7th CIUHCT Distinguished Lecture

Title

The Empiricist Impulse: Doers and Thinkers in 16th Century Spain.

Abstract

Early modern natural philosophy harbored an inherent tension between empiricism and its theoretical underpinnings. This tension was most apparent in the range of practitioners of science who we describe as "Doers" and "Thinkers." Using the figures of cosmographer Andrés García de Céspedes, architect Juan de Herrera, and theologians Benito Arias Montano and Francisco Suárez, sj  we will try to understand how they engaged with the limitations, but also the strengths of pre-Galilean natural philosophy.

About the speaker

María M. Portuondo, PhD is Professor Emerita at The Johns Hopkins University. She is a historian of early modern science and technology whose work has focused on Spain and Latin America. She is currently writing a book on technology in the colonial Caribbean.

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