That’s All Folks—Summing Up and Reflecting on our Blogging Stint

Over the past six years, we published a total of 128 posts here, plus 59 in our sister Arabic Science and Philosophy blog. It was clear from the beginning that we needed, as part of our publication and outreach activities, some “light” counterpart to formal institutional publications. In view of the variety of options, multiplying at pace and always morphing into new media, we settled on a combination of media accounts (X/Twitter, Facebook) and these two blogs. The experience has been rewarding and educational on several fronts. Here are a few stats and reflections.

The top three posts by number of views are:

• The exotic “Canopus: Gentle Celestial Key” in the Arabic blog (346 views).
• The amusing “Beware the Edge of the Earth!” (294 views).
• And the disturbing “Mental Illness and Suicidal Tendencies in Early Modern Oceanic Voyages” (256 views).

Now, the top-ranking post owes its position most likely not to its amazing philosophical contents, but to a mention of Harry Potter in the text! Like this one, we have other examples that made us confirm clearly, often amusingly too, the wonder-greedy and showbiz-focused nature of the internet.

As academics, we need to learn how to capitalise on the use of sound-bytes and the myriad pervasive tags and hashtags, to play on the nature of the ephemeral tools at hand for our perennial intentions. There is often a fine line between using, exploiting and making fun of the circumstances. For example, we could have written posts about a tailor swift in his work on board a ship, or about elections, chocolate, sex, and it is certain that any of these terms would trump our serious and well-researched keywords, but we would never stoop that low, no!

It was also made clear that to a certain extent we needed to understand the “digital mind”, the elements of HTML and XML code, and the TEI Guidelines, especially if we wanted to join in the international drive towards really digital humanities. We made our efforts, and in the end, apart from their light-hearted tone, the blog posts often contain snippets of original research that eventually made it into our academic publications. As such, while the RUTTER Project comes to a close this Sunday 31 August, they will remain, we hope, a source of valuable information for our colleagues and any interested readers (of English) worldwide.

Thanks for reading! [J. Acevedo]

Image by Luís Ribeiro.

Fish-Tasting and Toxic Navigation: Life and Death at Sea in 1526

When we think of pilots’ technical writings, we tend to imagine raw materials—hurried notes, rough sketches, a synthetic and telegraphic style. So it comes as a surprise to encounter richly crafted codices, adorned with elegant graphic elements and beautiful handwriting. This is precisely the case with the Livro de Marinharia by Bernardo Fernandes, preserved at the Vatican Library. It is one of the oldest surviving nautical collections, comprising around forty texts—rutters, logbooks, nautical regulations, treatises, and questionnaires for pilots—dated between 1514 and 1548. These texts incorporate earlier knowledge and hands-on maritime experience, alongside insights from more recent long-distance voyages.

At the heart of this post is the logbook of the ship Conceição, which sailed from Lisbon to Goa in 1526. It provides a vivid account of daily life on board. In many logbooks, the rhythm of the journey is shaped by problems and setbacks. Pilots frequently report on the presence of the sick, the types of treatments administered, and even the deaths that occurred during the voyage. The journey of the Conceição is no exception and offers a striking case of poisoning.

The source of the poisoning was a type of fish consumed by the crew between the Angoche Island and the African coast. The author of the logbook wrote that the sailors who had gone ashore to fetch water caught some small fish resembling the peixe-sapo (anglerfish, fam. Lophiidae), of which about three men died immediately, and the other three, when they returned to the ship, were already swollen. The account also mentions the use of theriaca, the theriac of ancient physicians, a complex antidote used in early medicine, which was considered especially useful against animal venom and stomach aliments, to save the three men. The symptoms and context suggest that a toxic species, possibly a pufferfish (fam. Tetraodontidae) or toadfish (fam. Batrachoididae), was mistakenly consumed during the voyage. Especially, the consumption of pufferfish could lead to symptoms like swelling, paralysis, and death. [Luana Giurgievich]

Pilots Always Win: A Socio-Epistemic History of European Early Modern Navigation III

And so, as I was saying, such epistemic incommensurabilities need not have been a problem if pilots and cosmographers plied their trades independently—as, indeed, had been the case for much of history. This time round, however, the novel panorama resulting from the early modern oceanic expansion forced their epistemic frameworks to collide.

In the second part of my dissertation, I explore several socio-epistemic clashes between pilots and cosmographers, from 1450 to 1800. By giving a central role to the pilots’ rationale, I offer an original approach to episodes such as the debates on the nautical chart in sixteenth-century Iberia or the introduction of the Mercator-Wright projection in European navigation.

I show that the artisanal epistemic framework constructed by the pilots to perform their profession was as epistemologically sound as the one constructed by cosmographers to perform theirs. Thus, when both frameworks collided, the former always prevailed over the latter.

Jacques Devaulx, Premières Œuvres, 16th c.

