The circulation of scientific knowledge: the relationship between scholars and printers (New Spain, eighteenth century)

Resumen

The representation generated within a specific historical context— religious or cultural—promotes and inhibits certain cognitive developments. In this we follow constructivist epistemology, who studies history as a laboratory of knowledge. Hence the interest to locate, contextualize and compare cognitive processes in different eras and cultures. The historical narrative should explain the spatial and temporal distribution of knowledge, for example, between New Spain, the metropolis and the Europe of the eighteenth century. Here it is investigated how the scientific information was obtained, managed and used by the readers and writers, appealing to their material means of communication.

Key words. Circulation, knowledge, symbolic representations, cognitive developments, New Spain, eighteenth century, scholars, printers.