The Fabric of the Skies: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora and the Academia Mexicana
This case study discusses the role of the chair of mathematics and the status of celestial knowledge in the Real Universidad de México in late-seventeenth-century New Spain through the analysis of a chronicle of Marian festivities. Triumpho Parthenico (Mexico, 1683) was penned by Carlos de Sigüenza...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Museo Galileo
2023-04-01
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| Series: | Galilæana |
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| Online Access: | https://gal-studies.museogalileo.it/index.php/galilaeana/article/view/5 |
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| Summary: | This case study discusses the role of the chair of mathematics and the status of celestial knowledge in the Real Universidad de México in late-seventeenth-century New Spain through the analysis of a chronicle of Marian festivities. Triumpho Parthenico (Mexico, 1683) was penned by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (1645-1700), during his professorship in mathematics at the Mexican university. This Mexican-born author, known to Latin American scholars as a baroque polymath and prominent actor in the development of criollo identity, has been historically considered a defender of mathematical reasoning and a representative of a shift to modernity in New Spain. This essay argues that Sigüenza and his contemporaries’ understanding of celestial knowledge and science is not merely instrumental to local political struggles, but that it should be contextualized within the political, epistemic, and confessional discussions about the origin, mediation and purpose of knowledge in early modern Mexico.
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| ISSN: | 1825-3903 |