‘For the Sciences Migrate, - Recherche en IA spécialisée au MIT

‘For the Sciences Migrate,
Just Like People’:
The Case of Botanical
Knowledge in the Early
Modern Iberian Empires

Ran Segev
Universität Hamburg

In his writings, Francis Bacon emphasized the interrelatedness between the
migration of people and knowledge, arguing that Europeans of his time
had surpassed the greatest civilizations because of their ability to traverse
the world freely. Concentrating on Spanish observers who investigated New
Spain’s ﬂora, this article bridges theory and practice by examining the Iberian
roots of Bacon’s views. The article examines scientiﬁc approaches for acquiring
bioknowledge by Iberians who specialized in European medicine, y compris
Francisco Hernández, Juan de Cárdenas and Francisco Ximénez. While
the article recognizes the contribution of travellers and expatriates to Spain’s
bioprospecting project, it also points to the ways in which the limitations of the
transfer of botanical information was acknowledged and discusses its mean-
ing. By presenting the complexities in the communication of knowledge, je
argue, naturalists in the colonies could highlight their unique vantage point
in relation to “armchair” specialists in the metropole.

The English natural philosopher and statesman Sir Francis Bacon (1561–
1626) belonged to a generation that experienced ﬁrst-hand the opportuni-
ties that resulted from the rise of European empires. In his De augmentis
scientiarum, Bacon commented that “sciences migrate, just like peoples”
(Bacon [1623] 1635, p. 91). The Iberian expansion into the Atlantic
and the Paciﬁc, in particular, served as the impetus for the Lord Chancellor
to urge the English court to follow a similar imperial course with the
intention of reconstituting a New Science (Marroquín Arredondo and
Bauer 2019, p. 4; see also Findlen 2018, pp. 1–4; Cañizares-Esguerra

Perspectives on Science 2022, vol. 30, Non. 4
© 2022 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00409

732

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2004; Gaukroger 2004, p. 117). This seemingly simple contention by one
of the most prominent champions of early modern science provides a start-
ing point to connect geopolitical and demographic developments at the
beginning of European colonialism with epistemological transformations
that founded modern science.1

The beginning of the modern era was characterized by massive and
unprecedent migration across the four quarters of the world. Among these
waves of people in movement were the many refugees who sought asylum
following religious wars and political strife that tore the European conti-
nent apart (Terpstra 2015). En plus, the colonial expansion of Europe,
for its part, connected the continent to Asia, Africa and America, consol-
idating a global economy that increased the movement of people and
brought about, what Serge Gruzinski has described, “the ﬁrst stage of
globalization” (Gruzinski 2004). The socio-demographic changes that
followed this process had undoubtedly negative impacts, even catastrophic
ones, for many indigenous communities. Encore, these developments were
fruitful for Western scientiﬁc activities, and especially for botanical and
pharmacological exchange which developed mainly as a result of commer-
cial interests and the desire to ﬁnd new sources of revenues for European
states (Cook 2007; Schiebinger and Swan 2004; On Habsburg Spain’s
vision for imperial knowledge: Brendecke 2016; Pimentel 2000). Admin-
istrators, merchants, missionaries, soldiers, explorers, and emigrants, avec
the collaboration of indigenous populations and other ethnic groups (pour
instance, enslaved Africans),2 forged new, long-distance knowledge net-
works that “became a deﬁning feature of the early modern world” (Findlen
2018, p. 4).

In this context, historians have devoted considerable attention to the
processes of circulation and cultural translation of knowledge, seeing, surtout-
cially in the natural sciences, a dynamic “form of communication” (Secord
2004). This paradigm privileges the social environment that supported the
transmission of ideas and objects and highlights the information-gathering
techniques that brought about “knowledge in transit.” Experience outside
of one’s native country became a salient feature that frequently accounted
for the move and exchange of knowledge. Par exemple, the historian of
science, Peter Burke, in a sense corroborated Francis Bacon’s aphorism
by elaborating on the connection between the displacement of knowledge
et les gens. Focusing on the “disproportionate contribution” of exiles and

1. On European colonialism and the vision of scientiﬁc progress as two ideologies that
developed in parallel and in conjunction during the sixteenth-century, see Burns 2016,
p. 42; Maravall 1966.

2. On botanical knowledge and the institute of slavery: Gómez 2018; Carney 2004.

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Botanical Knowledge in Early Modern Iberian Empires

expatriates to modern science, Burke viewed the experience of displace-
ment as “a tough form of education” that supported the scientiﬁc program
in the West. Expatriates, he explains, spread ideas between their original
homeland and hostland, often by creating innovative hybrid studies which
were marked by a detached approach and a more objective perspective of
“the stranger” (Burke 2017, pp. 8, 12, 17, 22–31). This positive conse-
quence of an alien gaze is true not only for exiles, but is also one that most
distinctively affected colonial observers of nature.

The scholarly attention to the ﬁeld of natural history, including the his-
tories of ethnobotany, pharmacological and medical exchange plays no
small part in the historiographical reorientation toward the migration of
connaissance. The utility of the transfer of botanical knowledge for empire
building became a prominent topic that sheds light on the interactions of
régional, mondial, and commercial networks that supported the circulation
of information and specimen (par exemple, Schiebinger 2004; Drayton
2000). En particulier, historians of the Iberian expansion have examined
the intrinsic links between imperial endeavors, commerce and empiricism
that matured by colonial bioprospecting in Asia and the Americas (Županov
and Barreto Xavier 2014; Walker 2009; de Vos 2006; Bleichmar 2004;
Barrera-Osorio 2001). These studies provided a complex understanding
of science that emphasized both the utilitarian approach that emerged
due to the desire to exploit natural resources and to the adaptations of
bioknowledge for use in particular geo-cultural contexts in the Atlantic
and the Paciﬁc. The ﬁeld of early modern botany thus became a prism
through which colonial encounters are viewed as well as a mirror of the
developments in the Iberian monarchies’ epistemic culture. The focus on
the production of knowledge in the colonies has further helped to reveal
the agency of local interlocutors who took part in the exchange of bio-
knowledge and botanical specimens. As Susan Parrish has asserted colo-
nial subjects “were not mere collectors for the knowledge makers of the
metropole” (Parrish 2006, p. 4).

