In 2019 the Olavo Setubal Chair of Art, Culture, and Science will have two holders who will address the visual arts and science, as well as the intersections between them.

The positions have been taken on by art critic, curator, and cultural manager Paulo Herkenhoff, and by biochemist Helena Nader, a professor at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) and former president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC).

The inauguration took place on March 28 during a ceremony in the University Council Room. Social, educational and cultural activist Eliana Sousa Silva, the previous holder, will continue to be linked to the Chair while coordinating the ongoing project Democracy, Arts and Knowledge.

The coordinator of the chair and former director of the IEA, Martin Grossmann, emphasizes that the initiative, as a result of an agreement between the IEA and Itaú Cultural, has an open configuration, both thematic and organizational, hence the possibility of simultaneously exploring two areas of knowledge.

For him, the choice of Paulo Herkenhoff and Helena Nader is due to the role of "curators" that both play in their areas of activity. "Herkenhoff has important institutional participation in the field of the arts and Nader acts almost as a diplomat to the world of science, science politics, technology and innovation."

It will not be the first time that science will be next to art in an activity of the chair. In 2016, holder Sérgio Paulo Rouanet organized the seminar "Science and Its Borders."

At a preliminary meeting on March 8 to gather the IEA directors, the chair coordination, and the new members, Director Paulo Saldiva said that choosing Herkenhoff and Nader will allow a reflection on the false duality between the creative process and the scientific one. In reference to Jacob Bronowski's book "Science and Human Values," he affirmed that there are "extremely intuitive things when you do science and very accurate ones when you paint a picture."

Still in relation to the dialogue between art and science, Herkenhoff cited the concept of a "black hole" applied to ghettos by artist Cildo Meirelles: "The energy trapped in the ghetto ends up growing and self-feeding, an example of which is New York's Harlem in the 1920s."

Another aspect emphasized by Saldiva is the importance of the new holders' action so that the chair is a space of dissemination and clarification for art and science "at a time when both areas are under attack."

This is a crucial function in the current context of the country, according to Nader: "We must take advantage of this space to strengthen art, culture, and science." In that sense, she and Herkenhoff hope that their stay at the IEA will contribute to the development of scientific and artistic education.

Specifically referring to the role of art in this context, Herkenhoff sees it as a possibility of healing, of something that makes life possible: "As sculptor Louise Burgeois said, 'art is a guarantee of sanity.'"

Paulo Herkenhoff

In the 1970s Herkenhoff worked in a law firm and eventually participated in the reorganization of the Açude Museum and the Chácara do Céu Museum, both created by the Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya Foundation in 1964 and 1972, respectively.

In the following decade, he worked at the Brazilian Art Foundation (FUNARTE) and traveled to several cities in the country. He highlights two works from that period: a show in Curitiba, with the participation of 250 artists from the Americas, and a project in Belém about visuality and diversity of the Amazon.

He was the curator general of the 24th São Paulo Art Biennial, the so-called "Biennial of Anthropophagy," held in 1998. So that the exhibition could have a historiographic and critical character about the city, Herkenhoff considered the Brazilian Anthropophagic Movement as a representation of São Paulo and a response to it. The objective was to address the concept of anthropophagy as a "process of cultural formation with a view to autonomy." Also worthy of note is his curatorship of the Brazilian pavilion at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997.

Herkenhoff has also been director of the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Fine Arts, chief curator of Rio de Janeiro's Museum of Modern Art (MAM), curator of the Eva Klabin Rapaport Foundation, adjunct curator at the Department of Painting and Sculpture at New York's MoMA, and cultural director of the Rio de Janeiro Art Museum (MAR).

At MoMA, in 2002, he had three months to organize the exhibition "Tempo," in which artists from different countries addressed the phenomenological and fictional perceptions of time aspects. It was pointed out by The New York Times as a reference for directions to be taken by the museum.

Herkenhoff's bibliographic production includes works on various Brazilian artists, collections, artistic production in historical periods, and contemporary art in Brazil and Latin America.

Helena Nader

A professor of Molecular Biology at UNIFESP, Helena Nader has allied her teaching and research activities with the role of academic administrator, director of scientific entities and adviser of research support agencies.

Nader has graduated in biomedical sciences from UNIFESP and in biology from USP. She has performed postdoctoral research at the University of Southern California. She is a productivity fellow at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) and of the São Paulo State Academy of Sciences (ACIESP), and participates in The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS).

She is an adviser to several national and international journals, and has been a visiting researcher in the United States (Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine (SSOM) and W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center) and in Italy (Ronzoni Institute for Chemical and Biochemical Research and Opocrin Research Laboratories).

Her main focuses of research are glycobiology, and cellular and molecular biology of proteoglycans, especially heparin and heparan sulfate. Her works are related to the involvement of these compounds in hemostasis, in the control of cell division and in cell transformation.

Helena served as president of SBPC for three terms (2011 to 2017), president of the Brazilian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SBBq), provost for Undergraduation and provost for Postgraduation and Research at UNIFESP, coordinator of the Advisory Committee in Biophysics, Pharmacology, Physiology and Neurosciences (CABF) of CNPq, adjunct coordinator of the Biological Evaluation Area of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), and member of the Biology Coordination of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).

Nader received the National Order of Scientific Merit (Comendador class in 2002 and Grand Cross class in 2008), the Brazilian Navy's Tamandare Medal of Merit in 2013, and the 2007 Scopus Award by Elsevier and CAPES.

Photos: Leonor Calasans / IEA-USP

Modernity and its Ambivalences was the opening conference of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, a project of the IEA in partnership with the Itaú Cultural Institute.

Political scientist, philosopher and diplomat Sergio Paulo Rouanet addressed the influence of modernity in the economic, political and cultural contexts through the ideas of sociologists Max Weber and Manuel Castells, and philosopher Jürgen Habermas, on May 17. He said that modernity was institutionalized in two vectors that incorporate aspects of each other: the functional one and the emancipatory one.

The notion that modernization is mainly effective can be found in the ideas of Weber, Rouanet said. "This concept is what prevails in the specialized literature, and in economic and social development policies. He believes that it is a functional concept of modernity with the idea that in a modern society institutions work better than in an archaic one, which is identified by globalization.

The emancipatory vector, in turn, only considers a society modern if its subsystems (economy, politics and culture) also provide the maximum autonomy possible for individuals, Rouanet said.

In this view, modernity would mean the following: in the economic context, the individual works to have access to goods and services, necessary for their well-being; in the political context, there is ability to put citizenship into practice; and in the cultural context, there is the free use of reason, "an institutional context that guarantees the right to cultural production and the right of access to culture for everyone."

The ceremony has highlighted the importance of the partnership between universities and the private sector in support of culture From left to right: Maria Alice Setubal, Paulo Saldiva, Marcelo de Andrade Romero and Eduardo Saron The launch of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science was held at the USP's School of Medicine in the presence of the provost for Culture and University Extension, Marcelo de Andrade Romero, the director of the IEA, Paulo Saldiva, the director of Itaú Cultural, Eduardo Saron, and sociologist and educator Maria Alice Setubal, daughter of Olavo Setubal (1993-2008). Rouanet was presented by his colleague at the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL), Alfredo Bosi, a professor emeritus from the USP's Faculy of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), and an honorary professor of the IEA. The conference had the following commentators: Celso Lafer, former president of the São Paulo Research Foundation, also a member of the ABL and professor emeritus from the USP's Faculty of Law; Renato Janine Ribeiro, former Minister of Education and a professor at FFLCH; and Barbara Freitag, a professor emeritus from the University of Brasília. The event was closed by Martin Grossmann, former director of the IEA and scientific coordinator of the chair. All of them have stressed the importance of the chair being the result of a partnership between a public university and a private institution for the sake of art and culture. They have also highlighted the peculiar profile of Setubal as an entrepreneur who has always stood out in supporting culture. In 1975, when he was the mayor of São Paulo, he defined the construction of a large public library, which later became the São Paulo Cultural Center. He created the Itaú Cultural in 1987. As for the choice of Rouanet being the first chair holder, Saron and Grossmann said that his name was naturally mentioned when they sought to identify an intellectual with a decisive role in the development and deployment of culture supportive policies. Rouanet was the National Secretary of Culture in 1991-92, being the author of the cultural incentive law that bears his name. From left to right: Celso Lafer, Renato Janine Ribeiro, Barbara Freitag and Martin Grossmann.

