Traces on a Muddy Shore. Science and religion in Colonial and Early Independent Río de la Plata

ABSTRACT

This paper is intended as a contribution to the study of science and religion in late modern Catholic societies. I explore the treatment of natural philosophy vis-à-vis religious (Roman Catholic) authority, the teaching of Biblical geology, and the use of natural theology in texts from Río de la Plata in the transition from late colonial to early independent times (1770-1815). After reviewing the assimilation of modern science into scholastic teaching and the articulation of reason and religious authority, the article considers the handling of the early history of the Earth in the theses of scholastic teachers and in the geological memoirs of the naturalist priest from Montevideo Dámaso Larrañaga. The core of the paper is devoted to the treatment of natural theology in Larrañaga’s Diary of Natural History and in the speeches and documents of enlightened crown bureaucrats. The conclusion is reached that the harmonious character of the relationships between science and religion in this period and location harboured tensions (such as the blurred frontier between natural theology and natural religion) which could be accounted for in terms of the inherent inconsistencies in the programme of Catholic Enlightenment.

KEYWORDS:

• Catholic natural theology
• Catholic Enlightenment
• science and religion in Iberian America
• scholasticism and modern science

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Marcos Estrada, ‘La Casa de Altolaguirre’, Genealogía, 12 (1957), 139–51.

2 See the inventory of the instruments in Anales de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Segundo período, ed. by Zenón Bustos, 3 vols. (Córdoba: Casa editora Domenici and Tipografía La Industrial, 1901-1910), iii (1910), 305–329.

3 The Art of Teaching Physics. The Eighteenth-Century Demonstration Apparatus of Jean Antoine Nollet, ed. by Lewis Pyenson and Jean-François Gauvin (Montreal: Septentrion, 2002).

4 Miguel de Asúa, La ciencia de Mayo. La cultura científica en el Río de la Plata, 1800–1820 (Buenos Aires: FCE, 2010), pp. 78–80.

5 Anales, ed. by Bustos, iii (1910), 332–35 (8 February 1802).

6 Anales, ed. by Bustos, iii (1910), 336–345 (pp. 340–41) (26 February 1802)

7 Anales, ed. by Bustos, iii (1910), 347–52 (p. 348) (28 September 1802).

8 Anales, ed. by Bustos, iii (1910), 352–61 (25 February 1803).

9 Miguel de Asúa, ‘Three Centuries of Scientific Culture and Catholicism in Argentina’, in Rethinking History, Science, and Religion. An Exploration of Conflict and the Complexity Principle, ed. by Bernard Lightman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), pp. 37–49.

10 David Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987. From Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 39–78.

11 Jeremy Adelman, Republic of Capital. Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 19–108.

12 See Adrian J. Pearce, The Origins of Bourbon Reform in Spanish South America, 1700–1763 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Allan J. Kuethe and Kenneth J. Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, War and the Bourbon Reforms, 1713–1796 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

13 Jean Sarrailh, L'Espagne éclairée de la deuxième moitié du XVIII^e siècle (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1954); Richard Herr, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958); Gabriel B. Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and Its Empire, 1759–1808 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

14 Andrea J. Smidt, ‘“Luces por la Fe”: The Cause of Catholic Enlightenment in 18th-Century Spain’, in A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, ed. by Ulrich L. Lehner and Michael O'Neill Printy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 403–52; Ulrich L. Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

15 César A. García Belsunce, Buenos Aires y su gente, 1810–1830 (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1976), p. 62.

16 John Lynch, ‘From Independence to National Organization’, in Argentine since Independence, ed. by Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 1–46 (pp. 1-2); Susan M. Socolow, The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1778–1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

17 John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808-1826, 2nd edn (New York: Norton, 1986), pp. 38-127; Tulio Halperín Donghi, Revolución y Guerra. Formación de una elite dirigente en Argentina, 3rd edn (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2014).

18 Eugene Shiels S.J., King and Church: The Rise and Fall of the Patronato Real (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1961); Austen Ivereigh, Catholicism and Politics in Argentina, 1810–1960 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 39–43.

19 Susana Bianchi, Historia de las religiones en la Argentina. Las minorías religiosas (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2004), pp. 17–39.

20 For an earlier period, see Ana Schaposchnik, The Lima Inquisition: The Plight of Crypto-Jews in Seventeenth-Century Peru (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015). See also José Toribio Medina, La Inquisición en las Provincias del Plata (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Elzeviriana, 1899), pp. 259–68.

21 Ernesto J. Maeder, ‘Libros, bibliotecas, control de lecturas e imprentas rioplatenses en los siglos XVI al XVIII’, Teología, 77 (2001), 5–24.

22 Tulio Halperín Donghi, ‘Un estilo de vida barroco’, in idem, El Río de la Plata al comenzar el siglo XIX (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1961), pp. 70–83.

23 Gauvin Alexander Bailey, The Spiritual Rococo. Decor and Divinity from the Salons of Paris to the Missions of Patagonia (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 250–70.

24 Los curas de la revolución, ed. Nancy Calvo, Roberto Di Stefano, and Klaus Gallo (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2002).

25 See, for example, John Tate Lanning, Academic Culture in the Spanish Colonies (London: Oxford University Press, 1940); idem, ‘Tradition and Enlightenment in the Spanish Colonial Universities’, Cahiers d’histoire mondiale, 10 (1967), 705–21; Walter B. Redmont, Bibliography of the Philosophy in the Iberian Colonies of America (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972); Mundialización de la ciencia y cultura nacional, ed. by A. Lafuente, A. Elena, and M. L. Ortega (Madrid: Universidad Autónoma-Doce Calles, 1993).