In this context, this article revisits the topic of the mobility of bioknowledge
in the age of modern science, roughly from the end of sixteenth century
to the ﬁrst decades of the seventeenth century (not incidentally, a period
that coincided with the life of Bacon himself ). Focusing on Iberian
expatriates and travellers who specialized, formally and informally, dans
European medicine, including Francisco Hernández, Juan de Cárdenas,
and Francisco Ximénez, my intention is to study Iberian scientiﬁc atti-
tudes towards acquiring bioknowledge, and through this, bridge theory
and practice regarding the mobility of knowledge in Bacon’s times. Stud-
ies about these medical practitioners and more broadly about the botanical
and medicinal activities in the viceroyalty of New Spain have been central

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Perspectives on Science

735

to the integration of Iberian and Amerindians scientiﬁc attitudes and sys-
tems of knowledge into the revised and globally-conscious narrative of
modern science (Par exemple, Fresquet Febrer and López Piñero 1995;
for the geographical reorientation of modern science, voir: Brûlures 2016;
Raj 2007). Nevertheless, this article aims to go further than reiterating
the role of travelers in the making of natural knowledge (on eyewitness
and reliability in the knowledge produced by travelers: Pimentel 2003,
pp. 25–109; see also Hayden 2016), or by stressing the links between
Bacon’s ideas and earlier, Iberian global explorations (see Marroquín
Arredondo and Bauer 2019, pp. 3–5). Studying discursive strategies of
naturalists in the colonies, je discute, also allows us to nuance Baconian (read:
metropole) views on the incremental accumulation of information by
examining the multiple perceptions of movement of knowledge in early
science. This shows not only knowledge migration as a multi-vectored
processus, but also highlights the limitations of the transfer of information.
Contrasting distinct views of early science will point to instances in which
the possibility of transferring bioknowledge was questioned by overseas
observers and the limitations of the imperial bioprospecting project were
acknowledged. I will begin the article by presenting Bacon’s ideas on the
circulation of knowledge, stressing the impact of Iberian monarchies’ expe-
rience on his writings. Alors, I will re-examine the concept of the transfer
of knowledge, arguing that by claiming that not all knowledge was indeed
movable, colonial observers protected their special position in relation to
those of “armchair” specialists in the metropole.

1. Chamber of Knowledge and Merchants of Light
The famous frontispiece of Bacon’s Instauratio Magna (1620) offers a cap-
tivating visualization for the migration of science in the so-called Age of
Découverte (voir la figure 1). The image depicts a ship crossing through “the
pillars of Hercules” (Gibraltar) that separates the Mediterranean Sea from
the Atlantic Ocean. The straits, which were perceived in past eras as phys-
ical obstacles for pilots and a metaphorical barrier to knowledge of the
wider world, was represented in Bacon’s time as a gate through which
ships would embark and return from the open seas, bringing new ideas
and objects to Europe. Below the painting, a revealing inscription from
the Book of Daniel 12:4—“Multi pertransibunt et augebitur Scientia” [“Many
will pass through, and knowledge shall be increased”]—connects contem-
porary European expansion with biblical prophecy about the coming of a
new era. The image and the epigraph together suggest the meaning of
knowledge migration for Bacon and the European metropole at the dawn
of modernity by associating scientiﬁc progress with maritime voyages and
geographical expeditions, particularly in recently discovered America (voir

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Botanical Knowledge in Early Modern Iberian Empires

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Chiffre 1. Title page to Francis Bacon, Instauratio Magna (Londres, 1620).

Perspectives on Science

737

Grafton and Siraisi 1992, pp. 197–208). Whereas Bacon generally viewed
knowledge as a practical tool for improving human existence ( Vickers
1992; Pérez-Ramos 1988), he additionally recognized that new scientiﬁc
discoveries entailed a religious, redemptive component for postlapsarian
humanity (see Scalercio 2018, p. 80): a path for salvation in the spirit of
the prophet Daniel whose words he quoted.3

For Bacon, the movement of people and the migration of knowledge
were complementary and interrelated historical processes: Many will
travel, and knowledge shall be increased. Bacon also used this quote from
Daniel in his other writings in order to convey the idea that contemporary
Europeans surpassed the knowledge held by the greatest classic civiliza-
tion, namely Greece and Rome, precisely because of the ability in his time
to traverse the world freely.4 The movement of people, Bacon reckoned,
perhaps with excessive optimism (and naivety), would safeguard the prog-
ress of science (scientia) for the beneﬁt of all of humankind—not just for the
select group of “travellers.” Without the ﬂow of people, science would be
stopped and with it, human progress.

Bacon further provided a blueprint on how to support the advancement
of science by persistently carrying out and supporting the movement of
people. In his posthumously published utopian work, Nova Atlantis, Bacon
described how human societies should be organized and governed in a way
that served science (For a discussion on these ideas and their impact on the
British Empire: Irving 2008, pp. 1–46). The well-known ﬁctional story
tells about a group of English travellers who lost their way at sea and
reached an imaginary kingdom on an island, Bensalem, where scientists
receive utmost honor and the chief purpose of the state was to support sci-
ence. The “lanthorn of this kingdom” is Salomon’s House, a semi-academic
institution in which scientiﬁc experiments and observations are conducted
in multiple scholarly ﬁelds with the intention of “enlarging of the bounds of

3. The purpose of the study of nature was then to reinstate human’s dominium on the
created world that was impaired as a consequence of Adam’s Fall. Francis Bacon, Valerius
Terminus: Works iii.222; see discussion on Bacon’s concept of sacred history: Matthieu
2008, pp. 51–8 and 90–8.