Photos: Leonor Calasans/IEA-USP

The formation of modern world is associated with the process of secularization, which owes a lot to the scientific and technological development of the last centuries. However, if on one hand rationality has led to a profound transformation of society, where freedom has replaced the dogmas and certainties previously provided by the immersion of culture and power in religious beliefs, on the other it has also led to a sense of relativity of values. The result seems to be a world where the meaning of life has become fragile and where individualism, utilitarianism and consumerism leave no room for seeking transcendence.

This analysis of nowadays is the starting point of the workshop “Science and the Polytheism of Values”, to be held by the IEA-USP on April 8, at 9.30 am. Among the topics to be discussed at the meeting there are the place of science and religion in this pluralistic universe, the challenges that pluralism of values put ​​in a globalized world and the position of Brazilian culture in this context. This will be the opening event of the cycle “In Search of Lost Meaning: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Science and Transcendence”.

The exhibitor will be sociologist Bernardo Sorj, a retired professor from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and currently a visiting professor at the IEA-USP. The panelists will be Alfredo Bosi, professor emeritus from USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) and editor of IEA-USP’s journal  Estudos Avançados, and Enrique Larreta, director of the Institute of Cultural Pluralism (IPC) of the Universidade Cândido Mendes (UCM). Moderation will be in charge of Martin Grossmann, director of the IEA-USP.

According to Sorj, the political ideologies of modernity - as the Enlightenment liberalism, fascism, communism and nationalism – have maintained from religious monotheism the notion that values ​​can be organized around universal principles and that there is a single truth. With the decline of the "secular religions" a world of "polytheism of values ​, which transfers to the individual the right and responsibility to choose between often conflicting and mutually exclusionary beliefs and values" has arisen.

This polytheism of values ​​is the main feature of today in the opinion of Sorj, for whom "the challenge of democratic societies is to assume this position, completing the process of secularization that began in the Renaissance."

CYCLE

The cycle “In Search of Lost Meaning: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Science and Transcendence”, coordinated by Sorj, will have four meetings. The goal is to address the changes caused by the decline of the great political ideologies and to discuss the production of meaning in this new sociocultural context.

According to Sorj, the everyday is invaded by the immediate concerns of success, status and consumption, by media that convey a flood of information that deplete themselves and social ties transferred to social networks, where quantity replaces density.

"We live in a world where technology permeates every angle of our lives, but we do not understand its knowledge bases. Communication is ubiquitous, but its content is shallow. The sense of time evaporates along the immediacy of the present and the insecurity of the future. The pursuit of individual happiness has evacuated of collective life and handed into the hands of therapists and drugs.", says the sociologist.

Focusing on this panorama of transformations, the cycle of events will address some key issues:

• What is the role of university and scientific knowledge in this new world?
• Is there a new meeting point between natural and human sciences?
• Is there space for a dialogue between scientific knowledge producers and other areas that reflect on human condition?
• How can local and global interact and produce new cultural syntheses?

The event will be broadcast live on the web.

The 2012-2016 Direction of the IEA strove to lead the University of São Paulo to a new and deeper involvement with culture and the arts. The main result of this endeavor has been the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, offered in 2015 but officially launched in 2016.

To give due weight and importance to this initiative, the first person to hold the chair is diplomat and essayist Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, former National Secretary of Culture and author of the cultural incentive law that bears his name.

A project of the IEA in partnership with Itaú Cultural Institute, the Olavo Setubal Chair will be a space to discuss and promote activities related to the world of arts, with special focus on cultural management. Its goal is to foster interdisciplinary reflections on academic, artistic, cultural and social issues of regional and global scope.

The official launch took place on February 17 at a meeting in the President's Office building, with the participation of the first holder of the Chair, Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, the director of the Itaú Cultural Institute, Eduardo Saron Nunes, the President of USP, Marco Antonio Zago, Vice-President Vahan Agopyan, the Director of the IEA, Martin Grossmann, and other representatives of the University and the cultural institution.

President Marco Antonio Zago (left) hosting diplomat Sérgio Paulo Rouanet for the official launch of the Chair

"We are honored to have Sérgio Paulo Rouanet inaugurating the Olavo Setubal Chair. The support of Itaú represents the strengthening of the University's relations with the productive sector, which is very important by allowing the USP to benefit from the presence of personalities as the ambassador," said Zago.

After the meeting, part of the group visited the Itaú Cultural. According to Marcos Cuzziol, manager of the Innovation Center / Observatory of the institution, the partnership recognizes the special attention of Itaú Cultural towards management and formation of a cultural policy, integrating the 10 years of the Itaú Cultural Observatory, to be celebrated this year.

The Itaú Cultural Observatory was created in 2006 with a focus on management, economics and cultural policies. Since then, it promotes studies and discussion of these issues, stimulating reflection on culture in its various aspects and analyzing national indicators. Its performance and range are extended with seminars, meetings and lectures; an editorial line of books and the journal Revista Observatório, available for free on the web; and the promotion of research on the cultural field. In addition, since 2009, it holds a free course on cultural management in partnership with the UNESCO Chair on Cultural Policies, with the cooperation of the University of Girona and the support of the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI). The course has one year of duration and takes place in classrooms and through virtual classes.

The chair

With a minimum duration of five years, the chair comprises two programs: Global Networks of Young Researchers, and Leaders in Art, Culture and Science, with a forecast joint endowment of R$ 1.5 million, sponsored by the Itaú Cultural Institute. Each program (described below) will be allocated R$ 150,000 annually.

Even before the official inauguration of the Chair, part of its activities had already begun. The Intercontinental Academia, the São Paulo stage of which was launched in April 2015, is part of the Global Network of Young Researchers program, aimed at developing new leaders. The programs seek to encourage and promote the interdisciplinary research of young (under 40) scholars.

The Leaders in Art, Culture and Science program follows the template adopted by USP’s José Bonifácio Chair, inaugurated in 2013. Each year, the chair is held by an exponent from the world of art, culture, politics, society, economics or academia – Rouanet being the first among them. In addition to the chairperson, professors, researchers and national and international personalities participate in the activities, with special attention given to public policies for culture and the arts.

"I hope to follow the example of Nélida Piñon, my colleague at the Brazilian Academy of Letters and holder of the José Bonifacio Chair [in 2015], and to help developing this new chair by placing a stone in this new building," said Rouanet.

The Olavo Setubal Chair extends the central role of the IEA in creating and managing professorships within the University. Over the course of its almost 30 years, the Institute lays claim to 11 chairs (eight elapsed and two active).

