Objective/context:

With this introduction (and this dossier) we seek to encourage reflection and debate around new perspectives in the face of the problematized but, in some way, still predominant narratives of a history of science centered on northern and western Europe. In particular, we seek to encourage reflection and debate on the role of the Ibero-American hybrid world and the role of indigenous knowledge in the rise of modern science.

Methodology:

In the Atlantic World, from the 16th to the 19th century, the solutions to problems related to long distance trade, communication, and control over populations, resources and territories, came through practices and institutions that emphasized empirical knowledge and personal experience. These practices and institutions produced definitive scientific knowledge for the history of modern science. In this context, the authors of the articles included in the dossier employ multiple perspectives, methods and empirical evidence to analyze cultural exchanges, and to better understand how Christians expanded and corrected their knowledge of medicine, geography and natural history (to mention only a few domains of knowledge) beyond the dominant knowledge of classical antiquity and Christianity. It became clear that indigenous knowledge and its re-readings gave rise to new epistemological practices. Also, that the Atlantic world from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries was a space where meetings between Native Americans, Africans and Europeans created, among other things, new sciences and technologies.

Originality:

For about fifteen years, researchers in the United States, Latin America and Spain have proposed major arguments that aim to explain the connections between the Ibero-American world, indigenous knowledge, and the new knowledge practices that we call modern science. With this dossier we offer a sample of the state of these investigations, which question the notions of European modernity and globality that still define academic works on science in the Atlantic world.

Conclusions:

Although we don't intended to offer an exhaustive state of the art, this work illustrates the importance of asking new questions about the production of knowledge in the context of the European exploration and conquest of the New World. We underscore the need for a better understanding of the encounters of European and American knowledge, and the importance of these knowledge production dynamics in the history of European modernity. This text briefly presents each of the contributions to this volume.

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