Par exemple, Bacon stated: “This proﬁcience in navigation and discoveries may
plant also an expectation of the further proﬁcience and augmentation of all sciences; because
it may seem that they are ordained by God to be coevals, c'est, to meet in one age. For so
the prophet Daniel speaking of the latter times foretelleth [‘Many shall go to and fro on the
earth, and knowledge shall be increased,'] :as if the openness and through-passage of the
world and the increase of knowledge were appointed to be in the same ages” (Bacon [1605]
1974, p. 78; see also Francis Bacon’s New Organon. Bacon [1620] 2000, p. 78. On the
contribution of travels to expand the “narrow limits of the ancients” Bacon [1620]
2000, p. 69).

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Botanical Knowledge in Early Modern Iberian Empires

Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.”5 While the inhab-
itants of the isolated island keep their distance from the outside world, le
“fellows” at Salomon’s House continuously gather reports, instruments and
specimens from around the world by special crews that are sent overseas on
secretive “spying” missions. These “Merchants of light,” as Bacon named
these travellers, collect “books, and abstracts, and patterns of experiments”
(Bacon “New Atlantis” (1627) in Bruce 1999, p. 183) from foreign coun-
tries that are later deposited in Salomon’s House, which functions as a state
of the art archive of natural history and all human scientiﬁc accomplish-
ments.6 Importantly, as Stephen Gaukroger has clariﬁed, Bacon did not envis-
age public and universal access to the accumulated knowledge (c'est à dire., on the part
of all the kingdom’s subjects), but rather, he imagined this operation as a func-
tion that served the sovereign (the king of England) (Gaukroger 2004, p. 9).7
Nova Atlantis was a ﬁctional story, yet the way of collecting information
and natural objects was not totally imaginary and was at least partially
based on a reality that had developed following the sixteenth-century
Iberian maritime expeditions (Barrera-Osorio 2006a, p. 11; Cañizares-
Esguerra 2004, pp. 86–92). En particulier, two critical elements in Bensa-
lem’s handling of data had a Spanish precedent, namely, ﬁrst, the use of a
centralized unit to accumulate massive amounts of information and, sec-
ond, the recruitment of mobile agents for this purpose. The similarities are
hardly surprising given that Bacon speciﬁcally addressed the Iberian
expansion to the West and East Indies in his writings. The conquests of
Spain are mentioned in Nova Atlantis when a ship that had embarked from
Peru supposedly arrived at the island. En plus, the residents of Ben-
salem spoke Spanish, the lingua franca which allowed them to obtain
reports from afar. Spanish inﬂuence on Bacon can be seen also in the

5. Bacon described that Salomon’s House was perceived by the islanders: “the noblest
foundation (as we think) that ever was upon the earth; and the lanthorn of this kingdom”
(Francis Bacon, “New Atlantis (1627)” in Bruce 1999, pp. 167, 177).

6. Bacon saw a special connection of King Solomon to botany since the king, in his
words, “was a man so seen in the universality of nature that he wrote an herbal of all that
was green upon the earth” (Bacon quoted in Gaukroger 2004, p. 73). Bacon’s idea of taking
advantage of passengers in foreign countries for gathering information under the aegis of a
research institute was adopted by the Royal Society of London (est. 1660), which like
Salomon’s House was informed about the world by collaborating with informants.
Gascoigne 2009, pp. 539–62.

7. Bacon understood the collection of reliable data by the state as an essential element in
the reform of natural philosophy: The King should take “steps to ensure that a Natural and
Experimental History be built up and completed: the true, strict history (without philological
questions) which is the path to the foundation of philosophy […] So that at last, after so many
ages of the world, philosophy and the sciences may no longer ﬂoat in the air, but rest upon the
solid foundations of every kind of experience […]” Bacon [1620] 2000, pp. 4–5.

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Perspectives on Science

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frontispiece of Instauratio Magna that was printed in 1606 in Regimiento de
Navegación by the Spanish Royal cosmographer Andrés García de Cespedés
(1560–1611), as Juan Pimentel reminds us (Pimentel 2000, pp. 23–4). Dans
short, Francis Bacon’s scientiﬁc theories (and fantasies) articulated experi-
ential methods that had been develop in previous generations, primarily
across the Atlantic, as the Spanish administration devised innovative,
long-distance empirical methods to overcome the vast maritime distances
that separated Spain from its new possessions (Barrera-Osorio 2006a).

In this context, the activities at the House of Trade in Seville [Casa de la
Contratación de las Indias], which was established in 1503 to oversee the
movement of people and goods to and from America, demonstrates
information-gathering practices in the Spanish world. The Casa collected
and analyzed geographical reports as well as botanical and zoological spec-
imens, taking advantage of the movement of people to the region and back
for the utilitarian study of the Indies. Par exemple, throughout the six-
teenth century, the Casa gathered information on maritime navigation
routes by demanding returning ships report upon their voyages and dis-
coveries. The reports of longitude and latitude were copied onto a map of
sea routes, islands and coastal areas that was preserved in Seville—the
Padrón Real—and used as the basis for the creation and distribution of
nautical maps among Spanish seafarers (Sánchez 2013). The Spanish
administration supervised and regulated the ﬂow of cosmographic infor-
mation and functioned, inter alia, as a centralized “learning bureaucracy”
that standardized knowledge (see Portuondo 2009). Such activities were
characterized by “collective empiricism” (on this term, see Daston and
Galison 2007, pp. 19–27) whose purpose was to accumulate the (partial)
experience of individuals in order to piece together a broader geographical
perspective. The project’s success depended, not only upon the existence of
a centralized bureaucracy, but also upon the movement of skilled people
(in the aforementioned example, pilots) who received appropriate training.
Spain’s experience paved the way for other European nations, who used
similar scientiﬁc tools and programs to study colonial territories (Barrera-
Osorio 2006b; Carey 2009). Antonio Barrera-Osorio and other historians
have pointed to the similarity between the various empirical activities (et
the secrecy) at the Casa and those that took place at Francis Bacon’s imag-
inary Salomon’s House.8 Indeed, similar measures were later taken by the