Olavo Setubal, a culture supportive

Olavo Setúbal

A renowned businessman, mayor of São Paulo (1975-1979) and foreign minister (1985-1986), Olavo Setubal left his mark on Brazilian culture by creating an important collection of more than 3,600 works of art. He conceived and founded the Itaú Cultural Institute in 1987. Among his many contributions to culture are the conception and construction of the São Paulo Cultural Center and of the Itaú Cultural Encyclopedia of Visual Arts, a computerized database of Brazilian art, with scanned reproductions of works dating from the 19^th century French mission during the Empire.

Sérgio Paulo Rouanet

A national secretary of culture (1991-1992) and career diplomat, Rouanet was Brazil’s ambassador to Denmark and to the Czech Republic. He is the eighth holder of Chair 13 of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, elected on April 23, 1992. He was a visiting professor in the Graduate School of Sociology at the University of Brasilia (UnB), professor of the Rio Branco Institute and visiting professor at the University of Oxford, UK.

He graduated in Social and Legal Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, earning postgraduate degrees in Economics from George Washington University, in Political Sciences from Georgetown University and in Philosophy from the New York School for Social Research. He also holds a doctorate in Political Science from the University of São Paulo.

With information from the USP's press office

Photo: Erika Yamamoto

The appreciation that Japanese culture has given to an alleged ethnic homogeneity of its population for centuries is well known. However, this conception has weakened in this century, especially since 2013, when Tokyo was chosen to host the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics (held in 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The government's intention became to present a new Japan to the world, in tune with the emphasis on diversity and inclusion that permeates many societies today.

One of the ways that the Japanese government found for this purpose was to promote a growing appreciation of the Ainu culture. The indigenous people from the North of the country currently number 13,000 individuals according to official data. The contingent must be much larger if one considers the people who have refused to recognize themselves as Ainu due to rejection.

With policies that value the culture of these people, they are now trying to redefine themselves. This is the opinion of sociologist Mariko Murata, a professor at the Department of Sociology at Kansai University. "Museums can be a space for carrying out this redefinition process. Nonetheless, they are very colonial, which makes us think about how we can decolonise them."

Sociologist Mariko Murata (Kansai University)

On May 29, Murata spoke at the seminar Decolonising Museums and Exhibitions on the Indigenous Ainu in Japan, organized by IEA's Research Group Fórum Permanente: Cultural System Between Public and Private and the Olavo Setubal Chair of Art, Culture, and Science.

As part of the governmental action to value Ainu culture the Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park was inaugurated in Hokkaido in 2020. However, despite the importance of the initiative, there were many criticisms about the way the museum was structured and presented the Ainu culture, according to the sociologist.

Murata explained that the Japanese central government began taking land from the Ainu in the 19th century. The Matsumae clan, which had been responsible for the northern border of Japan since the end of the 16th century, forbade them to engage in trade on their own. "In the following period, the government created a land reconnaissance agency. In 1863, the island was named Hokkaido, and this marks the beginning of the policy of Ainu assimilation."

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ainu were even shown at industrial exhibitions, said the researcher. "After World War II, they were ignored as if they did not exist, and their culture was practically extinct. Only in 2008 did the government recognize them as an indigenous people of Japan."

Permanent exhibition at the Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park

With the choice of Tokyo for the last editions of the Olympics and Paralympics, Ainu culture suddenly came to the fore. "The government wanted to make their culture a symbol of Japan's diversity, something important for tourism and global political relations," said the Murata.

According to her, when the Upopoy was inaugurated, there were about 20 small museums with collections established by the Ainu or formed by researchers, governments, or traders. The Ainu had also previously engaged in tourist activities for income.

In 1984, the Ainu built a museum which was improved and now forms part of Upopoy.

Fireplace simulation: the use of too many digital resources is criticized

In addition to objects and records from the ethnic group's past, the Upopoy also shows how the Ainu live today: their activities as fishermen, traders, cooks, forest explorers, among other aspects. The biggest criticism of how the museum presents the Ainu culture lies in the controversial narrative, said the researcher. "The Ainu are agraphers. The panels are in Japanese and four other languages. The pronoun 'we' is used, as in 'our land.' Using 'we' for an exhibition does not explain everything, such as the case of the relationship with the colonisers and the process of colonisation. We rarely use the first person pronoun in a sentence for historical descriptions."

Murata said that new types of exhibitions avoid representing the Ainu culture as pre-modern, showing people in their current lives and with an excess of digital resources. "One of the criticisms is that the museum ignores the tragic history of the Ainu over the last 150 years. Their culture is explained from the Japanese point of view and, moreover, ignores the spirituality of the people.

Kanindé Indigenous Museum Memorial in Aratuba (Ceará, Brazil)

However, despite all the critical comments, the situation raised by Upopoy has sparked a discussion that had never happened before, said Murata. "The decolonisation of museums in Japan is a controversial issue. We are starting to create this space to think of Japan as non-homogeneous".

For her, Japan needs to recognize its diversity, which includes Koreans, Okinawans, Ainu, and immigrants who went there to work, like Brazilians. "Foreigners are 2% of the population, a number that should increase. Diversity is crucial for a country like Japan to continue to exist," she pointed out.

Decolonisation in Brazil

The meeting also opened space for the Brazilian reality regarding decolonisation, with presentations on museums created by indigenous peoples and on the Emanoel Araújo Afro Brasil Museu. The indigenous participants were: Kaingang shaman assistant Susilene Elias de Melo, one of the persons in charge of the Worikg Museum, created from the collection of her grandmother, Jandira Ubelino, of the Vanuíre Indigenous Land in the municipality of Arco-Íris (São Paulo), and Suzenalson da Silva Santos, a doctoral student in social history at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) and coordinator of the Kanindé Indigenous Museum Memorial, located in Aratuba (Ceará).

Sandra Mara Salles spoke on behalf of the Afro Brasil Museum. A parallel theme to the meeting, but also involving ethnic issues, was the presentation on Japanese-Brazilian visual artists given by semiotician Michiko Okano, from the School of Philosophy, Languages, and Human Sciences at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP).

Suzenalson da Silva Santos

During his speech, Suzenalson da Silva Santos said that there was a movement in the 1990s for the rebirth of indigenous cultures in Ceará: "There was an appropriation of a format from the colonisers, the so-called museum, and spaces called museums began to emerge."

In 1995, his father Sotero, chief and master of Kanindé culture, created a small space to show the history of his people in society. "Other stages and actions of the process were born from this initiative," he said.

"We did not have a school when the museum was created. We were one of the peoples to conquer schools very late, only in 2006. The museum presents objects in the context that universities have called decolonisation, another perspective to talk about this indigenous movement."

According to him, the implementation of the museum brought a lot of training to the community, covering several generations, from master Sotero to the youngest members, formed in the perspective of heritage education and living with the master. "The museum's activities relate to indigenous education. It is located next to the school and is part of the school curriculum," he said.

From the top: headdresses, ceramics, and dance performance at the Worikg Museum in the Vanuíre Indigenous Land (São Paulo, Brazil)

Santos stated that the museum's relationships with other indigenous peoples have grown: "In 2014, a network of memory and museology was created, engaging indigenous communities from all states of the country. They are spaces, points of culture, and houses of memory. In Ceará alone there are 17 locations. At the last meeting of the network there were representatives of 32 initiatives from various parts of Brazil."

He highlighted that these initiatives have been organized autonomously or in partnership with various actors, such as universities. He added that there are villages that work with community tourism.

According to Santos, the emergence of indigenous museums does not only mean an effort for self-affirmation but also a movement to build the communities' own memory in dynamic processes following the peculiarities of each people.

