Encyclopedism, professional distinction and modernity in Brazilian mathematical sciences (1808-1930)

Abstract

After a survey of the recent historiography on mathematical sciences dealing with mathematical practices along the 19th and early 20th centuries in Brazil, we suggest at least two distinct movements in the period. In the beginning of the 19th century mathematical practices are strongly related to a kind of Brazilian enlightenment, where medicine, literature, and engineering constitute a constellation of amalgamated knowledge usually denoted as encyclopedic. At this point, mathematics is an item of social distinction for an enlightened elite. At the end of the period, not an elite instrument anymore, mathematical sciences are an object of professional distinction: Sometimes they are tools for engineering practices, sometimes they are claimed as autonomous and disinterested objects by scientist-engineers.