Public instruction agency and popularization of science at the Paraense Museum of Natural History and Ethnography (1891-1898)

Abstract

This article aims to investigate how science was popularized at the Paraense Museum of Natural History e Ethnography – MPHNE, from 1891 to 1898, as a practice of  Public Instruction agency in Pará. From regulations, internal regulations of the Institution, Statutes of the Sociedade Zeladora of the Paraense Museum, official reports from governors of Grão-Pará and newspapers of the time, the work highlights that, since its installation, the MPHNE had as goals the popularization of science to the general public, with four main strategies for this purpose: (a) school visits, (b) public conferences, (c) printed instructions for collecting animals and plants, all of which are published in the Bulletin of the Museum of Natural History and Ethnography and (d) visitation to the Zoobotanic Park. The results indicate that during the first years of the Republic in Pará, the Museum was seen by government officials, directors of an agency of Public Instruction and the Museum itself as a republican project of modernity, based on the pedagogical language of the intuitive teaching method or objective method, opposing it if, therefore, to bookish culture at the end of the 19th century.