The Spectacle de la Nature in Eighteenth-Century Spain: From French Households to Spanish Workshops

Summary

This paper analyzes the Spanish appropriation of one of the great French eighteenth-century best-sellers, the Spectacle de la Nature (1732--1750) by the abbé Antoine Nöel Pluche. In eight volumes, the abbé discussed current issues in natural philosophy, such as Newtonianism, the origin of fossils, artisan techniques, natural history, machines, gardening or insect-collection in a polite-conversation format. It was translated into English (1735), Dutch (1737), Italian (1737), German (1746) and Spanish (1753). But the four Spanish editions were very different from their European counterparts. In Spain, it was delivered in 16 carefully printed and extensively commented volumes. In Pluche's original, there was a concern for the young gentleman's education, new pedagogical methods and an enthusiastic defence of experimental knowledge. However, Le Spectacle in Spain was conceived as a useful tool for modernizing the country, it served political and propagandist goals, defended Spanish culture and science (in particular with respect to American flora, fauna and geography) and the Jesuit contribution to science and aimed to harmonize experimental knowledge and scholastic tradition. The analysis of the more than 1500 footnotes, prefaces, some readers’ comments and other questions related to the format gives insight on how it was appropriated.

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to Prof. Agustí Nieto-Galán for his guidance and critical review. I also thank the CEHIC (Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona) and my colleagues there for fruitful discussions. I am especially thankful to Prof. Xavier Roqué for offering his support and encouragement. My deepest thanks go to Oliver Hochadel who tireless helped me with the English. Iris Montero guided me in natural history iconography and Professor Lissa Roberts generously read the manuscript. Professor Pedro Álvarez de Miranda provided me with crucial information about Terreros. I am extremely grateful to all of them. I am also much indebted to Prof. Antoni Malet for so generously giving me his time, thoughtful advice and sharp criticism. Finally, I should also wish to thank Andrea Immel and the staff of the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University Library, the Cambridge University Library and the Biblioteca de Catalunya and the Instituto de Estudios Vascos (Universidad de Deusto) for their helpful assistance. The Biblioteca de Catalunya has generously granted permission for the reproduction of images. The Spanish Ministerio de Educación granted me a three months visiting student fellowship at Cambridge University in 2010. My research has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación project HAR2009-12918-C03-02 and by the Catalan AGAUR project SGR2009-887.

Notes

¹Terreros himself said that he had consulted more than 500 artisans. Noël-Antoine Pluche, Espectáculo de la naturaleza, ó conversaciones acerca de las particularidades de la historia natural […] trad. del francés. por el P. Estevan de Terreros y Pando, 16 vols (Madrid, 1753--1755), preface: ‘I had to go from art to art and from learned man to learned man to find out for my own eyes, recording the arts and watching the operations and handling the instruments, in order to be able to write from practical knowledge’. (Translations from Spanish to English were provided by Unitat d'Assessorament Lingüístic i Traduccions, Servei de Llengües, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, UALT/SL (UAB), if no other is specified). I will refer to Terreros's translation of Pluche Spectacle as Terreros (note 1).

²Esteban de Terreros, Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes en las tres lenguas, francesa, latina é italiana. Su autor el P. Esteban de Terreros y Pando, 4 vols (Madrid, 1786--1793). Terreros explained his working method in the volume 1. Terreros also quoted some of his sources in the dictionary entries. See: Manuel Alvar, ‘Presentación’, in Diccionario Castellano con las Voces de las Ciencias y las Artes (Madrid, 1987); Dolores Azorín and Isabel Santamaría, ‘El Espectáculo de la Naturaleza traducido por Terreros y Pando como fuente de su Diccionario Castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes’, in Actas del Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española, edited by José Bustos and Jose Luis Girón (Madrid, 2006), 1253--1268, 1256--1257; María Arribas, ‘El diccionario como puente entre las lenguas y culturas del mundo’, in Actas del II Congreso Internacional de Lexicografía Hispánica (Alicante, 2006), 53--59; Josefa Gómez, ‘Notas sobre la traducción científica y técnica en el siglo XVIII’, in Historia de la traducción, edited by Brigitte Lépinette and Antonio Melero Bellido (Valencia, 2003); Pedro Álvarez de Miranda, ‘Entorno al diccionario de Terreros’, Bulletin Hispanique, 94 (1992), 559–572.

³The Spectacle was present in 500 private library catalogues printed between 1750 and 1780 and it was ranked the fourth best-seller between 1750--1780, only surpassed by Bayle's Dictionary, Marot's Ouvres and Buffon's Histoire naturelle. Data from Daniel Mornet, ‘Les enseignements des bibliothèques privées (1750--1780)’, in Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de France, 18 (1910), 449–496.

⁴Terreros (note 1), preface: ‘[…] I armed myself with Dictionaries, be they of Arts, of Sciences, of universities and I obtained facultative books as required by the variety of subjects it dealt with. Who would have said that being so well armed I wouldn't have been able to go forward?’; ‘I asked all day in the Orchard, in the Field, in the Flourmill, in the Shops, in Houses and in the streets.’

