Maurício de Carvalho Ramos

Academic Background

• 2014 Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
  Title: Morphology as an Historical Epistemological Concept
• 2014 Post-Doctoral Degree at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, Mexico
• 2012 Post-Doctoral Degree at the University of Montreal
• 2005 Post-Doctoral Degree at the University of São Paulo
• 1999 PhD in Philosophy at the University of São Paulo
  Supervisor: Prof. Pablo Rubén Mariconda
  Title: Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis and the Generation of Organized Bodies
• 1993 Master’s Degree in Science at the University of São Paulo (Zoology)
  Supervisor: Prof. Eudoxia Maria Froelich
  Title: Aspects of the Biology of Issoca rezendei (Schirch, 1929) (Tricladida, Terricola, Geoplanidae)
• 1983 Bachelor’s Degree in Biology at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters of São Caetano do Sul, Brazil

Current Research

Genesis and the Meaning of Technoscience
The central objective of the project is to critically investigate the roles played by ethical and social values, as well as by the individuals who support them and the institutions that incorporate them, in current scientific and technological practices. This central aim is to study the changes that have occurred in recent decades in the modes of social production of technoscientific knowledge, how this change affects the status of the values of objectivity, neutrality and autonomy to which the scientific community traditionally adheres, and the role of intellectual property rights in this process; to investigate the history of the relations between science and technology in modernity, in particular the role played by mechanistic machinery and ideas; to investigate the theoretical (artificial-natural, biological identity, etc.) and practical (ethical critique, proposal of alternatives, etc.) particular problems of current biotechnology from an approach that integrates philosophy, biomedicine and ethology; and to discuss alternative techno-scientific practices (i. e. agroecology), bioethics and the implications of a critical view of technoscience for science education and education in general. It is important that these investigations be open to a wider range of different perspectives and that their results have a positive impact on the direction of research in Brazil. To that end, we will make efforts to promote meetings of scientists, philosophers and social scientists, methodological approaches and divergent ethical perspectives, especially in contexts where the legitimacy of technoscientific innovations and the priorities of scientific research are at stake.

1) History of modern natural philosophy: science and philosophy of the organic 1.1) Generation and transformation of organisms and species: the theories of Maupertuis 1.2) Maupertuis and Leibniz 1.3) Cosmology and natural history 2) Life sciences and ethics: a technological intervention on organisms and the modern value of nature control.


 

Maurício de Carvalho Ramos