The problem solver: Colonial knowledge, authority, and the compilation of natural marvels in Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas y secretos (1591)
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Ran Segev
Abstract
Written in Mexico during a period of expanding systematic study of the New World, Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas was a pioneering attempt to explain the findings in America using European academic theory. This chapter places Cárdenas’s regional compilation in the context of Spain’s empirical vision, suggesting that the question-and-answer model responded to the Crown’s information- gathering initiatives. The chapter also examines Cárdenas’s approach to scientific observation, showing how his work reflects a fusion of pre-modern and modern epistemologies. Focusing on the author’s geological thinking and his analysis of local plants, it claims that while Cárdenas’s explanatory framework reveals his adherence to European models, he nonetheless emphasized the advantage of a colonial perspective. His efforts to impose order and intelligibility on American nature mirrored existing centralizing tendencies of Imperial Spain and the Church that equally desired to constrain disorder in the colonial realm.
Abstract
Written in Mexico during a period of expanding systematic study of the New World, Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas was a pioneering attempt to explain the findings in America using European academic theory. This chapter places Cárdenas’s regional compilation in the context of Spain’s empirical vision, suggesting that the question-and-answer model responded to the Crown’s information- gathering initiatives. The chapter also examines Cárdenas’s approach to scientific observation, showing how his work reflects a fusion of pre-modern and modern epistemologies. Focusing on the author’s geological thinking and his analysis of local plants, it claims that while Cárdenas’s explanatory framework reveals his adherence to European models, he nonetheless emphasized the advantage of a colonial perspective. His efforts to impose order and intelligibility on American nature mirrored existing centralizing tendencies of Imperial Spain and the Church that equally desired to constrain disorder in the colonial realm.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface and acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Regionally specified knowledge compendia between encyclopedia and chorography 1
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I Universal history, encyclopedia, and chorography: Early modern practices and forms of knowledge compilation
- The local, the regional, and the universal in knowledge compilations: Observations on the Codex Aldenburgensis 41
- Encyclopedia and dictionaries in premodern and early modern Japan: Chinese heritage and the local reordering of knowledge 95
- Imago et descriptio: Narrating Sicily in the modern period 147
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II Creating and organizing New Spanish knowledge: Early colonial compendia and “cultural encyclopedias”
- Dreams and the sacred thresholds of P’urhépecha power in the Relación de Michoacán 175
- Constructing a native heritage in New Spain? Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1577) as a “cultural encyclopedia” 209
- Order and organization of knowledge on the New World in José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) 323
- The problem solver: Colonial knowledge, authority, and the compilation of natural marvels in Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas y secretos (1591) 339
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III Writing history and depicting knowledge: Compendia and “cultural encyclopedias” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
- Mastering the chaos of cross-cultural encounter in Andrés Pérez de Ribas’s Historia de los triumphos de nuestra santa fee (1645) 363
- Jesuit historiography and the making of the Kingdom of Quito: Juan de Velasco’s Historia del Reino de Quito (1789) 399
- A mid-nineteenth-century ethnographic atlas of the Tibetan world: The British Library’s Wise Collection 423
- Notes on the contributors 445
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface and acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Regionally specified knowledge compendia between encyclopedia and chorography 1
-
I Universal history, encyclopedia, and chorography: Early modern practices and forms of knowledge compilation
- The local, the regional, and the universal in knowledge compilations: Observations on the Codex Aldenburgensis 41
- Encyclopedia and dictionaries in premodern and early modern Japan: Chinese heritage and the local reordering of knowledge 95
- Imago et descriptio: Narrating Sicily in the modern period 147
-
II Creating and organizing New Spanish knowledge: Early colonial compendia and “cultural encyclopedias”
- Dreams and the sacred thresholds of P’urhépecha power in the Relación de Michoacán 175
- Constructing a native heritage in New Spain? Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1577) as a “cultural encyclopedia” 209
- Order and organization of knowledge on the New World in José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) 323
- The problem solver: Colonial knowledge, authority, and the compilation of natural marvels in Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas y secretos (1591) 339
-
III Writing history and depicting knowledge: Compendia and “cultural encyclopedias” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
- Mastering the chaos of cross-cultural encounter in Andrés Pérez de Ribas’s Historia de los triumphos de nuestra santa fee (1645) 363
- Jesuit historiography and the making of the Kingdom of Quito: Juan de Velasco’s Historia del Reino de Quito (1789) 399
- A mid-nineteenth-century ethnographic atlas of the Tibetan world: The British Library’s Wise Collection 423
- Notes on the contributors 445