⁵Terreros (note 2). The four volumes of the dictionary were published in 1786, 1787, 1788 and 1793. The latter was a four language dictionary: Spanish, Latin, French and Italian.

⁶Spary (1999) refers to a ‘large and enthusiastic section of polite French society from 1740–1790’. See Emma Spary, ‘The Nature of Enlightenment’, in The sciences in Enlightened Europe, edited by William Clarke, Jan Golinsky and Simon Shaffer (Chicago-London, 1999), 272–304, 273. On Spanish audiences, see: Juan Pimentel, Testigos del mundo. Ciencias, literatura y viajes en la ilustración (Madrid, 2003); Antonio Lafuente, Juan Pimentel, ‘La construcción de un espacio público para la ciencia’, in Historia de la Ciencia y la Técnica en la Corona de Castilla, edited by Luís García Ballester, 4 vols (Valladolid, 2002), IV, 113–155; Nuria Valverde, Actos de precisión. Instrumentos científicos, opinión pública y economía moral en la ilustración española (Madrid, 2007). On the first years of the century, the classical reference is Olga Quiroz-Mártinez, La introducción de la filosofía moderna en España: el eclecticismo español de los siglos XVII y XVIII (México, 1949). There is a good summary in Antonio Mestre, Mayans y la España de la Ilustración (Madrid, 1990). On eighteenth-century Spanish literature and press the bibliography is innumerable. The most useful for me were: Francisco Sánchez-Blanco, Europa y el pensamiento español del siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1991); Francoise López, ‘Aspectos específicos de la Ilustración española’, in II Simposio sobre el Padre Feijoo y su Siglo: ponencias y comunicaciones, 2 vols (Oviedo, 1981–1983), I, 23–29; Nigel Glendinning, Historia de la Literatura española: el siglo XVIII (Barcelona, 1983); Francisco Aguilar Piñal, La España del absolutismo ilustrado (Madrid, 2005); idem, La prensa española en siglo XVIII. Diarios, Revistas y Pronósticos (Madrid, 1978); Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos, La República de las Letras en la España del siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1995); Víctor Infantes, François López and Jean-François Otrel (ed.), Historia de la edición y de la lectura en España: 1472–1914 (Madrid, 2003). Antonio Lafuente et al: ‘Literatura científica moderna’, in Historia literaria de España en el siglo XVIII edited by Francisco Aguilar Piñal (Madrid, 1996), 965–1028.

⁷The very few exceptions have been quoted by Antoni Malet, ‘Newton in Spain and Portugal’, in The Reception of Isaac Newton in the Europe, 3 vols, edited by S. Mandelbrote and H. Pulte (Forthcoming, 2011), I, chapter 11. These are: Jean-Antoine Nollet, Lecciones de Physica experimental, 6 vols (Madrid, 1755); Luís António Verney, Verdadero Método de Estudiar (Madrid, 1757); Charles Rollin, Modo de enseñar y estudiar las bellas letras, 4 vols (Madrid, 1755) and Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Relación Histórica del viaje a la América Meridional, 5 vols (Madrid, 1748). Specific treatises of different issues were also available. For example, on astronomy: Carles Lemaur, Discurso sobre la Astronomía (Madrid, 1762), architecture: Christian Rieger, Elementos de toda Arquitectura, (Madrid, 1763) or agriculture by Duhamel du Monceau. Buffon, Linnaeus, Fontanelle and Euler to quote just a few were translated during the last third of the century.

⁸Françoise Étienvre, Traducción y Renovación Cultural a mediados del siglo XVIII en España’, in Fénix de España: modernidad y cultura propia en la España del siglo XVIII (1737--1766): actas del congreso internacional celebrado en Madrid, noviembre de 2004, edited by Pablo Fernández Albaladejo (Madrid, 2006); Francisco Lafarga and Luis Pegenaute (ed.), Historia de la traducción en España (Salamanca, 2004); Idem, La traduccción en España: 1750--1830: lengua, literatura, cultura (Lleida, 1999).

⁹Benito J. Feijoo, Cartas Eruditas y Curiosas, 5 vols (Madrid, 1742–1760), V, carta 23, 367--391; Juan Sempere y Guarinos, Reflexiones sobre el Buen Gusto en las ciencias y en las artes. Traducción libre de las que escribió en italiano Luis Antonio Muratori, con un Discurso sobre el gusto actual de los españoles en la literatura (Madrid, 1782), 279.

¹⁰The first volumes of the Panckoucke's Encyclopédie méthodique in Spain appeared in 1788. Clorinda Donato, ‘La Enciclopedia metódica: Transfer and transformation of knowledge about Spain and the New World in the Spanish translation of the Encyclopédie méthodique’, in Das Europa der Aufklärung und die außereuropäische koloniale Welt, edited by Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Göttingen, 2006), 74–112; José Checa Beltrán, ‘Mínguez de San Fernando y su traducción de la Encyclopédie Méthodique’, in La traducción en España (1750--1830). Lengua, literatura, cultura, edited by Francisco Lafarga (Lleida, 1999), 177–186.

