the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of

Interdisciplinary History

Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution by
Antonio Barrera-Osorio
Review by: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Summer, 2007), pp. 159-161
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4139717 .
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REVIEWS 159

neither the dynamics of friar-native interaction nor the factors that moti-
vated native Americans to cooperate are fully explored.
In his final chapters, Lara partially corrects this imbalance, demon-
strating how long-standing Amerindian traditions and cosmologies had a
demonstrable influence over the shape and function of these monastic
complexes. Lara convincingly interprets the atrial crosses placed at the
center of the four-square patios as Mesoamerican World Trees as well as
"icons of the soon-to-appear Messiah" (162), with their elaborately
carved arma Christi (symbols of the Passion). As does Edgerton's recent
publication, Lara develops the theme of convent as liturgical stage for
Christian narratives activated in "rituals of conversion."'1 Within the in-
tersecting political and spiritual goals of colonialism, Amerindians, as
neophyte Christians, are inserted into a "trajectory of salvation history
together with the myth of the Last World Emperor in the person of
Charles V" (18o).
Jeanette Favrot Peterson
University of California, Santa Barbara

ExperiencingNature: The Spanish AmericanEmpire and the Early Scientific

Revolution. By Antonio Barrera-Osorio (Austin, University of Texas
Press, 2006) 2I I pp. $45.00

Kuhn and Koyre once characterizedthe "scientificrevolution" as a tec-

tonic shift in worldviews. According to their influentialinterpretations,
seventeenth-centurymathematicians,cosmographers,and naturalphi-
losopherssuddenlyembracedheliocentrismand mechanicalphilosophy
and threw Aristotelianphysics and geocentric theologies into the dust
bin of history.' Kuhn's and Koyre's accounts bolstered the status of
Nicolaus Copernicus,JohannesKepler,Rene Descartes,Galileo Galilei,
and Isaac Newton as culturalheroes, the ushers of modernity. Later,
however, sociologistsof science like Stephen Shapinand Simon Schaffer
upset this heroic, revolutionarynarrativeby linking the historyof seven-
teenth-century English mechanicalphilosophy firmly to the welter of
partisaninterestsunleashedby the Civil War, Restoration, and the Glo-
riousRevolution. Shapinand Schafferalso addedartisansand instrument
makersto the list of modernity'sfounding fathers.Shapinand Schaffer's
narrative,however, remainedwedded to the history of physicsand cos-
mography.Historiansof science have more recently begun to question
this emphasison momentousphilosophicaland cosmographicaltransfor-
mations and pay more attention to the mundane and the obvious; the
and IndianArtisansin Co-
I Samuel Y. Edgerton, Theatersof Conversion:ReligiousArchitecture
lonial Mexico (Abuquerque, 2ooi).
I See Thomas Kuhn, The Structureof ScientificRevolutions (Chicago, 1962); Alexandre
Koyre, Etudes d'histoirede la pens&escientifique(Paris, 1985).

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160 JORGE CA IZARES-ESGUERRA

