Charles M. Breder, Jr.: Palmetto Key, 1942

Charles M. Breder and his wife Ethel spent part of the summer of 1942 at the Palmetto Key field station, known today as Cabbage Key, on the west coast of Florida south of Charlotte Harbor. The Palmetto Key field station began in 1938 and ended in 1942 because of World War II. His Palmetto Key diary ran for 95 pages of notes, tables, diagrams, drawings, lists, and business records and this report presents a variety of fascinating entries. Diaries from other years all bear Breder's style of discipline, curiosity, humor, and speculations on nature. The diary was transcribed as part of the Coastal Estuarine Data/Document Rescue and Archeology effort for South Florida. (PDF contaons 24 pages)

Charles M. Breder, Jr.: Hypothetical considerations, 1931-1937

Charles M. Breder Jr. “hypothesis” diary is a deviation from the field diaries that form part of the Breder collection housed at the Arthur Vining Davis Library, Mote Marine Laboratory. There are no notes or observations from specific scientific expeditions in the document. Instead, the contents provide an insight into the early meticulous scientific thoughts of this biologist, and how he examines and develops these ideas. It is apparent that among Dr. Breder’s passions was his continual search for knowledge about questions that still besieged many scientists. Topics discussed include symmetry, origin of the atmosphere, origin of life, mechanical analogies of organisms, aquaria as an organism, astrobiology, entropy, evolution of species, and other topics. The diary was transcribed as part of the Coastal Estuarine Data/Document Rescue and Archeology effort for South Florida. (PDF contains 33 pages)

Charles M. Breder, Jr.: Dry Tortugas, 1929

During the summer of 1929, Dr. Charles M. Breder, Jr., employed at that time by the New York Aquarium and American Museum of Natural History, visited the Carnegie Laboratory in the Dry Tortugas to study the development and habits of flying fishes and their allies. The diary of the trip was donated to the Mote Marine Laboratory Library by his family. Dr. Breder's meticulous handwritten account gives us the opportunity to see the simple yet great details of his observations and field experiments. His notes reveal the findings and thoughts of one of the world's greatest ichthyologists. The diary was transcribed as part of the Coastal Estuarine Data/Document Rescue and Archeology effort for South Florida. (PDF contains 75 pages)

Charles M. Breder, Jr.: Bahamas and Florida

Dr. Charles M. Breder, a well known ichthyologist, kept meticulous field diaries throughout his career. This publication is a transcription of field notes recorded during the Bacon Andros Expeditions, and trips to Florida, Ohio and Illinois during the 1930s. Breder's work in Andros included exploration of a "blue hole", inland ecosystems, and collection of marine and terrestrial specimens. Anecdotes include descriptions of camping on the beach, the "filly-mingoes" (flamingos) of Andros Island, the Marine Studios of Jacksonville, FL, a trip to Havana, and the birth of seahorses. This publication is part of a series of transcriptions of Dr. Breder's diaries. (PDF contains 55 pages)

Charles M. Breder, Jr.: Atlantis Expedition, 1934

Dr. Charles M. Breder participated on the 1934 expedition of the Atlantis from Woods Hole, Massachusetts to Panama and back and kept a field diary of daily activities. The Atlantis expedition of 1934, led by Prof. A. E. Parr, was a milestone in the history of scientific discovery in the Sargasso Sea and the West Indies. Although naturalists had visited the Sargasso Sea for many years, the Atlantis voyage was the first attempt to investigate in detailed quantitative manner biological problems about this varying, intermittent ‘false’ bottom of living, floating plants and associated fauna. In addition to Dr. Breder, the party also consisted of Dr. Alexander Forbes, Harvard University and Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI); T. S. Greenwood, WHOI hydrographer; M. D. Burkenroad, Yale University’s Bingham Laboratory, carcinology and Sargasso epizoa; M. Bishop, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Zoology Dept., collections and preparations and H. Sears, WHOI ichthyologist. The itinerary included the following waypoints: Woods Hole, the Bermudas, Turks Islands, Kingston, Colon, along the Mosquito Bank off of Nicaragua, off the north coast of Jamaica, along the south coast of Cuba, Bartlett Deep, to off the Isle of Pines, through the Yucatan Channel, off Havana, off Key West, to Miami, to New York City, and then the return to Woods Hole. During the expedition, Breder collected rare and little-known flying fish species and developed a method for hatching and growing flying fish larvae. (PDF contains 48 pages)

Charles I : unhero of royalist poetry

During the English Civil War, Charles I appeared as a character in Royalist poetry, both directly and allegorically. These depictions drew on ancient Roman epic poems, particularly Lucan’s De Bello Civili, in their treatment of the subject matter of civil war and Charles as an epic hero. Though the authors of these poems supported Charles, their depictions of him and his reign reveal anxiety about his weakness as a ruler. In comparison to the cults of personality surrounding his predecessors and the heroes of De Bello Civili, his cult appears bland and forced. The lack of enthusiasm surrounding Charles I may help to explain his downfall at the hands of his Parliamentarian opponents.  

