Aina Trias – Verbeeck, José Pardo – Tomás, Institució Milà i Fontanals – CSIC, Barcelona
This past Friday, November 18th the Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technique held its biannual conference in the city of Palma, in Mallorca. The meeting took place in an old building, now hosting courses form the Universitat de les Illes Balears, but formerly part of a big architectonic unit built in the early 1900’s to host several cultural and education institutions of the island.
This eclectic style complex was constructed upon the new gained ground resulting from the deviation of a water stream which gives it name: Sa Riera (The Torrent). Besides the university area, the same building still hosts the Balearic Art and Design school and the Ramon Llull high school, successor of one of the pioneer secondary schools of the country. Inside, ancient scientific collections of botany, zoology, mineralogy, physics, meteorology and chemistry -including pedagogical models, instruments and apparatus- are preserved and displayed in classrooms and laboratories that still retain the atmosphere and furnishings of more than a century ago.
Such a special place welcomed a heterogeneous group of a hundred people (historians, mathematicians, biologists, physicists, philosophers, among others) presenting the results of their research, publications, and individual or collective projects related to the history of science, medicine and technology.
One of the sessions was dedicated to “Spaces, museums and material culture of science”, organised by José Pardo-Tomás. The presentations focused on two study cases: the retrieval of the pharmaceutical spaces and objects at the Militar Hospital built in the XVIII by the British army on a tiny island called Illa del Rei (The King’s Island) in the natural harbour of Maó (Minorca) and the research lines about the cabinet of curiosities of the Salvador family in Barcelona developed by SciCoMove researchers and colleagues.
In this framework, the Scientific Collections on the Move project was presented to the attendees as a work in progress example of the importance of networking and connecting histories, places, persons and things circulating and constructing knowledge, in the past and nowadays.
Being it a reunion of a local society on an even more local and peripheral place as an island, the project aroused enthusiasm and interest among the public.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Nathalie Richard (December 16, 2022). Introducing SciCoMove in Palma, Mallorca. SciCoMove — Scientific Collections on the Move. Retrieved April 28, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/twtm