¹¹For example, Filippo Buonani (1638--1725), Johannes Jonston (1603--1675), Ferdinando Marsigli (1658--1730) or Claude Perrault (1613--1688). For an extensive description of the engravings, see Madeleine Pinault-Sørensen, ‘Les planches du Spectacle de la nature de l'abbé Pluche’, in Écrire la nature au XVIIIe siècle; autour de l'abbé Pluche, edited by Françoise Gevrey, Julie Boch and Jean-Louis Haquette (Paris, 2006), 441–59.

¹²Spary (note 6), 299.

¹³See for example Kostas Gavroglu et al, ‘Science and Technological in the European Periphery: Some Historiographical Reflections’, History of Science, 46 (2008), 154--175; Agustí Nieto-Galán, Los públicos de la ciencia. Expertos y profanos a través de la historia (Barcelona, 2011); Jonathan R. Topham ‘Rethinking the History of Science. Popularization/Popular Science’, in Popularizating Science and Technology in the European periphery, 1800--2000 (Surrey, Burlington, 2009), 1--20; Juan Pimentel, ‘The Iberian vision: Science and empire in the framework of a universal monarchy, 1500--1800’, in Nature and Empire, edited by Roy MacLeod, Osiris 2 ^nd series, 15 (2001), 17–30.

¹⁴See for example Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Christine Blondel, ‘A science full of shocks, sparks and smells’, in Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment edited by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Christine Blondel (London, 2005), 1--24; Patricia Fara, Sex, Botany and Empire: The Stories of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks (New York, 2003); Mary Fissell and Roger Cooter, ‘Exploring Natural Knowledge’, in The Cambridge History of Science, edited by Roy Porter (Cambridge, 2003), IV, 129--156; Jan Golinski, ‘Barometers of change: Instruments as machines for Enlightenment’, in The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, edited by William Clark, Jan Golinski and Simon Schaffer (Chicago and London, 1999), 69--93; idem Science as Public Culture. Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760--1820 (New York, 1992); Ursula Klein and Emma Spary (eds.), Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory (Chicago, 2010); Oliver Hochadel,‘The sale of shocks and sparks: itinerant electricians in German Enlightenment’, in Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment edited by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Christine Blondel (London, 2005), 89--101; Agustí Nieto-Galàn, ‘Between Craft Routines and Academic Rules: Natural Dyestuffs and the ‘Art’ of Dyeing in the Eighteenth Century’, in Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe. Between market and laboratory edited by Ursula Klein and Emma C. Spary (Chicago, 2010), 321--353; Lissa Roberts, Centres and cycles of accumulation in the Netherlands during the early-modern period (forthcoming); John H. Plumb, ‘The commercialization of leisure in Eighteenth-century England’, in The birth of a consumer society, by Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J.H. Plumb (London, 1983), 265–285.

¹⁵Dennis Trinkle, ‘Nöel-Antoine Pluche's ‘Le spectacle de la nature: an encyclopaedic best seller’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 358 (1997), 93--134. Cynthia Koepp, ‘Curiosity, science, and experiential learning in the eighteenth century: reading the Spectacle de la nature’, in Childhood and children's books in early modern Europe (1550--1800), edited by Andrea Immel and Michael Witmore (New York, 2006). Françoise Gevrey, Julie Boch and Jean-Louis Haquette (eds.), Écrire la nature au XVIIIe siècle; autour de l'abbé Pluche (Paris, 2006). Benoît De Baere, Trois introductions à l'Abbé Pluche: sa vie, son monde, ses livres (Genève, 2001). See also Stephane Pujol, ‘Science et sociabilite dans les dialogues de vulgarisation scientifique au XVIIIe siècle’, in Diffusion du savoir et affrontement des idées 1600–1770 Festival d'histoire de Montbrison, 30 septembre au 4 octobre 1992 (Montbrison,1993), 79--95; Robert Loqueneux, ‘L'abbé Pluche, ou l'accord de la foi et de la raison à l'aube des Lumières’, Sciences et Techniques en perspective, 2 (1998), 235--288. See also the biography of Pluche (‘Eloge historique de monsieur l'abbé Pluche’) that Robert Estienne included in Antoine-Nöel Pluche, Concorde de la géographie des differents ages (París,1764). Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 238--239, discussed Pluche in relation with gender education; Spary (nota 6) situated him in the French natural history context.

¹⁶The chronologies of the eight volumes are as follows: I. Ce qui regarde les animaux et les plantes, 1732; II. Ce qui regarde les dehors et l'intérieur de la terre, 1735; III. Ce qui regarde les dehors et l'intérieur de la terre, 1735; IV. Ce qui regarde le ciel et les liaisons des différentes parties de l'univers avec les besoins de l'homme, 1739; V. Ce qui regarde l'homme considéré en lui-même, 1746; VI--VII. Ce qui regarde l'homme en société, 1746; VIII. (1–2) Ce qui regarde l'homme en société avec Dieu, 1750. For French quotations, I used the volumes digitalized in the Service Commun de la Documentation de Université de Strasbourg: vols 1–4: (París, 1739); vols 5–6: (París, 1746). http://num-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr:8080/. Translations from French to English come from the Spectacle de la Nature: or Nature delineated, translated by Jonh Nelly, D. Bellamy and J. Sparrow (London, 1760).