“The Casa evolved through its activities into a veritable chamber of knowledge […]
The activities and programs of this chamber of knowledge pre-dated Francis Bacon’s depic-
tion of ‘Solomon’s House’, as well as the knowledge gathering activities of such scientiﬁc
institutions as the Royal Society of London” (Barrera-Osorio 2010, p. 134; on the secrecy of
the Spanish cosmographic program: Portuondo 2009, pp. 6–7).

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740

Botanical Knowledge in Early Modern Iberian Empires

Royal Society of London that, like Spain’s colonial administration, realized
the importance of individual reports in compiling a large database on for-
eign lands (Gascoigne 2009).

2. Botany on the Move
From early on, the Spanish Crown recognized the potential of expatriates
and travellers for valuable information on distant lands and issued decrees
that aimed to take advantage of the mobility of people. The royal orders
instructed in detail what kind of information was expected from the
reports, including geographical and biological information that was neces-
sary for governance and trade.9 Moreover, the Spanish crown directly
promoted and encouraged mobility, including by ﬁnancing the costs of
overseas research. A famous example of state-funded study was the expe-
dition of Dr. Francisco Hernández (ca. 1515–1587), the chief medical ofﬁ-
cer ( protomédico general de todas las Indias) in the court of King Philip II and
a well-known physician who was sent from Spain to Mexico in the 1570s
to study American nature.

Realizing the commercial and medicinal potential of plants in the
Spanish American possessions, the royal instructions explicitly requested
Hernández, whenever possible, to “experience and test at ﬁrst hand” the
plants’ practical use.10 His instructions also reveal that the Crown was
informed that the quantities of known valuable plants is higher in Mexico
than any other part of the Indies, and as such assigned Hernández primar-
ily “to gather information generally about the herbs, trees and medical
plants” in that land.11 Like the “merchants of light” in Bacon’s New Atlantis
who brought to their island new empirical ﬁndings, Hernández’s expedition
expanded the botanical and zoological horizons of his days (Hernandez
1960; López Pinero 2007, pp. 115–30). After years of systematic ﬁeld
work in Mexico, Hernández returned to Spain (in May 1577) avec le
knowledge of over 3000 new plants and hundreds of species of birds
and animals, which he described in detail in his manuscripts that were
distributed across Europe (see López Piñero and Pardo Tomás 2000).

“Ordenanzas para la formación del libro de las descripciones de Indias,” San Lorenzo de El
Escorial, 3 Julio 1573. Pp. 16–74 in Cuestionarios para la formación de las relaciones geográﬁcas
de Indias, siglos XVI–XIX, edited by Francisco de Solano, Madrid: CSIC, 1988. On the
importance of the royal decree: Barrera-Osorio 2006b, pp. 47–8; Alvarez Peláez 1993,
pp. 170–215.

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10. The Royal instructions to Francisco Hernández, Janvier 11. 1570. (Diego de

Encinas 1945, vol. 1, pp. 224–25).

11. The Royal instructions to Francisco Hernández, pp. 224–25.

Perspectives on Science

741

The descriptions were supplemented by botanical specimens and addi-
tional paintings by artists who assisted Hernández in visualizing the unfa-
miliar nature for distant readers.

Facing the challenge of deﬁning plants that had not yet been docu-
mented in existing literature, Hernández described his working method,
which was also explained in the Royal appointment letter (unfortunately
another essay in which he expanded upon the means to identify plants is
lost) (Varey 2000, p. 52). The Spanish protomédico recognized that the expe-
rience of indigenous physicians with local plants was far greater than that
of European immigrants, and therefore admitted that he preferred to learn
directly from the natives about the properties of the plants, the climate and
environmental conditions in which they grew, and their recognized med-
ical use. His attitude stands in contrast with European botanists who
tended to disregard and belittle the importance of the native informants
in their writings (Pardo Tomás 2007, pp. 175–6, 181–2, 191–3). Unlike
stories on the lack of cooperation among the Amerindians that were circu-
lating in Europe, Hernández claimed to have found much assistance
among them.12 He employed a large number of native assistants including
Indian doctors [ticitl], pintores, intérpretes, herbolarios, and urged the king to
pay the Indians who brought him plants and reports from the different
geographic and climatic regions of the viceroyalty.13 While Hernández
criticized what he considered to be the lack of theory in native medicinal
pratiques,14 he not only collected relaciones, herbs and seeds15 from Indian
doctors, he also incorporated Nahuatl classiﬁcations into his report
(Bustamante García 1997).

12. Regarding the natives’ lack of cooperation, consider the testimony of the soldier,
Pedro de Osma y de Xara y Zejo, attached to Nicolas Monardes’ Historia Medicina. Osma
stated that Indians, being “our enemy,” “would not disclose a secret [of plants] nor a prop-
erty of an herb” even as “they saw us dying” (Monardes 1580, Fol. 62v; see also Monardes
1580, 58r. Compare with Viesca Triviño 1995).

Francisco Hernández’s Letter to Phillip II, after returning to Spain in 1577

13.

(Toribio Medina 1968, vol. 2, p. 291).