Susilene Elias de Melo

Susilene Elias de Melo said that the desire to build a museum to record the Kaingang culture was born in 2015 as a wish of her grandmother Jandira Ubelina, a shaman who died the following year. "We were left with the need to put the museum on its feet, as she wanted. In 2017, we held the first exhibition at the Worikg Museum,” she reported.

Now, Melo continues the work with her mother, the new shaman, of which she is an assistant just as her mother was to her grandmother. "Singing, dancing, eating... I learned everything from both of them," she said.

The museum stays open year-round and has several school visits per week. "We do not have much help. We took a little from here, a little from there," said Melo.

For a long time, the Kaingang culture in the Tupã region "was dormant, even to protect our territory," she said. "It was common to say that the Kaingang were extinct. We are firm and strong in the center-west of the state of São Paulo. We are a living museum."

In Tupã there is the Índia Vanuíre Historical and Pedagogical Museum, owned by the state government, dedicated to the memory of the indigenous peoples of western São Paulo. Melo said she had no complaints about the museum, Worikg's partner. "If we have our museum today, it was because of my mother's trip to the Tupã museum. She wanted to know why non-indigenous people talk so much about indigenous people." She also mentioned a partnership with USP's Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (MAE).

The museum is not just about material culture. There is a spiritual side, as a place of healing and empowerment, she said. "People think they are going to see a museum like the one in the city. But the museum is the territory, it is everything you experience. I am a museum, my mother is a museum. There is a bonfire inside the museum and the visit includes singing, dancing, and walking on the trail. We are also building our clay house."

Emanoel Araújo Afro Brasil Museum

According to the executive director of the Emanoel Araújo Afro Brasil Museum, the institution is experiencing a moment of transition with a new reflection on the formation of the collection and on the cultural program.

Sandra Salles recalled that the museum was created from the private collection of artist, curator, and cultural manager Emanoel Araújo, who founded it in 2004 and stayed for 18 years as its director and curator. His name was added to the institution's original name after his death in 2022

The museum contains items related to religiosity of African origin and popular Catholicism, objects from work and life on farms, sculptures, paintings, among other items. The collection includes photographs and information about black people from different areas of arts and knowledge.

For Salles, the museum is decolonial in its narrative construction and perspective by talking about unofficial history. "However, being the narrative of a single man, its creator and leader, it is necessary to make room for other voices to be heard as a decolonial practice," she said.

Sandra Mara Salles

"Since last year, the museum has been trying to build a network of Afro-Brazilian collections, to connect with other spaces, including private collections, in order to have another vision of its own collection," she said.

An example of these connections is the dialogue initiated in 2018 with Quilombo de São Pedro, in the Ribeira Valley (São Paulo), with the aim of creating a memory center to promote tourism and cultural practices. The local residents also participate in the Afro Brasil Museum, as in the case of the exhibition Roça É Vida, which will open on June 24, curated jointly with a working group from the Quilombo.

The museological plan is being rethought with the participation of all the institution's professionals, said Salles. There will be external participation in this discussion, with conversation circles and working groups. "We are going to send invitations to different sectors of society to participate in this, so that they can say which museum they want. I think this is the moment for the black movement to participate in redefining the museum's model," she added.

Photos (from the top): 1, 3, and 4 - Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park; 2 - Leonor Calasans/IEA-USP; 5 - Kanindé Indigenous Museum Memorial; 6 - personal archive of Susenalson da Silva Santos; 7 - Worikg Museum; 8 - Índia Vanuíre Historical and Pedagogical Museum; 9 - Emanoel Araújo Afro Brasil Museum; 10 - IEA-USP.

When ethologist Eduardo Ottoni, from USP's Institute of Psychology (IP), began researching the use of tools by capuchin monkeys in the 1990s, he did not imagine that his and other researchers' work dedicated to the study of the species were contributing to the consolidation of a new scientific discipline: cultural evolution.

The volume of relevant critical mass in the area led to the creation of the Cultural Evolution Society in 2017, during a meeting in Jena, Germany. "The keynote of that meeting was to optimize the inclusion and interaction of various theoretical and applied perspectives related to the study of cultural phenomena, from the humanities to information and natural sciences," says Ottoni, who joined IEA's Sabbatical Year Program in 2019.

As outcomes of the project "Evolutionary Approaches to Culture," he is writing a textbook on the subject and two articles for specialized periodicals. In addition, the professor is planning a workshop to take place in November. The idea is to invite four foreign researchers, including Rachel Kendal, from the University of Durham, president of the Cultural Evolution Society.

With these contributions, he hopes to foster debates on recent field study perspectives, which include Darwinian approaches to cultural evolution, gene-culture coevolution, extended cognition, and behavioral traditions in nonhuman animals.

Origins

According to Ottoni, there used to be a complete division between the humanities and the biological approaches to cultural evolution, with prejudices on both sides. "Some areas of the human sciences imagined horrible things when one spoke of biology, and there were even pejorative classifications, such as calling someone a 'genetic determinist.'"

In this context, a perspective of cultural anthropology associated with the tabula rasa theory has appeared, making no sense according to the ethologist. "The conception was that evolution gave us the brain and sense organs, with everything related to culture being a social and flexible construction, with nothing to channel or determine it."

On the biological side, restrictions were also established with the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, developed from the late 19th century until the discovery of DNA in the 1940s, says the researcher. "Neo-Darwinism generated a model with more restrictions on culture than Darwin's original model."

The Neo-Darwinian model speaks of "particulate" and non-Lamarckist inheritance (as it would not involve the inheritance of acquired characters) with "blind" variation (in relation to selection), specifies Ottoni. "This model can hardly be applied to culture."

"Darwin speaks basically of inheritable variation with consequences in terms of fitness (aptitude). This model, indeed, serves well to model cultural processes."

The extreme example of this restrictive model has been given by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, "although he has been the creator of the 'meme' concept as a unit of culture transmission," says the professor. "It was a metaphor or a kind of theoretical exercise on the information process."

"For Dawkins, culture affects the success of the organism and thus becomes part of the phenotype in a broader sense of the term, which he calls the extended phenotype (the set of 'selectable' characteristics of the individual). The implication of this is that culture affects fitness but is not 'inherited' in the same way as genes."

Coevolution

These humanistic and biological conceptions have allowed for a lot of discussion, but they have been replaced by a new point of view: cultural aspects would not be something isolated from the organism, but a very important part in the processes of biological evolution, Ottoni explains.

"Genetic evolution is no longer considered as the only information transmission line in time. Cultural evolution has come to be considered another transmission line, with somewhat different rules in its dynamics. Both lines interact and there is also a perspective that has gained visibility and relevance: culture would not be exclusive to humans."

Ottoni says that the reason he ended up heading to this area was the discussion of cultural processes in capuchin monkeys after the initially accidental discovery that they use tools and that they learned to use them with each other. "We already knew of the more sophisticated use of tools by chimpanzees."

Researchers began to discard anything that could be explained by genetic variation or, in the case of differences in behavior between groups, by ecological differences. "Having discarded these aspects, we must verify the degree of importance of social interaction for learning."

This approach has been applied to the use of tools by nonhuman primates: chimpanzees, monkeys, and orangutans. The idea of existence of cultural processes in other nonhuman animals has also been present in studies of vocal communication in cetaceans, experimental studies with fish, and in other cases, adds the ethologist.

All of this echoed general evolution models and authors working on the idea of niche construction: "In a more traditional evolutionary model, individuals expose their extended phenotype to the environment and nature kills some more than others. However, every organism minimally transforms its environment, but some transform it more and will change the selective pressures to which they are subject."