Paradoxically, the mainstream narratives of the history of early modern nautical science have been constructed almost exclusively from the voice of those “defeated” in the epistemic clashes I analyze. The truth is that the tempo of early modern navigation was always set by the pilots. The truth is that, after all, pilots always win.

[Jose María Moreno Madrid]

Pilots Always Win: A Socio-Epistemic History of European Early Modern Navigation II

Picking up from last episode… my dissertation challenges this approach by delving into the socio-epistemic reasons behind the pilots’ rejection of many of the cosmographers’ nautical proposals. Far from being passive actors with no historical agency, pilots are the main characters of my narrative.

In the first part of the dissertation, I argue that pilots and cosmographers performed their professional activities in different and incommensurable epistemic frameworks. Being a true early modern cosmographer, I explain, consisted of fully adhering to the Ptolemaic philosophical and epistemological program. A main feature of this program is the explicit link between the apprehension of truth (ἀλήθεια) and the concept of ἀκρίβεια—which, in English, has etymologically evolved into accuracy. For Ptolemy, accuracy—and therefore truth—could only be achieved through mathematics and astronomy.

Ptolemy's Mappa mundi

This philosophical aspect is also fundamental in his cosmographical program. As he explains in the Geography, only those sciences would lead to a true depiction of the cosmos. For the respectable early modern cosmographer, both the way to apprehend truth and the notion of accuracy were essentially Ptolemaic. When they thought about the truthful procedure to depict the cosmos or about the proper way of using astronomical instruments, they did it drawing from such basis.

For their contemporary pilots, truth and accuracy had a completely different philosophical and epistemological dimension. Broadly speaking, they operated these categories within a very specific artisanal epistemic framework. This affected both the way they performed their profession and the way they used and constructed their professional instruments. Nautical charts, for example, were not conceived as attempts to capture the geographical truth of the Earth—in a Ptolemaic sense—, but as navigational instruments; therefore, they were constructed based on notions of accuracy completely different from those followed by cosmographers to draw their maps. [José María Moreno Madrid]

Cantino Planisphere (1502)

Pilots Always Win: A Socio-Epistemic History of European Early Modern Navigation I

The history of navigation and nautical science in early modern Europe has been written mainly by listening to the voice of cosmographers, mathematicians, and other like-minded scholars—hereinafter I group them under the denomination of “cosmographers”. Their scientific perspective on how navigation should be performed was assumed to be “the right one”, and thus obediently followed by every worthy pilot of the time.

However, the sources reveal that most of the early modern pilots used to ignore or reject many of the proposals made by their contemporary cosmographers. There were, therefore, two clearly dissenting voices on how navigation should be practiced in the early modern period. Although nautical historians have long agreed on this, they have only taken seriously the cosmographers’ reasons for trying to impose their view on navigation on the pilots.

As far as the pilots’ view was concerned, rather than really trying to understand it, they have settled for much more simplistic interpretations from both a historical and epistemological point of view. At best, they argued that pilots perverted the cosmographers’ nautical theories by the way they put them into practice—a major oversimplification of the real issue. At worst, they simply branded the pilots as “ignorant”, “conservative” people, anchored in “scientific obscurantism”.

The narrative that has emerged from this approach is laden with presentist and deterministic overtones. In it, pilots seem to have no agency. Their role appears to be limited to the passive assimilation of scientific “discoveries” that they were desperately waiting for to improve their “rustic” nautical practices.

Now… if you are interested in the other side of this story, and in what the pilots’ practice was really about, watch out for next week’s post! [José María Moreno Madrid]

Traitor or Go-between? Jean Alphonse and his Contributions to French Overseas Projects and Knowledge

From 1531 until his death, the Portuguese pilot João Afonso became a persistent nightmare for the Portuguese Crown. Considered a traitor since 1531, Afonso’s movements, knowledge, and service to Valois France deeply worried King John III of Portugal and, over time, King Charles I of Spain as well.

Afonso was a skilled oceanic pilot who had accumulated nautical experience in West Africa, Brazil, the Strait of Magellan, and, most concerning to the Portuguese, the Indian Ocean. He was first detected in France in 1531 by the Portuguese agent Gaspar Palha at La Rochelle. Palha attempted to negotiate Afonso’s return to Portugal, as he had already done with Leone Pancaldo, one of Ferdinand Magellan’s pilots, but he failed. In 1532, another Portuguese agent, the lawyer Gaspar Vaz, also failed to convince Afonso to return. Even more significantly, the renowned Diogo Gouveia, the Elder, the famous Portuguese rector of the University of Paris, was unable to succeed. Gouveia warned King John III that Afonso would soon pilot French expeditions against Iberian overseas interests, and that Portugal would be powerless to prevent this. Alarmed by these warning and failures, King John III issued a pardon letter to Afonso in 1533, hoping he would return. Afonso never did.