Cartas enviadas por Charles Becker y por su viuda (M. L. Becker) entre 1929 y 1942

1 tarjeta postal y 1 carta (manuscritas) ; entre 140x90mm y 215x275mm

Metaphysics in the Work of Charles Darwin

It is not hard to see how two visions of nature are intertwined in Darwin’s Journal of Researches: one vision, the province of romantic authors depicting the sentiments awakened by certain landscapes, the other, the domain of natural scientists describing the world without reference to the aesthetic qualities of the scenery. Nevertheless, analyses of this double perspective in Darwin’s work are relatively rare. Most scholars focus on Darwin, the scientist, and more or less ignore the aesthetic aspects of his work. Perceiving the gradual transformation of Darwin’s world view, however, depends on analyzing the two different modes in which Darwin approached and perceived the world. While one can, on occasion, find commentaries on the beauty of the natural world in Darwin’s early work, the passage of time produces a modification in the naturalist’s manner of perceiving nature. This does not, however, mean that Darwin ceases to find beauty in nature; on the contrary, the disenchantment, in Max Weber’s words, that Darwin’s theory produces should not be understood in a pejorative, but rather in a literal sense. The theory of evolution, in effect, divests nature of its magical character and begins to explain it in terms of natural selection, according it, in the process a new and more intense attraction. In the present work, the metaphysical implications of this new vision of the world are analyzed through the eyes of its discoverer.

Charles Darwin y la Descripción de la Naturaleza

Comunicación presentada en el I Congreso de la Asociación Iberoamericana de Filosofía de la Biología (Valencia)

O bifrontismo do feminino em A Demanda do Santo Graal: Redescobrindo o substrato céltico das personagens femininas na busca do Santo Cálix

A figura da mulher ocupa significativo papel nas novelas de cavalaria do Ciclo Bretão. Emergindo como um elemento que traz liga às narrativas do lendário artúrico, constitui-se adjuvante essencial e multifacetada na construção dos episódios, numa interação constante com o masculino representado, principalmente, pelos cavaleiros. O Medievo traz à tona uma imagem matizada do feminino: a mulher socialmente vista sob clivagens diversas é refletida na literatura de cavalaria, conforme se pode verificar em A Demanda do Santo Graal. A presença feminina é importantíssima na narrativa, sobretudo na sua tensa relação com a cavalaria, agora ligada ao elemento religioso - monastizada, celibatária e ascética. O objetivo precípuo de nossos estudos é investigar de que maneira a fôrma sociocultural medieva, na qual foi moldada A Demanda do Santo Graal, se relaciona com seu substrato: as narrativas provindas da cosmovisão inerente ao imaginário céltico. Desta feita, nosso viés analítico verticaliza-se no elemento feminino presente na obra. Mais especificamente, toma-se por escopo a imagem de personagens que refletem a ideologia clerical moralístico-didatizante do século XIII, mas, sobretudo, resgata-se a imagem de personagens imbuídas de singular dualidade; ambigüidade esta que é marca não só do medievo paradoxal concernente ao feminino, mas também de personas literárias concebidas entre dois mundos, dois pólos ideológicos distintos. Em outros termos, fala-se de personagens que são seres ficcionais bifrontes: personagens localizadas entre as herdades e as identidades. Foram tomados como corpora de pesquisa os episódios em que estas damas polidimensionais aparecem e se tornam adjuvantes na ação literária, seja para cooperar, confundir ou prejudicar os cavaleiros que empreendem a sagrada, inefável e venturosa busca do Santo Cálix que dará fim às aventuras do Reino de Logres

Lugares e personagens do universo buarqueano

A partir da década de 1970, a ciência geográfica passou a entender que seus conceitos, suas categorias analíticas, bem como seus objetos de pesquisa poderiam se utilizar dos discursos literários, em suas diversas possibilidades, incluindo o cinema, a pintura e, até mesmo, a música. Compreender os lugares a partir dos panoramas narrados pelos literatos {escritores ou compositores} e fomentar uma leitura de mundo repleta de sentidos existenciais, oferecida pelas maneiras que os autores apreendem, se configura como um relevante caminho de entendimento do mundo vivido a partir da interrelação entre a linguagem científica e artística. Neste sentido, a corrente humanística em geografia tem se dedicado a esta análise, uma vez que a linguagem literária tem a particularidade de comunicar aspectos da vida ou fatos e tempos da experiência humana, revelando, pois, o sentimento e o entendimento do literato frente à sociedade. No que tange à literatura musical, os versos permitem múltiplas interpretações. A música pode afetar, comover, causar estranheza, interesse ou reflexão, fazer o corpo se movimentar ou relaxar e, ainda, servir de base para análises filosófico-científicas a respeito dos espaços e lugares geográficos. Dito isto, esta dissertação segue a trilha da geografia humanística e nossa intenção é mostrar esta corrente configurando um caminho para a elucidação da complexidade exposta pela análise subjetiva de um elenco de letras capturadas do acervo de Chico Buarque, bem como o desvendar da plêiade de efemérides, sentimentos, mazelas e vibrações encerradas no cancioneiro buarqueano e que podem ser lidas através do conceito de lugar, este confundido com a trajetória da geografia humanística.

The Executive Council of the Charles Darwin Foundation 1964-1988

From a special issue: A Brief History of the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands 1959-1988