RESUMO O artigo consiste em uma apresentação e em comentários à tradução, publicada aqui pela primeira vez em português, de extratos retirados dos cadernos preparatórios de Marx para a segunda edição de O Capital, de 1872. O conteúdo desses extratos sublinham o caráter social da objetividade valor, o que indica a importância a análise da forma valor para a crítica social elaborada por Marx. Partindo dos diferentes tratamentos da forma valor contidas em Para a crítica da Economia Política (1859), O Capital (1867) e O capital (1872), os comentários abordam, além de aspectos práticos do problema, a particularidade do objeto de análise de Marx e sua diferença com relação ao objeto de estudo da Economia Política clássica.

ABSTRACT The text consists in a presentation and comments to translated extracts of Marx’s revision notes - published here for the first time in Portuguese - to the second edition of Capital (1872). The content of these excerpts stresses the social character of value objectivity and point to the importance of the value form analysis in Marx’s social critique. Departing from the different treatments of the value form as they appear in Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Capital (1867) and Capital (1872), the text highlights the precise object of Marx’s investigations, its difference regarding the method of classical Political Economy and some practical aspects derived from his critical conception.

It is well-known that humans have used medicinal plants for millennia, but as a defined field of scientific research called ethnopharmacology, it has a relatively short history. It is linked to the development of pharmacology in the 19th century (as exemplified in the work of Claude Bernard linking the explorers' observations on traditional uses of medicines and toxins) and to fascination with psychoactive drugs in the 1960s. This fascination gave rise to what we now call ethnopharmacology, a term first used as recently as 1967. With thousands of ethnopharmacological articles published each year now, the field has expanded greatly. It nowadays covers a wide range of topics based on the anthropological, historical and other socio-cultural studies of local and traditional plants, fungi and animals; as well as the biological and clinical studies of resources used as medicines, toxins, foods, among other applications. It is one of the few fields in science truly transdisciplinary and it is a key bridge between socio-cultural and the natural/medical sciences. More importantly, ethnopharmacological research is crucial for the improvement of livelihood, health and wellbeing of humans.