Scientific Revolution took place amid a commercial revolution trig-

gered by Europe's imperial expansion to the New World, Africa, and
Asia.
This new emphasis on commerce and empire has suddenly
prompted historians of science to study the history of collecting, curiosi-
ties, and botanical gardens. Yet the role of Spain and Portugal, the two
most important early modern European empires, has received little at-
tention. This silence should surprise no one, for the history of these two
countries has long been associated with a narrative of backwardness not
progress, obscurantism not enlightenment, ignorance not science. The
Black Legend has long blinded historians to the fact that the roots of
European scientific modernity lie in fifteenth-century Portugal and six-
teenth-century Spain, not seventeenth-century Amsterdam or London.
Barrera-Osorio's book is a fine first step to render the obvious and
long-ignored visible. His book is solely concerned with demonstrating
that both empire and New World novelty forced Spanish merchants,
bureaucrats, and intellectuals to dispense with classical, humanist
epistemologies and fully to embrace "experience" (eyewitnessing and
experimentation) rather than the authority of texts. This simple yet radi-
cal conclusion flies in the face of a well-established historiography that
maintains that, despite all its novelties, the New World had a blunted
impact on Europe and that European scholars easily incorporated the
flurry of new data coming from the Indies into classically based textual
narratives.
But Barrera-Osorio cracks the proverbial nut differently. Rather
than dealing with scholars, his focus is to study merchants, settlers, and
bureaucrats. Free from the hindrance of textual authority, merchants, ar-
tisans, entrepreneurs, and royal officials time and again settled disputes
about the commercial value of new commodities and technologies by
appealing to "experience." Entrepreneurs sought to establish monopo-
lies over new botanical resources by demonstrating the therapeutic value
of plants through clinical trials. The Crown, in turn, handed out patents
and licenses only after proving those claims valid. Empire and commerce
quickly led to the creation of institutions with the sole purpose of appor-
tioning credit to competing claims.
The Casa de Contratacidnemerged to settle disputes and regulate
trade. It also worked as a clearing house of knowledge about the New
World, where cosmographers debriefed pilots to create ever more accu-
rate charts and maps, where pilots were trained to calculate longitude
and latitude in the open sea and thus to avoid costly sea wrecks, and
where cosmographers developed new instruments of navigation. These
two cultures of the textual and the experiential were often at logger-
heads at the Casa; cosmographers and pilots more often than not failed
to agree.
Barrera-Osorio also describes a culture of technological innovation
triggered by empire and commerce, offering a sixteenth-century Spain
teeming with artisans and entrepreneurs, not painters and bards.

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REVIEWS 161

Whether concerning innovative devices to pump water out of ships,

metallurgical processes to extract metals from ores, or diving instruments
to fish oysters loaded with pearls, the procedure was always the same:
Experience trumped textual authority. Bureaucrats, settlers, and mer-
chants routinely developed the means to gather, and reflect on, the nov-
elties of the New World. The occasional original report expected from
pilots and conquistadors soon gave way to an institutionalized circula-
tion of information through questionnaires, which were centralized and
processed by specialists (royal cosmographers, historians, and natural his-
torians) hired by the Crown to winnow the grain from the chaff.
Barrera-Osorio ends this provocative study by showing that this culture
of experience ultimately had an impact on scholars. Jose de Acosta, for
example, came to challenge the textual authority of Aristotelian meteo-
rology, and Gonzalo Fernaindezde Oviedo found Pliny's natural history
wanting.
Barrera-Osorio's is a short, richly documented study, mostly based
on archival research at the Archivo de Indias. To the traditional narrative
of the scientific revolution, he offers an alternative plot that has re-
mained muted for too long. Would historians of science listen to
Barrera-Osorio's soft-spoken yet forceful voice? Probably not. They
most likely will need the shouts of a crowd, but this book is a fine first
wake-up call.
Jorge Cafiizares-Esguerra
University of Texas, Austin

The Colonial Spanish-AmericanCity: UrbanLife in the Age of Atlantic Capi-

talism. By Jay Kinsbrunner (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2005)
198 pp. $40.00 cloth $18.95 paper

The author states as his main theme that the Spanish colonial city
"evolved during the age of Atlantic capitalism and was itself a circum-
stance of that capitalism" (xi). He advances well beyond this goal, how-
ever, offering a detailed class and caste analysis, overt and implicit com-
parisons with Western European cities, and various assertions about
urban class structure. Included are repeated statements that what he
terms a "lower-middle class" was common and often a large component
of the urban population. The author, however, also falls short of some of
these aims in important ways.
The book ranges widely, covering such topics as what constitutes a
Spanish colonial city; the pre-Columbian city; the politics and institu-
tions of urban government; the city architecture, layout, and space; the
urban economy, with particular emphasis on petty trade and artisanal
production; the official, as opposed to the actual, caste and class struc-
ture; the nuclear family and its alternatives; and the many forms of social

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