Abstract

PUERTA-OLAYA, María Alejandra  and  ESCOBAR-ORTIZ, Jorge Manuel. Botany and topography: the problem of the levelling of plants in the scientific historiography on Francisco José de Caldas. Hist. Soc. [online]. 2017, n.33, pp.77-109. ISSN 0121-8417.  https://doi.org/10.15446/hys.n33.61152.

The levelling of plants is usually recognized as one of the main concepts in the works and the thought of Francisco José de Caldas. There are different interpretations about this concept, but in general, the treatment is not very careful and does not really go into the details concerning its theoretical assumptions and consequences. In this article, we identify the diverse interpretations that historians have offered regarding the origin, the function and the definition of this concept. Our interest is to show the difficulties that the scientific historiography on Caldas faces when it deals with this concept, and how these difficulties generate uncertainty concerning the coherence that may exist between those different interpretations. In particular, we defend the thesis that the approach to the term “levelling of plants” has been focused more on the plants part than on the levelling part, that is, more on botany than on topography. This historiographic assumption has led to the construction of historical narratives that, despite the explicit topographic dimension of the term, place it in the history of botany and not in the history of topography.

Keywords : Humboldt; geography; New Granada; natural history; process of Independence (authors).

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