ABSTRACT
Spain’s encounter with the New World in the fteenth century had a crucial impact on both sides of the Atlantic. One important aspect was its contribution to the progress in different elds of scienti c knowledge through the then unknown nature and cultures of America. This process unleashed in the year 1492, and consisted in the beginning of the intellectual awareness of this part of the world, until then ignored by the European consciousness. The activities of Spanish royal of cers, soldiers, merchants and missionaries constituted what can be considered an early scienti c revolution, since the information collected in America questioned and in some aspects even contradicted the European classical scienti c tradition.1 Furthermore, it was indeed an innovative approach to validate the personal experience of a scholar as source of learning; this new empirical tradition emerging in America was opposed to the textually based scholastic and humanist tradition.2 Nevertheless, evaluating the impact of the newly obtained scienti c information about natural history, geography, ethnography and medicine of the New World, we have to keep in mind the fact that this knowledge was essential for controlling the acquired regions and for establishing the Spanish empire overseas. As a consequence, it cannot be seen disconnected from its colonial purpose; thus analyzing the history of Spanish scienti c research undertaken in America and its contribution to early modern European knowledge includes also the study of colonial science in the frame of an imperial expansion.