¹⁷Among others: Histoire du ciel, 2 vols (Paris, 1732); La mécanique des langues et l'art de les enseigner (Paris, 1751); Concorde de la géographie des différens âges, ouvrage posthume de M. Pluche. Publié par l'abbé Pierre Thuilier, avec un éloge de l'auteur par Robert Estienne (Paris, 1765). See Françoise Gevrey, Julie Boch and Jean-Louis Haquette (note 15), 15–16.

¹⁸ Nature displayed. Being discourses on such particulars of natural history as were thought most proper to excite the curiosity, and form the minds of youth. However, other translators highlighted its pious nature in the title, see note 30.

¹⁹Pluche (note 16), II, plan, iv: ‘[…] nous avons cru nous rendre plus utiles aux jeunes Lecteurs que nous avions en vûe, en leur épargnant toutes les questions épineuses, & en choisissant dans les meilleurs livres d'histoire naturelle ce qui étoit propre á intéresser leur curiosité’.

²⁰Pluche (note 16), I, preface: ‘Si ces amusemens ou études de vacances avoient le bonheur de plaire à la jeunesse & sur-tout à notre jeune noblesse, qui se trouvant souvent à la campagne, est plus à portée des curiosités naturelles, […], à substituer le goût de la belle nature & l'amour du vrai, aux faux merveilleux des fables & des romans […]’, ‘If these amusements or studies in vacant hours, have the good fortune to be pleasing to youth, and especially to the youth of our nobility, who, as they are frequently in the country are more conversant with natural curiosities […] to substitute a taste for amiable nature and truth in the place of false marvels of fable and romance […]’.

²¹Maria Sybilla Merian (1647--1717), Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensis (1705).

²²Pinault-Sørensen (note 11), 145–149.

²³In the preface, Pluche justifies the choice of ‘polite people who are conversant with the world’ instead of great men like Descartes, Malebranche or Newton’ because his intention is ‘only to enjoy the minds of young people with free conversation, suited to their abilities, and without perplexing them with characters that are too strongly marked’: ‘Comme il ne s'agit, après tout, que de soulager l'esprit des jeunes lecteurs par une conversation libre & que soit à leur portée, sans les distraire cependant par des caractères trop marqués’.

²⁴Madelaine Basseporte worked in the Jardin du roi. She drew from the many natural botanical plates, and some mammals.

²⁵Pedagogical toys and games became popular from the late 18th century. See Jill Shefrin, The Dartons: Publishers of educational aids, pastimes and juvenile ephemera (Princeton, 2009); idem, ‘Make it a pleasure and not a task. Educational Games for Children in Georgian England’, Princeton University Library Chronicle, 40 (1999), 251--275; Brian Alderson, ‘New Playthings and Gigantic Histories: The Nonage of English Children's Books’, Princeton University Library Chronicle, 60 (1999), 178–95.

²⁶Steven Shapin, ‘The image of the man of science’, in The Cambridge history of science, edited David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, 4 vols (Cambridge, 2003--2006), IV, 159–178.

²⁷For Pluche, experimental philosophy began in Ancient Times with the zodiac, the study of the heavens and navigation instruments –the compass and astrolabe. Pluche considered the Middle Age as barren yet recognized the Arab contribution to the renaissance of science. He explained ‘modern’ instruments: telescope (Galileo, Newton), microscope (Leeuwenhoek), air-pump (Boyle), barometer and thermometer. Only the last twenty pages were dedicated to ‘systematic physic’, i.e. ‘the big system of Nature’. Epicure accounted for the first, followed by the Alchemists, Descartes, Gassendi and finally, Newton.

²⁸Pluche (note 16), IV: ‘La différence qui se trouve entre le système de M.Descartes y celui de M. Newton, c'est que le premier entreprend de rendre raison de tout; au lien que l'autre avouant modestement que nous ne conoissons point le fond de la nature, ne qu’éclaircir un point de fati, & en affigner la cause fans la concevoir ni l'eclaircir’. Nature Displayed, 1760, IV, 268--278: ‘The difference between M. Descartes and Mr. Newton is that the former undertakes to account for everything; and the other, modestly acknowledging that we are ignorant of the secrets of nature, pretends only to evince but one matter of fact, without undertaking to explain the cause’.

²⁹I have used here ‘natural theology’ in the sense of gathering proofs for the ‘manifold and wondrous works of God, as an affirmation of faith in, not an attempted proof of, divine wisdom’, as Brooke suggested when dealing with the contexts of monotheistic religions. Hedley Brooke, ‘Natural Theology’, in Science and religion: A historical introduction edited by Gary Ferngren (Baltimore, 2002), 163–175, 164. I thank the anonymous referee for qualifying this point. See also: Hedley Brooke Science and religion. An historical perspective (Cambridge, 1993); Hedley Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing nature: The engagement of science and religion (Edinburgh, 2000).

