The Gentleman, the Virtuoso, the Inquirer - Cambridge Scholars ...

CHAPTER TWO
THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SPANISH
SCIENTIFIC CULTURE: SPAIN, AMERICA,
AND THE STUDY OF NATURE 1
ANTONIO BARRERA
This paper compares the work of Don Juan de Vicencio Lastanosa (1607-
1684) and Alvaro Alonso Barba (ca. 1569-1662). Lastanosa was a
landowner-collector, who lived in Huesca, Aragon; Barba was a priestminer
who lived near Potosí, Perú. They, in other words, lived in two
distant regions of the Spanish empire. I wonder about these two people,
did they share a common culture as a result of belonging to the same
empire? Why a man in Huesca decided to make a collection of natural and
man-made objects, and, eventually create a museum at his house? Why
and how did he find those objects? Why a man in Potosí decided to gather
information about mining activities and write one of the most important
books on mining technology at the time? 2 Did they, both, share a similar
culture of collecting, and similar practices for understanding and studying
nature? Putting together Lastanosa and Barba is an arbitrary decision.
There are very few links between them: they belonged to the same empire
and their lives overlapped for some years; Lastanosa had a copy of Barba’s
book in his library; both collected curiosities; both published books in the
1640s. 3
This paper compares Lastanosa and Barba and argues that the Spanish
empire promoted, at least two alternative ways of understanding and
studying the nature world. One of these ways is connected with scholars
and humanists who were devoted to collecting curiosities, antiques, natural
and artificial objects, and books as a way to bring closer to home the
nobility of the first things. These scholars produced knowledge based on