; they also performed several civilian functions. The dispute evolved into a conflict between the relative powers of church and state in a period when the Roman church was trying to reestablish its leadership and authority throughout the world by reaffirming its most traditional and conservative values. Pope Pius IX, in his encyclical Quanta Cura listed all the evils of modern society condemned by the church: rationalism of all kinds: naturalism; indiferentism; the notion of a free church in a free state (i.e., the separation between state and church): the prevalence of civilian authority: the subordination of religious authority to) civilian government: liberalism: progress; modern civilization )Barros 1962:349). The Brazilian bishops opposed all these ideas. and their confrontation with the enlightened Empire of Pedro II was unavoidable. For resisting the authority of the civilian state. Dom Vital was sentenced to jail.

35. Falcão (ed.) 1965.

36. Paim 1971.

37. In 1813, in an essay on coal mines and iron foundries, Bonifácio stated: "If our nation is sterile in agricultural products; if factories face almost insurmountable obstacles in competing with those abroad, what more natural and safe way would a nation have of out becoming impoverished and deserted. if not through the extensive mining of the minerals with which Providence has chosen to bless it? . . . If Russia. Prussia, and France have regained so much wealth through the exploitation of their minerals, who is to keep Portugal from doing the same? Nations are supported and defended by bread. gunpowder. and metals: without these from their own backyard. the existence and liberty of any nation is precarious" (quoted in Falcão [ed.] 1965, 1 1:40. At the beginning of his career, in his previously mentioned first essay to the Academy. Andrada e Silva wrote: "Common men believe that common things are out part of science: this means that the art of making furnaces is considered vulgar, as is the art of any ignorant bricklayer. Nevertheless, a good deal of knowledge of physics is needed. In Santa Catarina, where Brazil's largest coal mines are located, there are at least twenty boilers with as many furnaces: but if the first builders had known a bit more abouut the physics and chemistry of fire, all of these could have been reduced to five at most" (Falcão [ed.] 1965. 1:40).

38. Rothblatt 1985.