³⁰The translators of the 1760 English edition (J. Nelly, of the Inner Temple; D. Bellamy, of St. John's College; and J. Sparrow, surgeon and mathematician) strengthen the pious character of Pluche's work and titled it: Spectacle de la Nature or Nature Delineated being Philosophical Conversations Where in The Wonderful Works of Providence, in the Animal, Vegetable and Mineral Creation are laid open; the Solar and Planetary System, and whatever is curious in Mathematicks, explain'd. The Whole being a complete Course of Natural and Experimental PHILOSOPHY, calculated for the Instruction of YOUTH, in order to prepare them for an early Knowledge of NATURAL HISTORY, and create in their Minds an exalted Idea of the Wisdom of the GREAT CREATOR. They also included this quotation on the front page (I. Watts): ‘NATURE is Nothing but the Art of GOD; a bright Display of that Wisdom, which demands an Eternal Tribute of Wonder and Worship’. (Capital letters in the original).

³¹Koepp (note 15) discussed the role of practical arts in Pluche's vision of gentleman's education.

³²Pluche (note 16): ‘It was very common that in the convents where Philosophy was taught, to find less healthy Physics in the Brother Reader or in the Master than in the Brother that prepares the medicines or cultivate vegetables’.

³³Pluche (note 16), ‘Histoire de la physique systématique’ IV, 541--572. An example of Pluche opinion about the ‘systematic philosopher and the ‘calculateurs infatigables’ in 563: ‘Je me garderai bien d'entrer ici dans le détail des systèmes qu'ont imaginés sur la pesanteur Mrs Hugens, Bulinger, Bernouilli & bien d'autres. Ce n'est la qu'un point de la méchanique de l'univers. Demandez en l'explication à cinquante physiciens : ils croiront tous vous donner une physique d'autant plus estimable, qu'ils y employeront plus de calculs & de géométrie. Mais il y a souvent bien loin de l'arithmétique &de la géométrie, à la physique. Tous ces calculateurs infatigables, même en partant souvent du même principe, vous conduiront à des sommes différentes, à différents méchanismes, & a autant de systèmes qu'ils sont de têtes’. ‘I shall take care here not to enter into a personal Account of the System's idea of Gravity such as those of Meff. Huygens, Bulfinger, Bernoülly and many others. This is only a single Point of the Mechanics of the Universe. Ask for an Explanation of it from fifty Naturalists, and they all will think they have given you a Scheme of Physics, one that is all the more valuable in Proportion as they shall use more Calculations and Geometry therein. But the Distance between Arithmetic, and Geometry and Physics, is often very great. And these indefatigable Calculists, though often setting out from the same Point, will lead you to very different Sums, to very different Mechanisms, and to as many Systems as there are Heads’.

³⁴Pinault-Sørensen (note 11). In 1701, Réaumur led the project. He accumulated information from all around the French provinces for the designs of the planches. However, he left the project unfinished. Pluche would have employed many of those reports, as the Encyclopédie team also did.

³⁵Koepp (note 15) has extensively discussed the modern pedagogical methods employed by the abbè.

³⁶Pluche mentioned his sources in order to convince the reader: Pluche (note 16), I, preface, v: ‘Mais le Lecteur sera plus disposé a goûter ce qu'il verra garanti par les témoignages des observateurs modernes qui ont acquis une estime universelle par leur exactitude & par leur précision’. ‘The Reader will be more disposed to relish what he finds warranted by Testimony of modern Observers, who have gained universal Reputation by their Accuracy and Circumspection’.

³⁷There is a Spanish copy where an informed reader rectifies the location of one of these marginal notes. In the third edition at Biblioteca de Catalunya, IX, 66, the reader has crossed out the note in the margin: ‘el estómago del hombre’ and put it in the correct place, two pages later.

³⁸Roger Chartier ‘Culture as appropriation: Popular cultural uses in early Modern France’, in Understanding popular culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to nineteenth century, edited by Steven L. Kaplan (Amsterdam, 1984), 229--53; Mary Terrall, ‘Natural philosophy for fashionable readers’, in Books and the sciences in history, edited by Marina Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine (Cambridge, 2000), 239--253.

³⁹For example, he included a whole chapter devoted to how to educate girls and boys in Lettre d'un père de famille sur la première culture de l'éspri VI, 73--261.

⁴⁰Pedro Álvarez de Miranda,‘Perfil biográfico del padre Terreros’, in Esteban de Terreros y Pando: vizcaíno, polígrafo y Jesuita. III centenario: 1707--2000 (Bilbao, 2009); Alvar (note 1). According to Álvarez de Miranda, Terreros’ four principal biography sources are: Antonio Pérez Goyena,‘Un sabio filósofo vizcaíno’. Razón y Fe, 94 (1931), 5--19 and 124--135; the Memoria included in the fourth volume of the Diccionario Castellano con las voces de Ciencias y artes written by the royal librarian Miguel de Manuel y Rodríguez (1793); an article in the unpublished Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, Biblioteca Jesuítico-española (1759--1799), estudio crítico, introducción y notas de Antonio Astorgano (Madrid, 2007) and some letters from Terreros kept in the Real Academia de la Historia de España (9--7226). Also, Terreros left much biographical information in many entries of his dictionary: Isabel Echevarría, ‘El autor en el Diccionario de Terreros’, in Actas del II Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Historiografía Lingüística, León, 2--5 de marzo de 1999, edited by Marina Maquieira et al (Madrid, 2001), 371--384. For Terreros’ contribution to mathematics, see: Agustí Udías, ‘El padre Terreros y Pando, professor de matemáticas’, in Esteban de Terreros y Pando: Vizcaíno, polígrafo y jesuita. III Centenario: 1707--2000 (Bilbao, 2009), 127–142.