As an example he cites the termite, whose organic structure is adequate to live in the controlled temperature and humidity of the termite mound built by the colony. "It could not stand to be exposed to the savannah climate." This concept of niche-building in evolutionary biology has been developed over almost a century, and though it still generates many polemics it has become a classic, says Ottoni.

"But there is also the idea of the niche's cultural construction, something more intense and determining. This changes the organism-environment relationship in natural selection: when the organism transforms the environment, other things get to be selected."

Capuchin monkey breaking nuts with stones at Serra da Capivara National Park

Machiavellian intelligence

The classical anthropological conception was that ecological aspects of natural selection produced the development of human intellect. "According to this explanation, the hominins went out into the savannah and lacked the survivability their predators had in that space, needing to build weapons since they also lacked the predators' natural utilities such as claws and tusks. Basically, it is an idea of technology supplying natural needs."

In contrast, the hypothesis of what became known as "Machiavellian intelligence" emerged. Supporters of this idea argued that the pressures of social complexity would have been more important for the evolution of primate intellect than the development of technologies.

"A submodel for social learning arose from the hypothesis about the social origins of the intellect: the idea of cultural intelligence. This means that if humans, ever since their ancestors, increasingly depend on technological development and relationship dynamics, they increasingly depend on culture. Thus, everything that genetically favors the evolution of capacities that predispose to the aptitude for socially mediated learning and the establishment of cultural processes would be part of a selection process."

Ottoni claims that this ability was a specific selective pressure that marked the history of primates. "It started with primatologists and then expanded to the study of other animals."

Until recently, however, many researchers called whatever perpetuated through socially mediated learning in nonhuman primates "traditions," he notes. "'Tradition' is not a good word because it denotes vertical transmission from generation to generation, while cultural transmission also happens between individuals of the same age group horizontally."

What should be used is "culture," with a status similar to "genetics," argues the professor. In this model, there is a flow of information that is marginal but interdependent with genetics. "If we call this process 'cultural,' the questions change: does human culture have peculiarities or is it just a case of hypertrophy? If it is peculiar, then what happens differently in humans?"

Faced with these questions, scientists have refined learning concepts, as in the case of imitation, according to Ottoni. "Maybe only humans imitate in the strict sense of the term. Is there such imitation in chimpanzees?"

The key issue is to operationally define these aspects in order to compare socially mediated learning processes in humans and nonhumans, and see what is different, says the researcher. One of the "hottest" research themes in this scenario today is that of cumulative culture: "Human culture is clearly cumulative, with progressive improvements."

Photos (from the top): Leonor Calasans / IEA-USP and Tiago Falótico / IP-USP

Ricardo Ohtake, new holder of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science.

To address the trajectory of art and culture in Brazil from the post-Second War period until the crisis of 2016, and to analyze the current situation of institutions and activities in the field with prospects for the future, are some of the goals of the new holder of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, created in 2015 and officially launched in February 2016 by the IEA in partnership with Itaú Cultural. Architect, graphic designer and cultural manager Ricardo Ohtake took office on March 17, in a ceremony in the University Council Room that was attended by authorities, sponsors of the Chair, artists and scientists.

"The discussion of the future is what matters most, mainly because of the new political, social, economic, administrative and institutional situation in Brazil, which we know has created a legal anomaly in the country, provoking insecurity for the population and certain insecurity in the cultural environment", said Ohtake.

While opening the ceremony, Martin Grossmann, academic coordinator of the Chair, professor at USP's School of Communications and Arts (ECA), and former director of the IEA, welcomed the new holder and thanked the work done by diplomat and essayist Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, former national secretary of Culture and author of the bill to encourage culture that bears his name. During the inaugural year of the Chair, Rouanet developed the approximation between the borders of knowledge in the personal, institutional and scientific scopes, as he recalled in his speech.

The new activities will include the debate on the actions and the thinking of cultural leaders, and the participation of institutions in the development of the artistic and cultural field, in a reflection that will go back to the cultural history of Brazil, Grossmann showed.

Ohtake recalled the evolution of Brazilian society and mentality - including its typical contradictions and complexities with which "a modern and medieval country" was built - and related this trajectory to the steps taken by the country in the cultural and artistic fields.

He mentioned the beginnings of the cosmopolitanization of Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, with the emergence of icons such as the Vera Cruz Cinematographic Company, the TBC Brazilian Theater of Comedy, art institutions, the Biennale and museums, among them the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), created by the coffee bourgeoisie.

To expose and develop his own trajectory as a cultural leader in the context of the city, the country and internationally will be one of Ohtake's pursued goals. He will also invite critics, cultural leaders, artists and historians to participate in debates and testimonials; approach the relationship between art and politics and the role of exhibitions in the art debate; and analyze the role of cultural leaders in the development of institutions and thinking.

The new holder intends to bring his experience of more than 50 years in this field. He has been Secretary of Culture of the State of São Paulo, Secretary of the Green and Environment of São Paulo, director of the São Paulo Cultural Center, and director of the Museum of Image and Sound and the Brazilian Cinematheque. He has lectured in several architecture, communications and plastic arts faculties and was curator of the Brazilian participation at the Architecture Biennale of Venice in 2010.

The Ohtake family is one of the most influential for the arts and architecture in Brazil. Ricardo Ohtake is son of artist Tomie Ohtake (1913-2015) and brother of architect Ruy Ohtake, who signs the project of the famous building that houses the Tomie Ohtake Institute. He has graduated from USP's Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU), and currently directs the Tomie Ohtake Institute.

"If, on the one hand, cultural activity is always provided by very limited resources, on the other hand it always requires a lot of imagination and daring for propositions to be solved. The leader does not have to be an intellectual, but he must know where the concepts, the variations of approaches, the artists, the history of art, and also the engineering of the activities take place. As the resource is never enough, knowing how to give priorities and alternatives is fundamental to make sense of everything that is done," he said.

While reviewing his own career, Ohtake recalled his childhood, when he invented things and plays on the street in the 'Mooca' neighborhood, in São Paulo. "I realized with surprise that I internalized what critic Mário Pedrosa said in the 1950s to my mother: 'The key is to be original.' I understood that I always had to be original, not only in artistic creation."

From the left: Eduardo Saron, Ricardo Ohtake, José Roberto Sadek, Vahan Agopyan, Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, Roberto Setúbal and Paulo Saldiva.

Tributes

The Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, created to foster interdisciplinary reflections on academic, artistic-cultural and social issues in the regional and global contexts, has been taking the form of an "experimental platform for freedom", according to Grossmann.

"If Rouanet practiced the permanent exercise of criticism by producers, and academic and cultural institutions during this period, Ricardo Ohtake intends to explore the experimental exercise of freedom, be it as a public figure, as a cultural manager, or through his wisdom and his constant thinking that produces an exemplary practice in the field of the arts and culture," said Grossmann.

In almost 12 months of activity as holder of the Chair, Rouanet has sought broad approximations and interactions in the epistemic, institutional or even personal fields, he showed. "The participation of so many colleagues in the effort to give prestige to other areas of knowledge, culture, arts, psychoanalysis, science and philosophy was an attempt to minimize the gap between the human sciences and other sciences," he said.

For Rouanet, the Chair has been a unique opportunity to deepen the effort to unify science a little more; an effort that was extended to the institutional field, with USP interacting with other institutions.

In the words of IEA's director Paulo Saldiva, the ceremony brings the symbolic sign of generosity and passion expressed in the "action of sponsors such as Itaú Cultural, or in the work of people like Ricardo Ohtake, who come to share their experience, teach and illuminate the spirit."

