Galilæana. Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Science

A psychological challenge to qualitative philosophies: the weight of matter of insensible substance

2023-04-18T15:08:42+00:00

Essay review of Barry Jonathan, Bigotti Fabrizio, eds. Santorio Santori and the Emergence of Quantified Medicine, 1614-1790. Corpuscularianism, Technology and Experimentation. Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan-Springer, 2022.

Jerónimo Muñoz and Juan Cedillo Díaz: the Sun as the ‘heart of the world’ in the debate on Copernicus

2023-02-23T15:29:16+00:00

The article examines the different evaluations of Copernicus and heliocentrism by the two most important Spanish astronomers between 1543 and 1633, Jerónimo Muñoz and Juan Cedillo, focusing on the motif of the Sun as the ‘heart of the world’. This motif, positively added by Cedillo in his manuscript translation of De revolutionibus (I, 10), had been employed by Muñoz in the criticism of Copernicus in his manuscript Latin translation of Theon’s Commentary on Ptolemy’s Almagest (Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples) as an unacceptable denomination of the Sun. Although the motif could have come to Cedillo from other sources (ancient and medieval tradition; not ultimately Peurbach and Clavius) we argue for the possibility that Cedillo received it from the oral teaching of Muñoz at the university of Salamanca. We show that Muñoz’s critique of heliocentrism and the motion of the Earth is related to his elimination of the celestial spheres and his adherence to the Alpetragian model of a single planetary motion from east to west, together with the attribution to the planets of a ‘spiral’ motion.

Between matematici and architetti d’acque: Vincenzo Viviani, Galileo’s legacy, and hydraulic engineering

2022-09-21T07:38:13+00:00

For a long time, Vincenzo Viviani has been regarded by historians in the light of his devotion to Galileo. However, while saying that Galileo was a major influence on Viviani would surely be an understatement, it must not be forgotten that after Galileo’s death Viviani had a career of his own in a field – engineering – that required him to negotiate his supposedly strict Galilean beliefs. In particular, his training under the guidance of Baccio del Bianco and the years he spent as assistant engineer for the Capitani di parte Guelfa made him a member of a closely-tied group of multi-skilled craftsmen who situated themselves someway in the middle between the matematici and the architetti d’acque, and this circumstance contributed to shape both Viviani’s peculiar approach to hydraulic engineering and his role in the institutionalization process of Galilean science.

The New World and the new science. Introduction

2023-04-05T08:45:50+00:00

Traditional historical reconstructions regarding the circulation and production of knowledge in the Spanish colonies in the New World have focused on their participation in the birth of Early Modern Science in Europe. Although recent studies have revised this approach by examining how knowledge production in the Americas contributed to the development of seventeenth-century Spanish scientific culture, this focus section intends to enlarge the scope of this revisionist approach by considering study cases that show that the circulation of knowledge informed the development of local contexts in the Americas. This introduction depicts this panorama by considering it in the light of the iconography produced by Europeans after the discovery of the New World.

Inscribing mining practice and theory: conceptions of knowledge production and the Iberian state in Capoche’s and Hinestrosa’s relaciones

2022-12-18T15:45:58+00:00

This contribution uses two narratives composed by practicing miners in Spain’s Viceroyalty of Peru to explore period conceptions of the Iberian state’s interest in metallurgical knowledge. Luis Capoche’s 1585 Relación general … de Potosí (“General Relation of Potosí”) and Juan Francisco de Hinestrosa’s 1596 Relación breve y sumaria … del descubrimiento … de nuebo Potosí (“Short relation and summary of the discovery of New Potosí”) evince parallels in content and form. While these similarities can be attributed merely to the context of colonial Iberian mining administration, they also point to a horizon of expectations shared by these authors and their intended readers, the viceroy and king. An exploration of the varied ways that Capoche and Hinestrosa marshalled theoretical and practical metallurgical knowledge in their writings enriches previous scholarship that has argued for the Iberian state’s interest in and promotion of knowledge production.

Popular science as knowledge: early modern Iberian-American repertorios de los tiempos

2022-12-18T15:49:37+00:00

Iberian repertorios de los tiempos stemmed from Medieval almanacs and calendars. During the sixteenth century significant editorial, conceptual and material changes in repertorios incorporated astronomy, geography, chronology and natural philosophy. From De Li’s Repertorio (1492) to Zamorano’s Cronología (1585), the genre evolved from simple almanacs to more complex cosmological works which circulated throughout the Iberian-American world. This article claims that repertorios are a form of syncretic knowledge rather than “popular science” by relying on the concept of “knowledge in transit”. Elaborating on this perspective, I present how repertorios ended up delivering a worldview from existing materials, a fact so far unnoticed by scholarship. At the same time, repertorios should not be considered an exclusively Iberian phenomenon, but the full scope of their nature as a form of syncretic knowledge should include their networks with migrants, indigenous, mestizos, and criollos across the Atlantic. In this sense, I try to trace the paths connecting productions in the Americas with Iberian repertorios.

The Fabric of the Skies: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora and the Academia Mexicana

2022-12-18T15:51:56+00:00

This case study discusses the role of the chair of mathematics and the status of celestial knowledge in the Real Universidad de México in late-seventeenth-century New Spain through the analysis of a chronicle of Marian festivities. Triumpho Parthenico (Mexico, 1683) was penned by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (1645-1700), during his professorship in mathematics at the Mexican university. This Mexican-born author, known to Latin American scholars as a baroque polymath and prominent actor in the development of criollo identity, has been historically considered a defender of mathematical reasoning and a representative of a shift to modernity in New Spain. This essay argues that Sigüenza and his contemporaries’ understanding of celestial knowledge and science is not merely instrumental to local political struggles, but that it should be contextualized within the political, epistemic, and confessional discussions about the origin, mediation and purpose of knowledge in early modern Mexico.