Translatio and Doctrina: Natural Science and the Indies of the West

FAIN: FT-291537-23

Jaime Marroquin
Western Oregon University (Monmouth, OR 97361-1329)

Archival research for a book on how Indigenous knowledge about the natural world informed the development of scientific knowledge in colonial New Spain.  

This project is a longue durée history of the colonial translations of Mesoamerican naturalist knowledges. Through a structural analysis of the translative processes that informed the writing of colonial Mexico’s most emblematic natural histories, the book analyses the often-veiled contributions of Amerindian knowledges to early modern natural sciences.