14. Hernández viewed the Indian doctors (Titici) as “mere empiricists” [Son meros
empíricos] who prescribed traditional medicine without proper understanding on how they
functioned: “Estos ni estudian la naturaleza de las enfermedades y sus diferencias, ni con-
ocida la razón de la enfermedad, de la causa o del accidente, acostumbran recetar medica-
mentos, ni siguen ningún método en las enfermedades que han de curar. […].» (Francisco
Hernández, Antigüedades de la Nueva España edición de Ascensión H. de León Portilla,
Madrid: Historia 16, 1986, p. 110).

15. On the collection of relaciones: letter by Francisco Hernández to Phillip II, dated
Décembre 1, 1574 (Toribio Medina 1968, vol. 2, p. 298). On the signiﬁcance of the relación
to Hernández’s investigation: Marroquin Arredondo (2019).

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As a trained doctor, Hernández understood the responsibility that
rested upon his shoulders when he described species that were not found
in the canonical botanical literature, including Pliny’s Naturalis Historia
which he himself translated for the ﬁrst complete Spanish edition.16 In
addition to the priority Hernández gave to indigenous botanical knowl-
bord, he also devised critical procedures for the veriﬁcation of data, inclure-
ing testing specimens in different seasons and circumstances. Hernández
describes the steps he took in order to avoid making a mistake in identi-
fying the plants:

I have relied both on the evidence of other curious persons and of the
doctors of this land and my own experiences, beyond what can be
deduced using the rules of medicine. In all this, great care has been
taken that no plant is painted unless I have seen it ten or more times
in different seasons, smelled and tasted all its parts and asked more
than twenty Indians doctors, each one individually, and considered
how they agree and differ, and unless I have subjected it to the
rigorous methods of identiﬁcation and examination that I developed
here for this project.17

As much as the passage contains the information that Hernández could
provide Europeans about the local plants, it is also saturated with data
that could not cross oceans. Hernández’s method demonstrates his strong
preference for sensory experience in the identification process: touching,
seeing, smelling, and even tasting the plant and its fruits in situ.
Seasonal smells and tastes are naturally bound to time and space and
cannot easily be reproduced in a different ecological environment. Above
tous, Hernández admits he did not settle for studying the physicality of
things (c'est à dire., their properties) but rather sought to explore the sensations
they provoked. As with Franck Jackson’s thought-experiment on Mary’s
room (c'est à dire., the brilliant scientist who knows everything about the science
of color, but has never experienced color in her black-and-white world),
it seems that Hernández recognized (or at least, claimed so) that in his
own “lab” sensations provided additional information to the study of
physical properties ( Jackson 2004). Complete knowledge had to be
acquired in-person and in-situ, through personal experience; thus, not all
knowledge gained in the peripheries did or could make its way back to the

16. Before embarking to Mexico, Hernández began translating Pliny’s Natural History,
adding annotations based on his experience. “Francisco Hernández’s Letter to Phillip II”
(Toribio Medina 1968, vol. 2, p. 292; see also Bustamante García 2013, pp. 25–37, 30).

17. Hernández quoted in Varey 2000, p. 52.

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metropole.18 Experiencing the plants in their native environment was not a
possibility, cependant, for the foremost expert on New World plants, le
Sevillian physician Nicolás Monardes (1493–1588), whose Historia medici-
nal was the most appreciated European source of New World materia medica
in the late sixteenth century (see Bleichmar 2004). Monardes’ decades of
therapeutic experience and empirical evidence certainly helped to form
the basis of his Historia medicinal (Pardo Tomás 2007, pp. 178–179). Encore,
Monardes had never crossed the Atlantic, and despite his engagement with
colonial botany and his long-term inﬂuence on the ﬁeld (mainly through
his translations by Clusius and others), his ability to repeat the same tests
and to sense the plants were quite limited.

The work of naturalist-travellers like Hernández, and its long-term
effect on the so-called mestizaje cultural in New Spain’s medicine, can be
compared to that of another famous Iberian physician, Garcia de Orta
(ca. 1500–1568), whose experience outside of his native country helped
him to integrate Far East medical knowledge into European conscious-
ness.19 In the backdrop of discovery expeditions in Asia and the continual
persecution of Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, de Orta’s life and book, Coló-
quios dos simples e drogas e coisas medicinais da India [Colloquies on the Simples
and Drugs of India] (1563), reﬂect the connections between knowledge and
people movements. De Orta, was a member of an exiled Sephardic Jewish
family who had settled in Portugal, who returned to Spain to study med-
icine at the important universities of Salamanca and Alcalá (c. 1515–
1525). After several years of teaching in Portugal, he moved in 1534 à
Goa, the centre of the Portuguese Empire in India. In subsequent years, de
Orta travelled and surveyed the west coast of India from Gujarat to Ceylon,
before returning to Goa in 1538 where he practiced medicine for high-
ranking clients until his death in 1568 (Fontes da Costa 2012; on de Orta’s
work in the context of converted Iberian Jews see Arrizabalaga 2015). De
Orta’s journeys on the Indian subcontinent and his position as a prominent
physician in Portuguese India allowed him to gather a wealth of informa-
tion on the Eastern materia medica (Pimentel and Soler 2014). Like

18.

En fait, in one of Hernández’ last letters, he pleaded with the king to support the
speedy publication of his work, stating that if this were not done, due to Hernández’ age
and the pestilence that wiped out many of his Indian informers, the beneﬁcial data would
be lost. In his view, the loss would be irreversible. “Ni seria posible restaurar esta pérdida aun-
que fuese en muchos años, por haberse muerto en esta pestilencia última gran cuantidad de médicos y
pinctores [sic] indios que dello han dado y pudieran dar razón.” Letter to Phillip II after FH
returned to Seville in 1577 (Toribio Medina 1968, vol. 2, p. 292).