⁴¹For the Seminario de Nobles, see Francisco Aguilar Piñal, ‘Los reales Seminarios de Nobles en la política ilustrada española’, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 356 (1980), 329--349 and Valverde (note 6). A good summary of the role of universities in Jose Luis Peset, ‘La disputa de las facultades’, in Historia de la ciencia y de la técnica en la corona de Castilla, edited by García Ballester, 4 vols (Valladolid, 2002), IV, 11--22. On the Colegio Imperial, see ‘Los libros y manuscritos de los profesores de matemáticas en el Colegio Imperial’. Archivorum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 74 (2005), 369--448 and José Simón Díaz, Historia del Colegio Imperial de Madrid, 2 vols (Madrid, 1952), I. On the contribution of the Jesuit Company, see Victor Navarro, ‘Science and enlightenment in eighteenth-century Spain: The contribution of the Jesuits before and after the expulsion’, in Jesuits II: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540--1773 edited by John W. O'Malley et al. (Toronto, 2006), 390--404; idem, ‘La renovación de la actividad científica en la España del s. XVII y las disciplinas físico-matemáticas’, in El siglo de las luces: de la ingeniería a la nueva navegación, edited by Manuel Silva (Zaragoza, 2005), II, 33--74; Malet (note 7); idem, La recepeciò de la ciéncia moderna a Catalunya: Isaac Newton a la Barcelona del set-cents, conference 12 sep. (Barcelona, 2007).

⁴²Christian Rieger, Observaciones physicas sobre la fuerza eléctrica grande y fulminante, confirmada y aumentada con nuevos experimentos (Madrid,1763). The author himself recognized Terreros’ help with the Spanish in the preface. He also wrote on architecture: Christian Rieger, Elementos de toda la arquitectura civil con las más singulares observaciones de los modernos (Madrid, 1763).

⁴³The professor was Antonio Zacagnini. He translated the six volumes of Jean-Antoine Nollet's Leçons de Physique Expérimentale in 1757, which he presumably used in his lessons. Udías (note 40).

⁴⁴Nicholas Jardine, James Secord, Emma Spary, Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge, 1996).

⁴⁵Terreros attended the tertulias at the Countess of Salcedo (Francisco Javier de Goyeneche) and Sarmientos’ place, see Echevarría (note 40).

⁴⁶In 1766, just before the Jesuit expulsion from Spain, besides the classical topics of latin and rhetoric, general geography and geography of the globes, they were taught experimental physics and mathematics, which includes geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, optics, mechanics, fortification and military architecture, nautical and music. The mathematic contents of those conclusions are discussed in Udías (note 40), 283–286.

⁴⁷ Conclusiones mathematicas dedicadas al Sereníssimo y Eminentíssimo Señor Don Luís de Borbón[…] presididas por el padre Estevan de Terreros, maestro de mathemáticas en el mismo seminario (Madrid, 1744); Conclusiones matemáticas dedicadas a D. Fernando VI […] presididas por Esteban de Terreros i Pando (Madrid, 1748); Conclusiones mathemáticas, prácticas y especulativas, defendidas en el Real Seminario de Nobles, en presencia de sus Majestades Católicas […], bajo la instrucción y magisterio del R.P. Estevan de Terreros (Madrid, 1751).

⁴⁸See for example, Gaceta de Madrid, 19^th April 1757, n°16, 128: ‘se divirtieron sus magestades entre varias y curiosas experiencias de Physica’.

⁴⁹Malet (note 7).

⁵⁰Fernando VI gave twenty thousand ‘doblones’ to the Jesuits on the same night. Quoted in Javier Burrieza, ‘Esteban de Terreros: retrato jesuíto de un maestro de la palabra’, in Esteban de Terreros y Pando: vizcaíno, polígrafo y Jesuita. III centenario: 1707--2007 (Bilbao, 2009), 292--328, 311. The play was entitled: La ciencia triumphante: drama alegórico representado a los Reyes Fernando el Sexto y doña Bárbara, por algunos Cavalleros Seminaristas del Real Seminario de Nobles de Madrid (Madrid, without year).

⁵¹Sánchez-Blanco (note 6); Antonio Bonet and Beatriz Blasco (ed.), Fernando VI y Bárbara de Braganza: un reinado bajo el signo de la paz (1746--1759) (Madrid, 2002).

⁵²Lafuente (note 6), Lafuente-Pimentel (note 6).

⁵³Terreros’ dedicatory: ‘Who cannot see that her Majesty and the Espectáculo de la Naturaleza, indicate the same character, are guided by the same end and have the same purpose?,’ ‘Quien no ve, que a V. Mag, y al Espectáculo de la Naturaleza los señala un mismo carácter, que miran a un mismo fin, y que tienen las mismas ideas?’.

⁵⁴Terreros (note 1), I, dedicatory ‘[…] without daughters being exempt from this instruction, being in little agreement with the reason that their gender has to force them into ignorance, from which it is born, for as they cannot always be occupied with the work that is theirs, they reject books, which they never held in their hands […]’.

