A01=Maria M. Portuondo
administration
alonso de santa cruz
Author_Maria M. Portuondo
bautista gesio
cartography
Category=PDX
Category=PG
cosmography
discovery
empire
epistemology
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
europe
expansion
exploration
governance
history
humanism
juan herrera
lopez velasco
lunar eclipse
maps
mathematical rationalism
nature
navigation
new world
nonfiction
patronage
philosophy
pilots
ptolemy
renaissance
scientific knowledge
spain
tordesillas question
Product details
- ISBN 9780226675343
- Weight: 680g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 01 May 2009
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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 such 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 Maria 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. "Secret Science" promises to enhance our understanding of early modern science and the scientific revolution by shedding light on a nation that has long been in the shadow of the Black Legend.
Maria M. Portuondo is assistant professor of history of science at the Johns Hopkins University.