19. The term mestizaje cultural is borrowed from Fresquet Febrer and López Piñero
(1995). Garcia de Orta’s Colóquios ([1563] 1987) was reprinted and translated into many
languages shortly after its publication. It was also the ﬁrst scientiﬁc book to be published in
India by a European subject (Pimentel and Soler 2014, p. 109).

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Hernández, in the places that de Orta visited, he exchanged ideas and
information with physicians, scholars, merchants, and ofﬁcials, either
Europeans or natives, who provided him with vital details on the proper-
ties and use of herbs, medicines and spices including cinnamon, cloves,
nutmeg, mangosteen and others.20 This information was presented in
the Colóquios in the form of an imaginary dialogue in which de Orta him-
self explains the medical cultures of the East by applying them to academic
teachings in medicine (par exemple., the works of Pliny, Galen, Avicenna, etc.).

Similar to the way De Orta integrated bioknowledge of the East into the
European medicinal consciousness, on the other side of the globe, physicians
like Juan de Cárdenas, wrote about American nature by bridging new empir-
ical ﬁndings with academic teachings (López Pinero 2007, pp. 135–6).
Cárdenas, unlike Hernández’s and de Orta, did not aim to compile an exhaustive
medicinal survey of local ﬂora and fauna but sought, in his words, to “provide
a solution and cause” for the “secrets” of the New World (Cárdenas 1591, fol.
63r). Born around 1563 in a village near Seville, Cárdenas migrated to the
viceroyalty of New Spain while he was still young (environ 1577)
and studied medicine at the University of Mexico (he obtained a doctorate
dans 1590). At the young age of twenty-six, he wrote Problemas y secretos mara-
villosos de la Indias [Problems and Marvellous Secrets of the Indies] (1591), dans lequel
he employed Hippocratic-Galenic humeral principles to explain American
natural phenomena. Cárdenas attributed the peculiar characteristics of his
adopted home to the qualities of “heat and humidity that reigns in these
Indies” (Cárdenas 1591, fol. 6v; see also 7r. 63r). According to his explanation,
the close proximity to the equatorial sun had created the humoral conditions
that were responsible for the frequent earthquakes, volcanoes, wind patterns,
and even the qualities of the plants. From this perspective, he opposed “absurd
stories” that attributed “magical” powers to indigenous healing practices,
choosing, instead, to explain nutritional and other properties of local plants
and herbs by the humoralism of Hippocrates and Galen (On the importance
of humoralism in the Spanish world, and speciﬁcally to understandings of the
New World, voir: Earle 2012). In the case of herbs, he exclaimed, “we should
doubt, and likewise explain how herbs can work and operate naturally in our
bodies without the intervention of a pact with the devil or a miracle.”21

20. Harold J. Cook and Timothy Walker remind us that spices and medicine were

interchangeable concepts in Iberian languages (Cook and Walker 2013, p. 338).

21.

“Me pareció declarar, y dar a entender al vulgo, qué sea esto que comunmente
llaman todos hechizos, y enhechizar, o dar bocado, porque acerca desto, oygo dezir cada
día dos mil quentos, y otras tantas historias patrañas […] lo mucho que acerca de todo esto
ay qué dudar, y assí mesmo dar a entender, lo que las yervas pueden hazer, y obrar en nues-
tros cuerpos naturalmente, sin intervenir pacto con el demonio, o por ventura negocio de
milagro […].” Cárdenas 1591, Fol. 234r–235r.

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Cárdenas emphasized that nature operated within a framework of
universally-applicable natural laws that could be discovered by joining aca-
demic theory and empirical facts through experience and reason (“experiencia
y razón”). Written after another traveller-author, Gonzalo Fernández de
Oviedo (1478–1557), gave eyewitness accounts a privileged place, Cárdenas,
aussi, stressed his special position as an “expatriate” who could provide
“inside” information to Europeans about the fourth part of the earth
(On Oviedo’s rhetorical strategies: Myers 2007, pp. 1–5, 63–81). While
Cárdenas did acknowledge that the quality of his education in Mexico was
not comparable to that available in Europe,22 he insisted that being present
in the colony offered him a unique and advantageous perspective to see and
experience things directly. This rhetorical self-representation was particu-
larly important to the young physician who had to build his authority in
relation to well-reputed European physicians like Monardes. In this uneven
competition, Cárdenas compensated for his young age and lack of a suppos-
edly highly esteemed diploma from a prominent European academic insti-
tution (par exemple, the prestigious university of Alcalá de Henares from
which Monardes graduated) with something that he believed was, dans le
end, far more valuable: personal experience in the ﬁeld.

This can be seen in the way Cárdenas described the plants of the West
Indies, especially corn which he considered to be the “most balanced and
moderate” plant (from the perspective of its qualities) in the botanical world.
Corn, Cárdenas emphasized, was neither hot nor cold, neither dry nor
humid. He added that because of its qualities it could be used for a variety
of “complexions and illnesses.”23 Studying the plant in situ, Cárdenas
reported the many virtues of maize for the Amerindians: from the fact it
could grow in a variety of terrains and seasons to the fact that one could
use the entire plant. This position also allowed him to reveal his deep famil-
iarity with the natives’ way of life, as he meticulously explored the different
ways in which maize was prepared and used in Mexico. In one case, he offered
a lengthy description of the various recipes of atole, a corn-derived porridge
or drink. Using Nahuatl names and recipes, he differentiated between the
“eight to ten most common” versions of atole (including mixed with chili,
agave, fermented, and more), specifying for each the cooking technique and
its digestive and nutritional advantages. Cárdenas argued that since atole was
such a balanced food, the additives were what affected its humeral outcome,
thus making it compatible to all complexions and “appropriate for every

22. Cárdenas even apologized in his text that he lacked the “erudition, polish and
ornament” because of “the lack of teachers that I have had in the Indies” (“la falta que
en Indias he tenido de maestros”). Cárdenas 1591, fol. 79r–80v.

