Enlightened lives

Enlightened lives

—Women and commoners in the democratisation of science.—   Between 1797 and 1803, the daily press occasionally published news about the scientific events organised in the Coliseo de los Caños del Peral in Madrid, the Coliseo de Comedias in Valencia or...
Science in the public sphere

Science in the public sphere

—Spaces, figures and strategies at the service of the promotion and social approval of the sciences.—   Situating Chemistry is an online collaborative project whose main objective is to locate the spaces where chemistry has been carried out throughout history. It...
What is Enlightenment?

What is Enlightenment?

—Accounts, myths and superstitions about the Enlightenment and its relationship with the sciences.—   In 1783, a parish priest in Berlin, Johann Friedrich Zöllner, asked a question in a magazine: ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’ (What is Enlightenment?) The most...
Europe looks to others

Europe looks to others

—As colonial interests propelled new military exploration and conquests, the Eurocentric view of the world had to confront cultures which until then it knew little or nothing about.—   To finish laying the foundations for a panoramic, critical and...
Breaking the barrier of the invisible

Breaking the barrier of the invisible

—Telescopes and microscopes, instruments resulting from the knowledge and expertise of glass artisans, were a great contribution to the development of the new experimental philosophy of the seventeenth century.—   From the end of the fifteenth century...
Rodrigo Zamorano, cosmographer

Rodrigo Zamorano, cosmographer

—’Going round the world’ crossing the oceans was an extraordinary achievement, the result of a specific combination of knowledge and techniques involving the figure of the cosmographer.—   Being a cosmographer in the Renaissance meant mastering...
The court, a space for science

The court, a space for science

—The courts of kings, viceroys, cardinals and aristocrats became, for several centuries, a privileged space for the production and circulation of scientific knowledge and experimental practices.—   The court may be considered one of the most complex...
Knowledge of a globalised world

Knowledge of a globalised world

—The first globalisation began with the creation of the Iberian colonial empires: forced intercultural contact that led to hybrid knowledge about nature.—   The geographical space conveyed by classical Greco-Roman geography had its centre in the...
Knowledge in circulation: letters, books and journals

Knowledge in circulation: letters, books and journals

—Books, letters and the first scientific journals were the material media for the circulation of knowledge among the European and colonial elite participating in the Republic of Letters.—   Although not immediately and, of course, without replacing or...
Opening cadavers, a unique experiment

Opening cadavers, a unique experiment

—Born at the end of the thirteenth century, anatomical dissection went from being a sporadic rarity to a widespread experimental practice in Western scientific culture.—   The opening of a cadaver with the aim of searching inside it to learn the...