⁵⁵In baroque Spanish houses, there were specially designed places for women in the parlour, called ‘estrados’. There was a little fence, which separated them from other people, with small chairs where women could sit to do embroidery.

⁵⁶Carmen Martín Gaite, Usos amorosos del dieciocho en España (Barcelona,1981); Isabel Morant, Amor, matrimonio y familia (Madrid, 1998); Emilio Palacios, La mujer y las letras en la España del XVIII (Madrid, 2002); Mónica Bolufer, ‘Neither male, nor female: Rational Equality in the Early Spanish Enligtenment’, in Women, Gender and Enlightenment edited by Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (Houndmills, 2005), 389--409; idem, Mujeres y modernización: estrategias culturales y prácticas social)es (siglos XVIII--XX )(Madrid, 2008); idem,' ‘Las mujeres en la cultura de la Ilustración’, in Ilustración, ciencia y técnica en el siglo XVII español edited by Enrique Martínez, Pi Corrales and Magdalena de Pazzis (Valencia, 2008). Sally-Ann Kitts, Debate on the nature, role and influence of woman in eighteenth-century Spain (Lewiston, New York, 1995).

⁵⁷Sempere y Guarinos (note 9), 279.

⁵⁸Bolufer (note 56).

⁵⁹For example, in Terreros (note 1), II, 43, the Countess complained about the banal conversations that usually men have with women: ‘The conversation that they have with us is only about fashion, games and a gobbledygook of politics and good manners. It is a kind of miracle when one of us saves herself from the shipwreck and shows discretion and soundness’. The Countess went on to list the disciplines that must be taught to girls: Religion, History and the ‘wonderful works of the Creator’ and she detailed the useful things that her husband had taught her: ‘why a tree needs to be pruned, what land needs in order to produce fruit […]’.

⁶⁰In Historia del famoso fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes by José Francisco de Isla (1703--1781), it was said that ladies took a dead body in their carriages just to dissect it. Quoted by Lafuente and Pimentel (note 6). The Spectacle was also a best-seller among English ladies, as the list of subscribers suggests in the 1742 English edition (Biblioteca de Catalunya).

⁶¹ Biblioteca de Catalunya, 2 ed., II, 248--249: ‘son hermafroditas, y tienen juntamente los dos sexos, de suerte que cada uno de ellos da la fecundidad al otro de quien la recibe al mismo tiempo’

⁶²The royal librarians managed to finish the task thanks to the Jesuit having left all the material perfectly arranged. The volumes came out between 1786–1793

⁶³Udias (note 402), 290, refers to a possiblye earlier older manuscript at the Biblioteca del Palacio Real (II/1758). In Forlí, he also undertook the translation of an Italian grammar for Spaniards.

⁶⁴The first English edition (1733), translated by Samuel Humphreys and also published in London, by J. and J. Pemberton and R. Franklin, was elaborately made, with generous margins and perfectly printed plates. The 1739 edition is smaller, its paper and the plates do not look as good, and the margins and the lettering have narrowed.

⁶⁵The first volumes were printed by Gabriel Ramírez, but Ibarra continued.

⁶⁶Raúl Rodríguez, Antonio González, ‘La imprenta y los grabados científicos: la imagen y la palabra’, in Historia de la Ciencia y la Técnica en la Corona de Castilla, 4 vols, edited by Luís García Ballester (Valladolid, 2002), IV, 93--107.

⁶⁷ Espectaculo de la Naturaleza, ò Conversaciones a cerca de las particularidades de la historia natural, que han parecido mas a proposito para excitar una curiosidad util, y formarles la razon à los jovenes lectores.

⁶⁸Terreros (note 1), preface: ‘[…] that the Farmer should use these books to fertilise the land better, the Gardener to make more beautiful flowers, Herders and Landowners to take better advantage of their harvests, for Dealers to lawfully increase their income, for Artisans to all improve their instruments; Society as a whole should benefit from this work’.

⁶⁹For example, in the prologue of Josefa Amar's translation of the Italian Francesco Griselini (1717--1783). Francesco Griselini,Discurso sobre el problema de si corresponde á los parrocos y curas de las aldeas el instruir á los labradores (Zaragoza, 1783). See Josefa Gómez, ‘El Padre Terreros traductor de la obra de Pluche’, in Esteban de Terreros y Pando: vizcaíno, polígrafo y Jesuita (Bilbao, 2009), 249-273, 256.

⁷⁰Terreros (note 1) XXII, 40, a three quarter page note explains Castilian ploughs.

⁷¹Idem, IV, 202: ‘Todo esto se podrá adelantar mucho, a vista de la exactitud, curiosidad y proporción que usan en sus máquinas otras Naciones’.

⁷²On the Iris (VII, 152): ‘Medicinal term, an arc, that we have in the eyes, around the pupil, on a tunic called Rhagoid or Ubea, called Iris for the variety of colours […]’ On heterogeneous water (V, 57): ‘That is, it has bodies of different species added inside, such as earths, minerals’. On ordinary machines such as pulleys, presses, winches, he explains that a jack is a ‘very efficient machine that thanks its many wheels, multiplies its force’ (X, 72). On analysis (XI, 230): ‘In algebra, it is said of the resolution of all problems, and in chemistry, it is the resolution of compound matter in its simple parts or principles, to find out its exact nature’.