23. Cárdenas 1591, fol. 142v–143r.

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malady.” For example, he tells of xocoatole, a sour atole that was fermented for
“two or three days” and that was according to the doctor “refreshing,
quenched one’s thirst, and beneﬁts all burning and great heat that one has
in the human body” (Cárdenas [1591] 1998, pp. 175, 178).

Cárdenas obviously did not aim to write a colonial cookbook. By dis-
cussing the cultural use of the corn, rather than merely exploring its bio-
logical properties, Cárdenas could show his position as a man between
worlds who could appropriate indigenous nutritional knowledge by pro-
viding it an additional European medicinal explanation. Unlike biological
information on Aristotelian properties, shapes and colors of the plants, le
information on speciﬁc sensations, such as “refreshing, quenched one’s
thirst” attest for a unique feeling that was not transferable to interpreters
of information in the metropole. This sensual information was not surplus
or redundant data as it had the capacity to explain the use and beneﬁts of
the corn-derived porridge by native peoples.

Notwithstanding their epistemic differences (as well as format of writ-
ing), the works of Iberian physicians such as de Orta in the East or Cárdenas
and Hernández in the West, made it possible to expand the boundaries of
European bioknowledge both by recognizing the importance of multigen-
erational botanical knowledge that had been accumulated among the local
communities and by adopting critical methodologies to analyse their ﬁnd-
ings. As with Burke’s insights on exiles’ scientiﬁc production, their distance
and perspective as strangers enabled these physicians to compile hybrid
works that were based on both European and indigenous knowledge.

Despite the historiographical focus on the Spanish administration’s
empirical program, it should be remembered that the agents of knowledge
were not solely the emissaries of the State. More than fulﬁlling evangelical
duties, the Catholic Mission also took a leading part in the production and
circulation of medicine and bioknowledge, as can be seen in the famous
discovery of antimalarial Cinchona bark from Peru that Jesuit priests
had introduced into European pharmacopoeia (Harris 1998, pp. 289–93;
for a discussion on Jesuit accomplishments in natural history see Millones
Figueroa and Ledezma 2005). The ability of missionaries to obtain valuable
information and botanical resources from far-ﬂung countries was an asset
to both the Spanish monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church, which also
underwent centralization processes during the Counter-Reformation
period. In many ways, missionaries matched the ideal of the “empirical
traveller.”24 They were mobile, erudite and literate and often excelled in

24. This notion is borrowed from Joan-Pau Rubiés who used it to describe the
sixteenth-century writers who produced and disseminated anthropological knowledge
(Rubiés 1993, pp. 161, 168).

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foreign languages and natural sciences. Beginning in the mid-sixteenth
siècle, royal decrees instructed members of religious orders and clergy
to send detailed reports of their whereabouts ( Jiménez de la Espada
1965, vol. 1, p. 50). Missionaries like the Carmelite Antonio Vásquez
de Espinosa provided detailed reports based upon his experience in Spanish
America to both the Spanish Crown and Rome. In his writings, Espinosa,
who left for America in 1608, included information on American ﬂora and
indigenous medicinal knowledge, including one of the ﬁrst descriptions of
quinine (Segev 2018; Espinosa 1992).

Thanks to religious orders’ intellectual infrastructure (including col-
jambes, hospitals), global networks and collaboration with local elites, mis-
sionaries took a leading role in Spain’s botanical activities. En fait, one of
the earliest and most impressive examples of botanical transfer in the Span-
ish Atlantic is related to the evangelical activities of a religious order—the
Franciscans at the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco, Mexico. The Colegio
was established by the Franciscans in the 1530s as part of a large complex
that included a monastery and library, in order to provide Christian
instruction to the young Nahua elite of the Valley of Mexico. Dans 1552
the Franciscans there prepared a unique book for the Spanish Crown that
explained the medicinal plants in Mexico, Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum
Herbis [The Book of the Medicinal Herbs of the Indians] (Badiano [1552] 2000;
on the Colegio and the production of Libellus Pardo Tomás 2014, pp. 24–9).
This Aztec herbal was ﬁrst written in Nahuatl by Martín de la Cruz, un
native healer with extensive medicinal knowledge, and then was translated
into Latin (the original in Nahuatl is lost). Inﬂuenced by Pliny’s Natural
Histoire, this book was nonetheless the ﬁrst to be written about medical and
botanical knowledge in central Mexico and included descriptions of some
250 Nahua therapeutic plants and many illustrations (Afanador Llach
2011, p. 21).

As with intercultural exchange in the Colegio, Colonial hospitales also
contributed to the Atlantic bioknowledge production. The Dominican
friar, Francisco Ximénez, worked at the Hospital de la Santa Cruz in Huax-
tepec, Mexico, an institution that was associated with traditional Aztec
herbal medicinal learning (Somolinos 1960, vol. je, pp. 202–3). Ximénez
who was born in a village in Aragon, spent signiﬁcant time outside the
Iberian Peninsula including in Genoa, Italy, and Florida, before he arrived
in New Spain in the year 1605 (For biographical notes: Varey and Chabrán
1994, pp. 128–9). Despite having no formal trainings in medicine, depuis
his position at the hospital at Huaxtepec he succeeded in getting a selec-
tion of Dr. Hernández’s botanical writings (whose expedition was
discussed above) and published a Spanish edition that aimed to provide
practical, autochthonous remedies for settlers who lived in regions far from

