Browsing by Author "Martins, Nuno O."
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- Early Atlantic navigation: pre-portuguese presence in the Azores IslandsPublication . Rodrigues, António Félix; Martins, Nuno O.; Ribeiro, Nuno; Joaquinito, AnabelaWe present here evidence of pre-Portuguese presence in the Azores Islands, Portugal, found near the site of Grota do Medo (Posto Santo), discovered by Rodrigues (2013) in Terceira Island, Azores. This evidence was dated by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, and indicates the presence of human activity in Terceira Island before or during the XIth century. The evidence consisted in a man-made rock basin, which was found in a site that contains also striking similarities with many other aspects from ancient cultures, including other man-made rock basins, arrangements of large stones which resemble megalithic constructions, and inscriptions in stones which resemble ancient petroglyphs. Although the dating of this evidence is highly suggestive of the presence of human activity in the Azores Islands long before the arrival of the Portuguese navigators of the XVth century, there is no clear evidence which enables us to identify which specific culture may have existed in the Azores before the Portuguese arrival.
- Numerical uncertainty and its implicationsPublication . Rodrigues, António F.; Martins, Nuno O.A scrutiny of the contributions of key mathematicians and scientists shows that there has been much controversy (throughout the development of mathematics and science) concerning the use of mathematics and the nature of mathematics too. In this work, we try to show that arithmetical operations of approximation lead to the existence of a numerical uncertainty, which is quantic, path dependent and also dependent on the number system used, with mathematical and physical implications. When we explore the algebraic equations for the fine structure constant, the conditions exposed in this work generate paradoxical physical conditions, where the solution to the paradox may be in the fact that the fine-structure constant is calculated through different ways in order to ob-tain the same value, but there is no relationship between the fundamental physical processes which underlie the calculations, since we are merely dealing with algebraic relations, despite the expressions having the same physi-cal dimensions.
- Sraffa on fixed capital, money and the phases of capitalismPublication . Martins, Nuno O.In this paper I address some elements in Piero Sraffa’s thinking that are connected to his conceptualization of the phases of capitalism. Sraffa describes various stages of capitalism using similar categories to the ones employed in the model of the economy provided in Production of Commodities. This is done by distinguishing the role of population, land and (circulating, intermediate and fixed) capital in each stage. Sraffa changed his conceptualization of fixed capital over the years, until he reached its final formulation. The conceptualizations of fixed capital that Sraffa discusses, together with his remarks on money which are made through an analogy with circulating and fixed capital, provide some elements that shed light on Sraffa’s view of the dynamics of capitalism.