The Chair also celebrates the union between academia, artists, intellectuals and young people who could see the example of rare values such as leadership and enchantment, Saldiva said. "Values such as generosity, passion and enchantment for study are sorely lacking for our youth today. These are feelings that make things happen despite all the difficulties," he emphasized.

USP's Vice-President Vahan Agopyan has stressed the importance of interlocution between academia and external sectors provided by chairs and interdisciplinary instances as the IEA. "I often say that the IEA is the think tank of USP: a place for debates on cross-cutting themes and, as well as the chairs, capable of promoting interaction with society. Dialogue with society is a challenge of the 21st century for all universities, and with the support of Itaú Cultural we are managing to increase this interaction," said Agopyan.

Roberto Setúbal, executive president of Itaú bank, when speaking about the support for the Chair, preferred to recall his father's personality and his tradition of appreciation for culture, his career as an entrepreneur and an engineer graduated from USP's Polytechnic School (POLI). "Severe, firm and demanding, but always very open to dialogue and new ideas. A man of science and research - he has worked at the Institute of Technological Research (IPT). A mayor who created the São Paulo Secretariat of Culture, a gesture that made me very proud in my student days and that shows how he valued culture and was open to the new," he said.

Eduardo Saron, director of Itaú Cultural, recalled the important role of Ohtake in the democratization of culture and arts in Brazil. "The democratization of access to culture, so much discussed by managers in the country, is a theme that will remain for a long time. Art and culture are beyond the needs and rights of the citizen. If the artist thinks of art as a field of desires, managers and actors of cultural politics need to think about culture in this aspect. It is not a matter of democratizing access only. It is about autonomy and freedom of expression. Cultural democracy thinks and understands the individual as an actor of self; an autonomous citizen who has the right to freedom of expression; to see and experience all cultures," said Saron.

Professor Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, from USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), was invited to give the reception address to the honoree. She recalled the work done with Ohtake and the projects undertaken at the Tomie Ohtake Institute.

Lilia Schwarcz, from USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH): "Ricardo Ohtake has distributed gifts in the fields of art and culture".

"A visionary of the arts, an intellectual of culture, an academic of the world of museums, of the arts in the broad sense, he knows that culture is what it does. In Ricardo Ohtake's words, among the various ways of assessing the success of different art forms, there is a unifying question, which is the transformation that the viewer of art undergoes before a work, and the emotion that provides a new knowledge, a new sensitivity, and / or a new experience," said Schwarcz.

For Schwarcz, Ohtake has "distributed gifts": he has toured the fields of architecture, graphic arts, decoration, urbanism, drawing, theater, education, cinema, publishing, dance, photography and the plastic arts; he has made exhibitions, documentaries, film festivals; sponsored concerts; created drawings for many books. "He has inspired generations, having passed through numerous institutions until landing at the Tomie Ohtake Institute, which opened for all kinds of experimentation."

"It is impossible to meet Ricardo without being deeply affected by his history, his smile, his generosity, his very noisy silence, and his transforming affection. I congratulate USP for realizing that Ricardo is a born scholar in the sublime function of being a cultural multiplier, and thus an immense distributor of gifts, an intellectual open to diversity, plurality and equality in this unfortunately unequal country," said the professor.

The State Secretary for Culture of São Paulo, José Roberto Sadek, highlighted the important link between the university and society promoted by the Chair, and the promotion of non-polarized dialogue, treated with the complexity and nuances that the theme requires.

The 93rd issue of the institutional journal "Estudos Avançados" inaugurates a series of publications focused on primary and secondary education. The main dossier of this issue brings a set of articles on the teaching of humanities, area of knowledge chosen to open the sequence. Besides reflections on the current conjuncture of Brazilian education, the texts present reflections on the teaching of philosophy, history, geography, music, literature and religion.

The journal also has three other sections, with different themes. In the first one, Urban Life and Health, four articles seek to understand how environmental and behavioral attributes of large cities affect the lives of their inhabitants. The second set of texts, Arts and Culture, brings comprehensive discussions on higher education in the arts and reflections on important works of the last century. The last section honors economist Paul Singer, who died in April, with a large and expressive interview in 2016.

To editor Alfredo Bosi, the humanities face a paradoxical situation. "At the same time we have a reflection on the new methods proposed by pedagogy and specific didactics that open new directions for teaching, we face a depreciation of the same humanities by the technicist thinking that has been generalized in bureaucratic organs inside and outside the University," he points out. He believes that the intense demand for specialization generated by industrial and technological revolutions has hampered the balance between human and biological sciences.

This context, according to Bosi, fuels the need to think about knowledge in a holistic and problematic way. A starting point, for him, would be to apply philosophy as a methodology of any and all modality of knowledge. "The reader will find articles by professors who experience this project both in public schools and in particular situations, such as teaching reading to inmates or the successful attempt to introduce Greek and Latin to elementary school students," he says.

Bosi dedicates issue #93 to Paul Singer and Paulo Freire, who, according to him, "took their democratic ideals to the heart of the economy and pedagogy of the oppressed ones."

Dossier

Between 2012 and 2013, Ana Vieira Pereira participated in a series of workshops on creative writing and reading mediation at the Romão Gomes Military Prison in São Paulo. Pereira's experiences and apprenticeships in the period are reported in the article Sidelines - Literature Experiences with Imprisoned Persons, which also composes the main dossier. According to her, the work made it possible to perceive literature and the telling of their own history as "powerful mechanisms for the personal reorganization and the discovery of new forms within the field of language".

In the article The reform of secondary education and its questionable conception of quality of education, Celso João Ferretti critically analyzes the reform promoted by the Ministry of Education in 2017. The political and economic interests of the restructuring, the ideological disputes that were presented and the official objectives announced by Michel Temer's government are some of the points dealt with by Ferretti. He further states that he has given "special attention to the curriculum flexibilization and the quality of education conception on which the reform is based."

In the article Latin and Greek in a municipal school of Elementary School, Paula da Cunha Corrêa presents a successful pedagogical experience conducted from 2013 at the Desembargador Amorim Lima Municipal School of Elementary Education (EMEF.) Using the "Minimus" method, created by Barbara Bell, Corrêa has organized the implementation of classic language courses - Latin and Greek - for students in the 4th and 7th grades of the school, which is located in the city of São Paulo. According to her, in addition to language teaching, the project offers "diverse aspects of classical culture," to students, namely mythology, history, politics, theater, poetry, music, art and architecture." The "Minimus Project" is still in force and seeks new schools to expand its operation area.

Other themes

The first two texts of the section Urban Life and Health show the consequences of violence and lack of basic sanitation for the health of the peripheral population. The latter two present comments on the last book authored by physician Paulo Saldiva, current director at the IEA-USP.

In The metropolis and the health of its inhabitants, Helena Ribeiro describes and analyzes the general themes addressed in Saldiva's work. According to her, the book clearly shows "the problems that urbanization has brought to physical and mental health" of the inhabitants of large cities.

Article writer Fabio Angeoletto emphasizes that the problems presented by Saldiva are not limited to São Paulo and other metropolises, but to all Brazilian cities, in Urban life and health. For him, the conclusion of the reading gives rise to a clear but not explicit message by the author: "Cities, in their complexity, demand planning, and multiple academic formations and social actors need to be involved in this work."

Among the seven authors in the Arts and Culture section are former IEA Director Martin Grossmann and two USP professors that participated in the first edition of the Institute's Sabbatical Year Program in 2016: Dária Jaremtchuk and Lúcia Maciel Barbosa de Oliveira. The papers in this edition represent part of the results of their research at the Institute.

