1,720,975 research outputs found
Science and technology : The physicist and the engineer = Scienza e tecnologia : Fisici e ingegneri
No full textI termini scienza e tecnologia sono comunemente intesi per designare attività diverse
ma affini. La loro distinzione, tuttavia, può difficilmente essere espressa in modo
semplice. Quando si tratta di decidere se un certo problema riguardi la scienza piuttosto che la tecnologia (o viceversa), le persone tendono a identificare i due ambiti più
o meno allo stesso modo o a rispondere con un’ammissione di ignoranza. Se, invece,
le si interroga sulla differenza tra scienza e tecnologia in generale, le persone tendono
a dare risposte più disperse e incerte. Secondo una narrativa diffusa, la scienza ha più
a che fare con la teorizzazione, l’astrazione, la generalizzazione, la semplificazione
attraverso la modellazione, mentre la tecnologia è impegnata nel mondo reale, nelle
misurazioni in scenari concreti, in casi individuali, in condizioni intrigate. Nel nostro
lavoro illustriamo brevemente le motivazioni epistemologiche e sociologiche della
risposta comune e suggeriamo di porre la questione della distinzione e del rapporto
tra scienza e tecnologia assumendo un punto di vista storico.Gli storici della tecno-
logia moderna hanno individuato la nascita di un nuovo attore nell’ambito culturale
europeo del XVIII secolo: l’ingegnere scientifico. L’obiettivo di questa nuova figura
intellettuale, spesso ben preparata in matematica, era la razionalizzazione della pro-
gettazione e dell’attuazione dei processi. A questo scopo si impiegavano ipotesi e
sperimentazioni, come nelle scienze fisiche (matematiche); erano anche richieste e
utilizzate informazioni provenienti da atelier tecnici, cantieri navali, ecc. La necessità
di questa nuova figura derivava dai tumultuosi sviluppi della scienza del XVIII seco-
lo, conseguenza e causa dello sviluppo economico, che richiedevano un corpo cre-
scente di ingegneri qualificati. Su questo sfondo, l’ingegnere – l’attore a cui è affidata
la conoscenza tecnologica – appariva come una sorta di termine medio in una duplice
relazione: l’operatore intermedio tra lo scienziato e l’utente finale.The terms science and technology are commonly meant to designate different yet cognate activities. Their divide, however, can hardly be expressed. When dealing with the question whether a certain problem pertains to science rather than technology (or the other way round), people tend to identify the two realms more or less in the same ways or to respond with an admission of ignorance. If, instead, people are asked about the difference between science and technology in general, they tend to give more dispersed and uncertain answers. According to a widespread narrative, science has more to do with theorization, abstraction, generalization, simplification through modelling, whereas technology is committed to the actual reality, measurements in concrete scenarios, individual cases, entangled conditions. In our paper, we briefly illustrate the epistemological as well as sociological motivations of the common answer sketched above and suggest to pose the question of the distinction and the positive relation between science and technology assuming a historically-informed point of view.
Historians of modern technology have identified the birth of a new actor in the European cultural milieu of the 18th century: the scientific engineer. The goal of this new intellectual figure, often well trained in mathematics, was the rationalization of design and implementation of processes. For this purpose, hypotheses and experimentations were employed, as in the (mathematical) physical sciences; on the other hand, data from technical ateliers, shipyards, etc., were requested and utilized. The need for such a new figure derived from the tumultuous developments of science of the 18th century, consequence and cause of the economic development, requiring a growing body of qualified engineers. On this background, the engineer – the actor who is entrusted with technological knowledge – appears as a sort of middle term in a twofold relation: the intermediate operator between the scientist and the final user
Venus moon: an astronomical tale of illusions and deceptions
Full text linkWhat do a Neapolitan lawyer, a famous Italian astronomer, a Scottish instrument maker, the greatest French writer of adventure novels and a curious Belgian journalist have in common? Perhaps, it may be surprising to discover that they all are main characters of a
story concerning the mysterious satellite of Venus. And if the attentive reader must have
immediately (and correctly) thought “But Venus has no satellite!”, it will be even more astonishing to realize that, for more than two centuries, some of the most eminent scholars really believed in the existence of such a celestial body. In fact, starting from the
seventeenth century, recurrent sightings of a hypothetical satellite occurred, leading several astronomers to go looking for it. Among them, the Italian Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712), who claimed to have seen something resembling a moon once in 1672, and again in 1686. 2022 is the 350th anniversary of his first alleged sighting; this work is thus aimed to trace the most relevant and curious passages of such a long and fascinating astronomical research
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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