⁷³Idem, IV, 4.

⁷⁴Idem, XIII, 201--360. It is not clear whether Andrés Marcos Burriell (1719--1762), a Jesuit erudite and the director of the Royal Colegio Imperial was indeed the author. Spanish Paleography was also published as an independent book in 1758, by Joaquim Ibarra.

⁷⁵Jorge Juan, Observaciones Astronómicas y Físcas, hechas de orden de S.M en los reinos de Perú y de los cuales se dice la figura y magnitude de la Tierra, with detailed experiments dealing with the methods employed to measure the meridian arc, Jupiter's satellites, metal dilatation, pendulum periods, etc. (Madrid, 1748).

⁷⁶An accurate account of the voyage in Antonio Lafuente and Antonio Mazuecos, Los caballeros del punto fijo (Madrid, 1987).

⁷⁷Pierre Louis de Maupertuis returned from his expedition to Lapland in 1737, which was launched in 1735 simultaneously with the one to Peru in which Ulloa and Juan took part. The data suggested the flat shape of the Earth, but Pluche did not mention Maupertuis’ new data. Mary Terrall, The man who flattened the earth: Maupertuis and the sciences in the enlightenment (Chicago, 2002).

⁷⁸Terreros (note 1), VIII, 134: ‘Las últimas observaciones hechas en América y en Lapona aseguran que la Tierra es chata por los Polos y señalan la diferencia que hay de terreno entre el grado contiguo a la Equiccnocial y el contiguo al Polo. Veánse las Obras dadas a luz sobre este asunto.’

⁷⁹Morvilliers claimed that the contribution of Spain to European thought was null. Agustí Nieto-Galàn, ‘The image of science in modern Spain. Rethinking the ‘polémica’’, in The sciences in the European periphery during the Enlightenment, edited by Kostas Gavroglu (Dordrecht, 1999), 73–94.

⁸⁰This engraving was erased in the third and fourth editions, although the long footnote remained.

⁸¹For detailed studies of the sources in Terreros’ dictionary, see Eduardo Jacinto,‘Terminología y autoridades científico-técnicas en el Diccionario Castellano (1786--93) del P. Terreros’, in Esteban Terreros y Pando: vizcaíno, polígrafo y jesuíta: III Centenario, 1707--2007 edited by Santiago Larrazábal (Bilbao, 2009). For medical terms, see Bertha Gutiérrez, ‘El léxico de la medicina en el diccionario de Esteban de Terreros y Pando’, in Actas del III Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española edited by Alegría Alonso, 2 vols (Madrid, 1996), II, 1327–1342.

⁸²Terreros (note 1), VI, 61.

⁸³Pluche commented that ‘the Aristotelian and corpusculists are always ready to argue about the vacuum or the plenum, or matter and form […], and all in truth without much fortune and without deciding anything.’ ‘Los aristotélicos y corpusculistas están siempre prontos para disputar acerca del lleno o del vacío, de la materia y de la forma […] y todo a la verdad sin mucho fruto y sin liquidar cosa alguna’. And Terreros qualified that: ‘All of this is understood by exercising without the moderation we have noted above’. ‘Todo esto se entiende ejecutando sin la moderación que dejamos notada arriba’.

⁸⁴Terreros (note 1), Aprobación del Lic. Don Blas Julián y Carrera, Presbítero, 4: ‘[…] y esta la que mereció su Sabio Autor el renombre de Philósopho Christiano, más apreciable que el de Aristotélico, Cartesiano, Gasendista, Neutoniano, Excéptico o Experimental’. And he added that there was an advantage in examining all of those systems in order to choose the right one: ‘As well as the advantage of examining all of these systems and only admitting those that most conform to the truth, those that most stimulate virtue, those that most serve Religion’.

⁸⁵Feijoo (note 9): ‘Esta Obra del Espectáculo de la Naturaleza, que no incluye menos de instrucción Moral, y Teológica, que de ciencia Física, sirve grandemente a la edificación de los Lectores; porque su piadoso Autor, el Abad Pluche, en la rica colección, que presenta de las Maravillas de la Naturaleza, oportunamente mezcla utilísimas Reflexiones, que conducen el espíritu a la admiración, y amor del sapientísimo, y beneficentísimo Autor de ella’.

⁸⁶James Secord, ‘Knowledge in transit’, Isis, 95 (2004), 642--672.

⁸⁷Josep Simon and Néstor Herran (eds.), Beyond borders. Fresh perspectives in history of science (Newcastle, 2008). Kapil Raj, Relocating modern science: circulation and the construction of knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (Houndmills and New York, 2007), Faidra Papanelopoulou, Agustí Nieto-Galan and Enrique Perdiguero, Popularizing science and technology in the European periphery, 1800--2000. (Aldershot, 2009), 237--241; Lisa Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and nation (Cambridge, Mass., 2001); idem,‘Women and utility in the Enlightenment science’, Configurations, 3.2 (1995), 233–255.