Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World

The discovery of the New World raised many questions for early modern scientists: What did these lands contain? Where did they lie in relation to Europe? Who lived there, and what were their inhabitants like? Imperial expansion necessitated changes in the way scientific knowledge was gathered, and Spanish cosmographers in particular were charged with turning their observations of the New World into a body of knowledge that could be used for governing the largest empire the world had ever known.

As María M. Portuondo here shows, this cosmographic knowledge had considerable strategic, defensive, and monetary value that royal scientists were charged with safeguarding from foreign and internal enemies. Cosmography was thus a secret science, but despite the limited dissemination of this body of knowledge, royal cosmographers applied alternative epistemologies and new methodologies that changed the discipline, and, in the process, how Europeans understood the natural world.

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

A Note on Translations

 

Introduction: Spanish Science and the New World

Chapter 1   Renaissance Cosmography in the Era of Discovery

                        Humanists Adopt Ptolemy: European Practitioners Create a New Discipline

                        Ideal Practice: Cosmography at the University

                        Cosmography and the Sea: Mathematical Rationalism and Navigation Books

Chapter 2   Cosmographical Styles at the Casa, Consejo and Corte

                        “Like Scattered Pieces of a Puzzle”: Compiling Knowledge of the New World

                        The Tordesillas Question

                        Alonso de Santa Cruz and His Cosmographical Opus

                        The Islario general

                        Experts to Explain the World: Juan de Herrera and the Expert Explorers

                        Cosmography at the Casa: Pilots and Maps

Chapter 3   Cosmography Codified

                        Cosmography as State Secret

                        Santa Cruzs Guidelines

                        A Law to Define Cosmographical Practice: The Ordinances of Indies

                        Legal Culture and Cosmographical Methodology

Chapter 4   The Cosmographer-Chronicler of the Council of Indies

                        The Empire, Patronage, and the Humanist: Juan López de Velasco, 1571-90

                        The Reluctant Historian

                        The Cosmographer as Censor

Chapter 5   The Cosmographer at Work

                        Writing the Geografía y descripción de las Indias

                        The Censor Censored: Juan Bautista Gesio

                        The Sumario

Chapter 6   Constructing a Cosmographical Epistemology

                        Questionnaires and the relaciones geográficas de Indias

                        Eclipses and Longitude

                        A Global Project

                        The Lunar Eclipse Observations

Chapter 7   Cosmography Dissolves

                        A New Patronage Equation

                        Mathematical Practitioners Take Over

                        Mathematics and Cosmographical Epistemology

                        Chroniclers and Historians

Conclusion

 

Bibliography

Index