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medical attention.25 In his book, Cuatro libros de la naturaleza [Four Books on
Nature] (Mexico, 1615), Ximénez described the plants and herbs found in
New Spain, emphasizing their therapeutic qualities and uses. En outre
to relying on Hernández’s ﬁndings, Ximénez added comments from med-
ical experience at the hospital, asserting that there is nothing in his work
that “has not been certiﬁed by experience” (“no va cosa en esta obra que la
experiencia no la aya certiﬁcado”). This clariﬁcation is particularly meaningful
in the context of the authority that Monardes’s work had enjoyed in Spain
et au-delà, but whose “errors” Ximénez aimed to correct. In the preface
Ximénez noted the advantages of using local medicinal plants because, comme
he claimed, during the long oceanic crossing, herbs and plants tend to lose
their potency (“pierdan de su virtud”).26 Ximénez was here referring to the
medicines that were shipped from Spain and not to it; cependant, his obser-
vation reveals his opinion about the many advantages of studying the
properties of plants in their natural environment where they are signiﬁ-
cantly more potent. Ximénez’s contention is critical given the enduring
data-gathering activities promoted by the Spanish administration and its
visionary attempt to establish an Iberian “chamber of knowledge” that reg-
ulated and oversaw the process of knowledge-making. Historian Daniela
Bleichmar is right to point out that Europeans acquired information about
materia medica, as well as food and spices on European soil and thus “colo-
nial botany was practiced not only in the Americas” but also in the courts,
gardens, and pharmacies “throughout the world” (Bleichmar 2004, p. 84).
Encore, as Ximénez noted, long distances could lead to incomplete knowledge
and contradicting results. Joining Hernández who prioritized sense-based
knowledge that could only be fully undertaken in situ, Ximénez added
that the physical characteristics of plants also changed once they were
picked and transported. This non-Eurocentric perspective problematizes
Bacon’s ideas about the ﬂuidity of knowledge and its possibly of arriving
intact to an establishment like Salomon’s House. From the traveller’s or
expatriate’s point of view, not all sciences could possibly migrate as easily
and smoothly as people. There were clear advantages, both sensual and
physical, to producing biological information in a particular location,
and here globalization was hard-pressed to compete.

25.

“para los que viven en estancias y minas do no ay Medico ni Botica a donde acudir
por el Remedio” (Francisco Ximénez “Al lector,» 1615). Scholars estimate that probably a
copy of Recchi’s abridgment traveled back to Ximénez in New Spain (Par exemple, Varey
and Chabrán 1994, p. 130).

“las medicinas que traen de España, passando tanta inmensidad de mares, pierden
de su virtud la mayor parte causa de que el effeto no sea el que los médicos pretenden.”
Ximénez 1615, “Al lector.”

26.

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Perspectives on Science

749

3. Conclusions
The movement of people around the world was a prominent feature of the
early modern era, which contributed to a new paradigm of knowledge. Comme
we have seen in Bacon’s writings, it helped establish the superiority of the
“moderns over the ancients” and promoted the development of a conscious-
ness of progress that, in subsequent years, stood at the heart of the narra-
tive of the “scientiﬁc revolution.” By exposing the approaches of Iberian
expatriates and travellers to the study of plants and herbs, this article
has related theoretical aspects of knowledge creation (c'est à dire., Bacon’s natural
philosophy) to the pragmatism of the production of bioknowledge. Before
Bacon envisioned the means to collect and compile global data in his ﬁc-
tional New Atlantis, Spain had already recognized the importance of peo-
ple on the move, and devised tools to gather and analyze the resulting
“wisdom of the masses.” Such agents, whether state ofﬁcials, merchants,
settlers, or missionaries, were seen as a part of a chain that initiated the
migration of knowledge; a chain whose very existence was perceived by
Bacon and his generation as the fulﬁlment of Daniel’s prophecy. Bien sûr,
these European “merchants of light” did not work alone, but instead oper-
ated within broader local partnerships that voluntarily or under duress
explained or “translated” local nature to European immigrants and travel-
lers. Together with the violence and exploitation that shaped the colonial
système, the migrations of knowledge and people played a critical role in
the formulation of modern science based upon observation, experimenta-
tion and the critical interpretation of the ﬁndings, the fundamental con-
ditions that set out what Harold Cook has labelled the refusal “to speculate
beyond the observable” (Cook 2007, p. 409).

Néanmoins, while expatriates and travellers participated in imperial
knowledge networks, they still had to justify their particular scientiﬁc
position by articulating views that often problematized, if not under-
mined, the idea of the complete transferability of knowledge in a Baconian
sense. After all, if information could truly and fully be transported, what
were the advantages of botanical research conducted in the colonies? Sur
what basis could a colonial botanist claim scientiﬁc authority over one in
the metropole? What prevented a colonial agent, even an untrained one,
from simply sending a biological specimen and materia medica to European
specialists? As we have seen, as expatriates, missionaries, and travellers
compiled information about local ﬂora, they employed several arguments
that aimed to confront this unresolved tension regarding the communica-
tion of knowledge. We can detect an “environmentalist” approach in
Ximénez’s writings that suggested that due to the greater effectiveness
of medicinal plants in their natural environment their observation is more
accurate in situ. I also showed how migrants emphasized that their diverse

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experiences on the ground—from sensual experience to the observation
and exchange of ideas with native specialists—had an indisputable
advantage for acquiring reliable bioknowledge. These various discursive
strategies ultimately favored the vantage point of colonial botanists by
acknowledging that not all types of information were indeed transportable.
Such claims mirror conﬂicting interests in the process of knowledge migra-
tion that emerged as a result of a dual position of those who came to newly
colonized lands: d'un côté, they were essential actors in the biopros-
pecting project, who needed recognition for the valuable information they
provided (hence, they supported the claim that the knowledge they gath-
ered did and could migrate in some basic sense). On the other hand, ils
also were required to reveal the epistemic weakness and limitation of this
same knowledge migration (c'est à dire., not all information travels or travels well)
in order to justify their position and any possible esteem which they felt
they might be owed. In short, Bacon’s paradigmatic phrase “sciences
migrate, just like people,” in fact depends on who’s asking, where and
in what context.

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