Article ID: CBB342986705

Beyond the “Irrational and Superstitious”: The New World, Spanish “Hunters of Nature’s Secrets”, and Transformations of Science in the Early Modern Era (2019)

unapi

The goal of this article is to examine the preconditions, presuppositions, and forms of modern science. It focuses on “hunt for nature’s secrets” as one of the key sources and roots of science, an enterprise where the productive role of human knowledge and its power ambitions became crucial. Such approach to science is often identified with Bacon’s project of recovery of sciences or with the experimental approach of modern science. In this contribution, however, it is demonstrated that one can find such goals and ambitions also in a different -and at first sight even “irrational”- area, namely in Spanish natural magic, occult philosophy, and tradition of libri secretorum. Considered are the works of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg and Juan de Cárdenas, where the “hunter’s epistemology” is defined. Both of these authors articulated new goals and methods of science, an approach based on the privileged epistemic status of experience, rehabilitation of intellectual curiosity, and active and power-demanding approach to nature and its secrets. These ideas were distinctly articulated in confrontation with nature of the New World.

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Authors & Contributors
Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero
Tavernese, Vincenzo
Hellawell, Philippa
Bertolini, Manuel
Garrido, Miguel León
Thurner, Lance C.
Concepts
Occult sciences
Natural magic
Spain, colonies
Epistemology
Experience; witness
Science and religion
Time Periods
Early modern
17th century
16th century
Renaissance
Medieval
18th century
Places
Spain
Europe
South America
Portugal
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean
Institutions
Royal Society of London
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