In the article Abdias do Nascimento in the United States: a "black art painter," Jaremtchuk discusses the 10-year period that the Brazilian painter has spent in the United States. According to her, the time was fundamental for Nascimento to reaffirm "his commitment to the creation of works aligned with the African cultural heritage."

In Oliveira's On Conquests and Tensions, in turn, there is a discussion on the emergence of new cultural dynamics anchored in information and communication technologies. "The current moment demands a non-simplifying understanding of the innumerable representations, contradictions, voices and silences that vie for visibility in the public arena," she argues.

Paul Singer

The last article of the issue celebrates economist Paul Singer, who died April 16, 2018, at the age of 86. Singer was a full professor at USP's School of Economics, Business and Accounting (FEA,) and a member of the first composition of IEA's Board (1987-1992.) Born in Vienna, he was the creator and greatest advocate of the "Solidarity Economy."

The article Paul Singer: a life of struggle and work for socialism and democratic participation, by Cris Andrada and Egeu Esteves, presents an interview with the economist in the year 2016. Singer talks about his migration to Brazil, the youth in the Post-war São Paulo, his relationship with the union movement - with emphasis on the participation in the 300,000 Strike - and, notoriously, Solidarity Economy.

"Only a few bring together intellectual greatness, genuine humility, and deep coherence between the writer and the practitioner," say the authors. "Paul Singer not only reflected on the violence of the world of work, but also devoted his studies to sharing it with workers, shoulder to shoulder, for years."

Roger Buergel, director of the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich and curator of the 12th Documenta in Kassel, will be at the IEA for the conference The Museum of Things in-Between. The speech will be broadcast live on the Institute's website.

On February 9, at 2.30 pm, he will address the need to give more visibility and space to things that are now in an in-between condition in the field of culture. In Buergel's opinion, one must get rid of the museological categories, and of the distinctions between art and non-art, promoting the appreciation of the uniqueness of objects on display. The researcher believes that the existence of categories in museums leads to a restricted human perception about things.

According to Martin Grossmann, coordinator of the Research Group Fórum Permanente: Cultural System Between Public and Private, which organizes the meeting, the museum format proposed by Buergel operates in a post-colonial (transcultural) mode, critical to a museum model that was developed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but still very present today. "It is a museum that promotes a more horizontal relationship between cultures, languages and cosmologies, where the object - 'the thing' - can act 'in-between', whether in relation to museological or disciplinary categories, or in relation to different notions of space and time," he explains.

Grossmann recalls that the subject has already been explored in Brazil, mainly in the fields of cultural theory and criticism. Silviano Santiago's "The Space In-Between: Essays in Latin American Culture" (1971) and Roberto Schwartz's "Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture" (1977) are two examples of works that address possibilities of action out of the European modern tradition.

The meeting at the IEA will feature a debate with the participation of Lisette Lagnado, director of the School of Visual Arts Parque Lage; Carlos Roberto Brandão, director of USP's Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC); José Teixeira Coelho Netto, former director of MAC-USP and curator-general of MASP from 2006 to 2014; and the former director of the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, curator and culture-specialized journalist Marcelo Rezende. Moderation will be in charge of Grossmann.

Yoshiyuki Suto, from the Nagoya University.

The Hellenistic world, regarded as the earliest age of globalization in human history, was discussed at the conference Articulating Time in the Hellenistic World, given by Yoshiyuki Suto, a professor of Ancient History and academic staff of the Center for the Cultural Heritage and Texts (CHT) at the Nagoya University..

The emergence of a multicultural society has imposed the need to synchronize calendars and to standardize documentary records and the dating of historical events. "The setting of time was closely related to the sense of social stability," said Suto during the Humanities / Social Sciences Workshop of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), on March 10.

"We have agreed on the use of units such as hours, minutes, seconds and days to express time, but we do not think about the origin of these markers."

From the observation of the stars, the Egyptians have been the first to count annual periods and also the pioneers in creating 12 subdivisions of time based on seasons. Greek historian and geographer Herodotus wrote on this ability of the so-called "time masters" in 3 BC. "Their calculations are more accurate than those of the Greeks, who added an intercalary month every two years so that the seasons could coincide. The Egyptians counted 30 days for each of the 12 months, adding five days to the total of each year and thus the full circle of the seasons would coincide with the calendar," Herodotus wrote.

Suto has been specializing in the history of Egypt under the Ptolemaic dinasty. "It is interesting to observe not only the advanced knowledge of the Egyptians, but also the unique feature of that moment. During Hellenism there has been the first era of globalization in human history. The creation of huge empires and the division into large kingdoms features a totally different time in comparison to the previous one," he said.

This period was marked by the expeditions of Alexander the Great to Asia, by the first invasion of Rome in Eastern Greece and by the spread of the Greek language. Public announcements and historical events often needed to be recorded in more than one type of spelling or language, and considering the calendars adopted by different peoples, Suto said. Those were common public documents referencing reigns, bishoprics and other historical facts, accordingly to Sumerian, Egyptian or Greek calendars, to avoid mistakes about the date or the fact that they wanted to portray.

Thus, the time synchronization was necessary. In order to date documents, some important reference points have been used, such as the Trojan War, the Flood of Deucalion (the Greek Noah) or the Return of the Heracleidae. A more explicit time series was created from the Olympic Games in Athens. "The new benchmark was based on the list of Olympic winners," Suto said.

To show how time synchronization evolved between the different peoples of ancient history, Suto introduced two basic concepts related to time in history. The first concept compares progressive time and recurring time, where progressive time is connected to a linear chain of events between past, present and future, and recurring time is caracterized by a repeated cycle of events from period to period, such as celebrations. The second concept compares natural time and human time, where natural time is related to astronomical phenomena and nature, and human time is linked to cultural articulations and a personal interpretation of natural time.

Even in ancient societies, natural time did coincide with celebrations and human needs as harvesting and planting, for example. But it was during the Hellenistic period that the definition of beginning and end of basic chronological units occurred, as well as the synchronization of various human times and ways to denote human time in daily life, he said.

There was no way to articulate a unit of time that had more than one year. Besides, there were difficulties to distinguish one year from another in a chronologically progressive time. Initially, the way that was found to do this was giving the name of a magistrate or an elected priest to a year. "It has certainly avoided a lot of trouble, but it was not practical because these references did not give a sense of relative sequence in relation to the facts," Suto said.

The way to mark time progressed in the Hellenistic kingdoms, especially in the Ptolemaic Egypt, the most successful and enduring of them. An alternative system became better known: to count the year from the throne succession of each king. For example, the year of the coronation of Ptolemy I (305-4 BC) was called the Year I of Ptolemy of Egypt.

The establishment of the concept of regular years has not only contributed to the identification of a given year, but also of longer periods. "It allowed to articulate progressive time with the respective period of each king's domain," he said.

This was demonstrated in a 300-name-long king list graphed over a papyrus. The document, entitled Turin Royal Canon, dates from the time of Ramses II and brings the exact duration of each reign. It is unknown why it is the only list of kings of the Pharaonic period.

Ptolemy II, co-regent of his father, Ptolemy I Soter, introduced changes in the calendar. He tried to extend the year of his reign, considering the period during which he was co-regent. "The reason for this is unknown but it is believed that it has been an attempt to extend his authority over the legislators of other kingdoms," Suto said.

After all, the regular year system starting from the year in which a new king succeeded the former one resulted in a convenient way to determine the beginning and the end of each period, Suto said. Thus, the striking feature of the Hellenistic phase was not only the structural and cultural integration of the kingdom. There was also the important time synchronization that in previous periods was locally separated in different parts of the kingdom.

