Medicine and Science in a New Medical-surgical Context: The Royal College of Surgery of Barcelona (1760–1843)

Taking the Royal College of Barcelona (1760 -1843) as a case study this paper shows the development of modern surgery in Spain initiated by Bourbon Monarchy founding new kinds of institutions through their academic activities of spreading scientific knowledge. Antoni Gimbernat was the most famousinternationally recognised Spanish surgeon. He was trained as a surgeon at the Royal College of Surgery in Cadiz and was later appointed as professor of theAnatomy in the College of Barcelona. He then became Royal Surgeon of King Carlos IV and with that esteemed position in Madrid he worked resiliently to improve the quality of the Royal colleges in Spain. Learning human bodystructure by performing hands-on dissections in the anatomical theatre has become a fundamental element of modern medical education. Gimbernat favoured the study of natural sciences, the new chemistry of Lavoisier and experimental physics in the academic programs of surgery. According to the study of a very relevant set of documents preserved in the library, the so-called “juntas literarias”, among the main subjects debated in the clinical sessions was the concept of human beings and diseases in relation to the development of the new experimental sciences. These documents showed that chemistry andexperimental physics were considered crucial tools to understand the unexplained processes that occurred in the diseased and healthy human bodyand in a medico-surgical context. It is important to stress that through these manuscripts we can examine the role and the reception of the new sciences applied to healing arts.

Proposed gravitational wave observatory based on solid elastic spheres

Spherical gravitational wave (GW) detectors offer a wealth of so far unexplored possibilities to detect gravitational radiation. We find that a sphere can be used as a powerful testbed for any metric theory of gravity, not only general relativity as considered so far, by making use of a deconvolution procedure for all the electric components of the Riemann tensor. We also find that the spheres cross section is large at two frequencies, and advantageous at higher frequencies in the sense that a single antenna constitutes a real xylophone in its own. Proposed GW networks will greatly benefit from this. The main features of a two large sphere observatory are reported.

Port-Royal i la visibilitat de la història de la lingüística

L"article presenta l"entorn històric de les gramàtiques universals del segle xvii. Descriu el moviment cultural de l"abadia de Port-Royal, en els vessants religiós, polític, pedagògic i científic. Analitza els principis de la Grammaire générales et raisonne d"Antonie Arnauld i Claude Lancelot. Considera la relació de la gramàtica amb la Logique d"A. Aranuld i Pierre. Nicole. I examina la recepció que ha tingut la gramàtica de Port-Royal a la història de la Lingüística, en especial a partir de la tesi de Noam Chomsky sobre la lingüística cartesiana. La controvertida postura de Chomsky, rebutjada per la crítica, instrueix sobre els processos de construcció de la historiografia