On the contrary, during this period, Afonso took steps to become a naturalized French citizen under the name Jean Alphonse of Saintonge. He enlisted his sons in the French navy, where they served as pilots and captains on numerous French voyages that challenged Portuguese and Spanish interests in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Afonso also played a pivotal role in the development of the Dieppe cartographical school shortly after his arrival in France in 1531. Collaborating closely with Jean Ango, the viscount of Dieppe and the renowned shipowner and corsair who sponsored several anti-Iberian maritime expeditions, Afonso likely provided Portuguese nautical charts and rutters that influenced subsequent French cartography produced at this school.

The pinnacle of Afonso’s career occurred in 1542 when King Francis I appointed him as royal pilot for Jean-François de Roberval’s expedition to colonize modern-day Canada. This appointment came in recognition of Afonso's cosmographical work, which synthesized his extensive maritime and overseas experiences in the service of both Iberian and French interests. His cosmographical work, authored in French and published posthumously (see illustration), underscored his enduring influence and expertise in navigation and exploration.

However, Afonso met his demise some time after returning from Roberval’s expedition, when the fleet of the Spaniard Pedro Menéndez de Avilés captured and promptly executed him, likely in 1547, citing his alleged treachery over the years. The disappearance of the Portuguese pilot who had become a naturalized Frenchman (see the illustration of his French signature) had a profound impact on France. The Pleiade poets never ceased to celebrate Afonso’s maritime and overseas exploits as emblematic of France’s own, drawing parallels between his career and those of ancient sailors. In this way, Afonso not only facilitated and inspired French overseas ventures, but also fostered the development of French maritime and overseas national pride. A traitor to the Iberians and a hero to the French, João Afonso was above all a typical 16th century go-between. [Nuno Vila-Santa]

To Write a PhD Thesis or To Be Under the Spell of the Moon

A lunar patina covers the act of writing a PhD thesis. On the one hand that writes, shines an opalescence typical of a junior researcher charmed by their historiographical ideas, potentially brand new and shiny. Like the iridescence of moonbeams glossing over the ocean at night that turn the waters white, milky in a way, such as the galaxy where this event is set, so above as below, the menace shining upon this hand mystifies one’s ideas, possibly by painting them brighter than they are. On the other hand that writes, a verdigris decomposes those ideas that may actually be fairly rusty, and better developed by other scholars, while lack of documental and material proof disintegrates previously brilliant arguments. To write a PhD thesis can feel like being under the spell of the moon, sometimes being slightly closer to the object the research gravitates around, almost pulling a good idea or evidence from its depths, as the moon tenderly pulls the ocean waters from the Earth; sometimes far away, wandering in the massive ocean of historiographical readings.

Like the moonlight penetrating the nocturnal ocean to unveil the corrosion of the objects there contained – the soft and colorless wood of sunk ships, the metallic rustiness of astrolabes, the bones of thousands of drowned people, these sediments of history –, the moment when consistent writing takes place is one of clarity, eroding initial poor or or green or overly ambitious or even lunatic choices. It is then that the great and possibly ingenuous expectations meet the historical objects, the documents and sources and the data they contain, and a moment for one to follow them deep sea. A quintessential moment for creating questions and hypotheses, redefine ideas, draw conclusions, and plunge into conceiving a historiographical narrative, in order to shine some light into the problem at hands. One may have an outstanding supervisor for the PhD thesis, or amazing colleagues, as is the case of the hand that writes this blog post. However, only the act of writing the thesis can break such a spell of such a romantic heavenly body.

Creation of the Sun and the Moon, De aetatibus mundi imagines (1545-1573), by Francisco de Holanda (1517-1584)

Writing the thesis will organize one’s thoughts coherently, since it structures one’s ideas logically, and turn abstract and vague ideas into tangible ones, while perhaps revealing connections and patterns that were not apparent when the ideas were just in one’s mind. Writing the thesis encourages deep thinking, since it requires a level of focus that encourages deeper exploration of an idea, and it allows one to examine concepts from different angles, leading to more thorough understanding of the issue, and possibly to new insights or the discovery of gaps in your thinking that need further exploration. Writing the thesis triggers new ideas or perspectives, in the process of choosing words and constructing sentences. Writing the thesis breaks down complex ideas into smaller, more manageable parts, making it easier to tackle difficult problems or to see solutions that were not obvious initially. Writing the thesis externalizes one’s thought process, allowing to review and access one’s ideas more objectively, maybe leading to more effective problem-solving and decision-making. Writing the thesis prepares the ideas there contained for oral communication with others, allowing for feedback, which can further refine and improve them by challenging one’s thinking, leading to stronger and more developed ideas. Ultimately, writing the PhD thesis will result in writing the PhD thesis. And, sometimes, it does not get any more romantic than that.

[Joana Lima]