History of Science and Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (II)

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all the member states of the United Nations. They represent a call for action by all countries —developed and developing— to, among other aims, improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth. The RUTTER project aligns with key aspects of the Declaration, goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda, which promotes a world of cultural diversity, and its appreciation, “to foster intercultural understanding, tolerance, mutual respect and an ethic of global citizenship” (par.36).

Creating an open platform giving access to collections which preserve interconnected histories, of value to many cultures, RUTTER contributes “to accelerate human progress, to bridge the digital divide and to develop knowledge societies” (par.15).

Our digital library will be a gender-inclusive endeavour, thus furthering Goal 5, target 5.b, to “Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women.”

From a fundamental point of view, given the nature of the collections we cover, and how we will be promoting the study of different languages with scholarly equality, we will align with par. 36 of the Declaration, “to foster intercultural understanding, tolerance, mutual respect and an ethic of global citizenship and shared responsibility.”

The map above, from the project “CenterNet-An international network of digital humanities centers”, highlights the existence of teams and projects involving digital humanities all over the world. DH work tends by nature to form international networks, breaking geographic and cultural barriers, driven by the desire to learn and to share knowledge. Because our editions will be online, free to access, and with a multilingual interface, we will in fact bring languages and discourses from developing countries as equal interlocutors into the world-wide forum that the internet has become. — We’ll give details about our methods in the next post in this series. [S. Munzi and J. Acevedo]

From the “leap day before the calends of March” to the 29th of February – Part II

Pilots and navigators of the 15th and 16th centuries needed the Sun’s Declination Tables to determine their daily position on ocean voyages, using the reading of the sun’s altitude values they got from the astrolabe or quadrant.

As the Julian calendar had a cycle of 4 years, three common and one leap year, the most rigorous Tables had to be quadrennial. The calculations were made by astronomers from astronomical tables such as the Tables of the place of the sun from Abraham Zacuto’s Almanach perpetuum (Leiria, 1496). Astronomers calculated and sailors learned to read and use; sometimes they copied them for their notes or seaman’s books, other times they used printed editions that began to appear in Portuguese, as in the Évora Nautical Guide (Guia Náutico de Évora) (Lisbon, ca. 1516).

The four-year Tables presented the 1461 days of the four years of the Julian cycle. There, the month of February of the “leap year” actually has 29 days, but without the dating format and Roman numerals by Calends, Nones and Ides, only with the series of days of the month written in Arabic numerals. In most handwritten documents — Livros de marinharia, Atlas and Códice Bastião Lopes - we find the quadrennial Tables of the Sun’s declination. Let's look at the “Treaty of the Sphere” section in Évora Nautical Guide, printed in Portuguese:

“Treaty of the Sphere” in Évora Nautical Guide (Lisbon, ca. 1516), BPE, Res 0404, fol. Biv, detail.

This Guide includes the values of the “Place of the Sun” and “Solar Declination”. On the 23rd of February of the leap year (1st column, 3rd row), it indicates the place of the leap year (lugar do bis.) and the vigil of Saint Matias, but the last day of the month is the 29th (1st column, 9th row), without a Sunday letter , only with the values of the place of the sun and the declination of the sun (9th row, columns 4th to 7th). In traditional Julian calendars, the leap day took the place of 24th of February, Saint Matias’ day moved to the 25th of February, and the month retained its count of 29 days.

Here, the day itself 29th of February is writen, but without a Sunday letter (or, if we want we could repeat the Sunday letter from the previous day, ‘c’). Only the values in degrees and minutes of the ‘Place of the Sun’ and the ‘Declination of the Sun’ are displayed. The “leap place” of the traditional Julian calendar, which repeated the 24th of February, no longer makes sense because the “added day” is now the 29th of February, as we use it today in the most diverse calendars, printed in diaries or electronically. [José Madruga]

History of Science and Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (I)

What’s the link between the Rutter project and sustainability? You will find out in this series of three posts.

At our project we draw directly from early modern scientific manuscripts, bringing them to light from half-forgotten shelves, showing their relevance, and making them available worldwide as much as possible.

Touching the sources themselves is key for an honest and fresh look into the past, for a real understanding, instead of a projection of our views, and this work can be exciting and fascinating, but it is hard work indeed, and it imposes limitations as far as open science and accessibility are concerned. Some typical scenarios are:

• Only one or just a few copies exist of a specific manuscript work, physically located in one/few libraries;
• The texts are hard to read unless the reader has a certain degree of expertise in paleography;
• The texts are written in the languages of the 15th-17th centuries;
• Some texts are considerably long, making it difficult to quickly retrieve information on specific topics.

Porllogo (instead of modern “Prólogo”) of the Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, from the oldest manuscript (ca. 1750) kept at the Public Library of Évora (BPE COD. CXV/1-3).

Applying Digital Humanities techniques to Iberian and Arabic maritime works opens new ways to approach these early scientific and technical texts and to bypass most of their limitations at once. The transcription of texts into digital formats (XML), following international standards (TEI), with the modernization of the language, makes them actually available from everywhere and to anyone, regardless of sex, nationality, age or race. More about this in the coming weeks, stay tuned! [S. Munzi and J. Acevedo]