Kirill Thompson addresses the perception of time in consciousness.

Daoism, Zen, Time Awareness, and the Reality of Time was the title of the lecture given by Kirill O. Thompson, from the National Taiwan University (NTU), during the Humanities / Social Sciences Workshop of the second phase of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA), on March 10.

An expert on neo-Confucian philosophy and Chinese philosophy, Thompson has examined the perception of time in the human consciousness according to Eastern traditions such as Taoism and Zen Buddhism, and compared this notion to the Western philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Taoism and Zen Buddhism are religious philosophical traditions of East Asia intended to reorient the common personal experience to a broader life experience. The consciousness of time is a part of that shift, said Thompson.

For Kant, time is not simply inserted in the experience: time is the very condition of the experience, the pure form of inner intuition. Time summarizes the flow or the pulse of consciousness and thus the mind synchronizes and applies this time to the world's events flow, said Thompson, who is a professor at the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department, and serves as Associate Dean for Humanities at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (IHS) of the NTU.

The German philosopher also conceptualizes the perception of objects as a basic experience that requires "time" to allow the mind to refer to memory and identify the object. Neurologically, this happens in a "self-centered" way because it is molded by mental filters. It is a sensory response that requires "time" to be filtered by personal experience, said Thompson.

The recognition or perception of objects or people is an experiential phenomenon reasoned by the Noumenon, which for Kant is inaccessible. The Noumenon (from the German Ding an sich, meaning "the thing itself") is the sphere of higher reality within the philosophic mind. It can also be understood as the essence of something or that what makes something what it is. The Noumenon exists in itself regardless of the conditions of the common experience phenomena, including time and space. In neurological terms the Noumenon is independent of mental filters of experience, said the professor.

Thus, the common experience is never a raw sensation; it is always conditioned by the forms of intuition and categories of understanding. The object, as a phenomenon, is seen in the context of subjective needs, desires, dislikes, goals or in addition to its own character and relationships.

According to the professor, the social sciences tend to value a self-centered point of view, referring rational interests as the great guide of ideal personal conduct. On the other hand, the Taoist response to existence is the negation of the ego and the dissolution of the mind filters.

Thus, the oldest Taoist text, the Laozi, challenges and refutes the independence and the ultimacy of objects, showing its origin from the non-being (invisible, formless) and mutual codependency. "But how could it be possible to experience that?," asked Thompson.

First, he said, we should note that the common egocentric experience is based on ego as a unified system or a set that brings together the expertise and its categories, and forms of intuition which filter and shape the experience. In this case, linear time is a condition for the exercise of memory, recalling past events and planing the sequence of future events.

In Taoism, the appropriation of time requires a "step back" in the common experience of being, and of its forms and categories of understanding. This involves a change of perspective, a general reorientation so that Laozi and Zen Buddhism can convey their message. The key is to relax and focus the mind through meditation.

One can directly see things as co-emerging and interdependent, according to Thompson. If this mindset - meditation - is successful, the result will be a dissolution of the intuition model, of the understanding categories, of the mind filters simultaneously including the dissolution of the ego, and of course of linear time. Meditation opens the path to be holistic and time gets suspended, said Thompson.

Thompson cited American neurologist James H. Austin, who engaged in holistic trial through Zen Buddhism. Author of Zen and the Brain, Austin seeks to relate the neural activity of the human brain and the practice of meditation. His book was awarded the Scientific and Medical Network Book Prize in 1998.

"Austin underwent Zen Buddhist trial and tracked its impact on the neural processes during meditation. He confirmed that the internal neural metronome turns off in relation to clock time and thus time ceases. Such dissolution of the filters that connect the experience and divide subject and object open the path for a direct and holistic orientation," he said.

The sense of achronia (cessation of time, eternity) accompanies the deep kenshi and the satori experience when a person opens into the void. Thompson defines achronia as the absence of any sense of time during meditative detachment. It is not a sense of timelessness or loss of time.

The horizon of consciousness opens beyond all notions of previous limits. There are neither past nor present. This lack of time enters the nonverbal experience as eternity. Neurologically, this kind of orientation contrasts with the egocentric pattern of the Western experience outlined above.

In the allocentric experience - which has interests and considerations centered on the other, contrary to the egocentric orientation - the being can grasp objects as they really are. Instead of a subjective perception filtered by wants and needs, a person acquires an objective perception to themselves and to others.

When consciousness is freed from rigid categories and mental filters, the path will be open to more flexibility and fluidity in thought and action, which enhances creativity in the arts, in problem solving, in life management and in the field of ideas.

Ultimately, the Zen notion about the nature of Buddha in regard to "empty" and "enlightenment" complements Kant's Noumenon (Ding an sich), said Thompson. The philosopher's ideas are static and logically chained, and posit the object as it is, ie, prior to the intuition of taxes, categories and mental filters that shape the common experience.

In theory, the concept of the Noumenon (Ding an sich) encourages us to see through the phenomena as they primarily appear.

Linear time as pure form of inner intuition is a common experience condition. Given this form of intuition, the internal neural metronome follows the pulse and the flow of the experience from within, which also keeps us in sync with the flow of events in the world.

In contrast, at the deepest level of allocentric experience, when the ego is dissolved and the internal neural metronome stops, time is suspended. Therefore, time such as distance is related to the forms or time measuring systems, said Thompson.

Political scientist, philosopher and diplomat Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, former National Secretary of Culture and author of the cultural incentive law that bears his name, will give the inaugural conference of the Olavo Setubal Chair of Arts, Culture and Science, of which he is the first holder.

Rouanet will address the influence of modernity in the economic, political and cultural contexts through the ideas of sociologists Max Weber and Manuel Castells, and philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Modernity and its Ambivalences will take place on May 17, at 10 am, in the former University Board Room.

The debaters will be jurist Celso Lafer, former Minister of Foreign Affairs; philosopher Renato Janine Ribeiro, former Minister of Education and coordinator of the IEA's Research Group The Future Inquires Us; and sociologist Barbara Freitag, professor emeritus from the University of Brasília (UnB). The opening of the seminar will be attended by the president of USP, Marco Antonio Zago, by the director of the IEA, Paulo Saldiva, and by Eduardo Saron, director at the Itaú Cultural Institute.

A project of the IEA in partnership with the Itaú Cultural Institute, the Olavo Setubal Chair will be a space to discuss and promote activities related to the world of arts, with special focus on cultural management. Its goal is to foster interdisciplinary reflections on academic, artistic, cultural and social issues of regional and global scope.

The concept of modernity

According to Rouanet there are still doubts about the concept of modernity even though it is being discussed more than ever before. One of the definitions has been presented by sociologist Anthony Giddens: "Modernity refers to the ways of life and the social organization that emerged in Europe from the 18th century, and subsequently became global in their influence."

However, Rouanet believes that "if we want to give a concrete content to this mature chronological frame, we should go back to the classical analyzes of Max Weber," for whom modernity is the product of cumulative rationalization processes that occurred:

• economically – free mobility of production factors, wage labor, rational techniques of accounting and management, and continual incorporation of science and technology to the production process;
• politically – replacement of the decentralized feudal state by the centralized national state;
• culturally – secularization of traditional worldviews (Entzauberung) and their internal division into value spheres (Wertsphären): science, morality, law and art.
  

Rouanet seeks to integrate these Weberian categories in the context of Habermas's theory of communicative action. As a case study, he proposes the analysis of more abstract questions about books and their future prospects in the face of new technologies of information and communication, taking advantage of Castells's approach.

Photo: Cecília Bastos/USP