26 For the University of Chuquisaca (Charcas), see Clément Thibaud, La Academia Carolina y la independencia de América. Los abogados de Chuquisaca (1776–1809) (Sucre: Editorial Charcas, 2010).

27 Juan M. Garro, Bosquejo histórico de la Universidad de Córdoba (Buenos Aires: Biedma, 1882); Anales, ed. by Bustos.

28 Gregorio Funes, Plan de estudios para la Universidad de Córdoba (Córdoba: Imprenta de la Universidad, 1832).

29 Juan Pabst, ‘Introducción’, in Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UBA), Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Documentos para la Historia Argentina, tomo XVIII, Cultura. La enseñanza durante la época colonial (1771-1810) (Buenos Aires: Peuser, 1924), pp. xi–ccxii (pp. cxxvii–cli).

30 Celina Lértora Mendoza, ‘La enseñanza elemental y universitaria’, in Nueva Historia de la Nación Argentina, ed. by Academia Nacional de la Historia (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1999), pp. 369–402.

31 Asúa, La ciencia de Mayo, pp. 19–48.

32 Guillermo Furlong S.J., Nacimiento y desarrollo de la filosofía en el Río de la Plata, 1536–1810 (Buenos Aires: Kraft, 1952); Celina Lértora Mendoza, La enseñanza de la filosofía en tiempos de la colonia (Buenos Aires: Fecic, 1979); José Carlos Chiaramonte, La Ilustración en el Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2007).

33 Buenos Aires, Fondo Antiguo de la Compañía de Jesús en Argentina (FACJA), Benito Riva, [Cursus physicae]. De mundo et caelo, fol. 1^r.

34 Celina Lértora Mendoza, ‘Introducción de las teorías newtonianas en el Río de la Plata’, in Mundialización de la ciencia, ed. by Lafuente, Elena, and Ortega, pp. 307–23; idem, ‘Nollet y la difusión de Newton en el Río de la Plata’, in The Spread of the Scientific Revolution in the European Periphery, ed. by Celina Lértora Mendoza, Efthymios Nicolaïdis, and Jan Vandersmissen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 123–36. The contrast with the reception of Newton in other centres of Spanish America is striking, see for example Luis C. Arboleda and Diana Soto Arango, ‘The Theories of Copernicus and Newton in the Viceroyship of Nueva Granada and the Audiencia de Charcas during the 18th Century’, in Universities and Science in the Early Modern Period, ed. by Mordechai Feingold and Víctor Navarro-Brotons (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), pp. 289–309.

35 Miguel de Asúa, ‘Acerca de la biografía, obra y actividad médica de Thomas Falkner S. J. (1707-1748)’, Stromata, 62 (2006), 227–54.

36 The book Suárez translated was Jacob de Castro Sarmento, Theorica verdadeira das marés (London: [n.pub.], 1737); it was through this author that the Jesuit communicated his observations on the satellites of Jupiter to the Royal Society, see Miguel de Asúa, Science in the Vanished Arcadia. Knowledge of Nature on the Jesuit Missions of Paraguay and Río de la Plata (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 222–53.

37 For the reception of Copernicanism in Río de la Plata, see Miguel de Asúa, ‘“Los phisicos modernos quasi todos son copernicanos”. Copernicanism and its Discontents in Colonial Río de la Plata’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 48 (2017), 160–79.

38 Riva, Cursus, fol. 13^r. This is one of several arguments against gravity. Riva’s discussion on Newton’s natural philosophy ocuppies fols 10^r-15^v of the manuscript.

39 Riva, Cursus, fols. 314^v-315^r.

40 Francisco J. Martínez de Aldunate and José Elías del Carmen Pereyra, Conclusiones sobre toda la filosofía (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de los Niños Expósitos, 1790), in Enrique Martínez Paz, ‘Una tesis de filosofía del siglo XVIII de la Universidad de Córdoba’, Revista de la Universidad de Córdoba, 6 (1919), 228–86 (pp. 277–78). All translations from Spanish and Latin in this paper are mine.

41 The oscillatory system, the work of an obscure Spanish author, proposed that the Earth was at the centre of the universe and subjected to oscillatory movement, see Joseph Santiago de Casas, Relox universal de pendola y en él nueva idea de la estructura del universo (Madrid: Herederos de la Viuda de Juan García Infanzón, 1758).

42 “Copernicanum systhema adversatur apertissimis divinarum Scripturarum sententiis, nec veritati consentaneum est, nec ut tale propugnari potest”. Buenos Aires, FACJA, Cayetano Rodríguez, Secunda phisicae pars seu Phisica Particularis, Liber I, quaestio 7 (not foliated).

43 Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Defending Copernicus and Galileo. Critical Reasoning in the Two Affairs (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), pp. 179–85.

44 Ludovico García de Loydi, Una luz en la manzana de las luces: Chorroarín (Buenos Aires: Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Secretaría de Cultura, 1973); Manuel J. Sanguinetti, Chorroarín. El prócer olvidado (Buenos Aires: Stella, 1984).

45 See the list of books on science in Asúa, La ciencia de Mayo, pp. 201–203.

46 Luis José Chorroarín, ‘Curso de Lógica’, in La enseñanza de la filosofía en la época colonial, trans. by Juan Chiabra (Buenos Aires: Coni, 1911), pp. 1–171 (pp. 142–45).

47 The advice to put aside Augustine’s negation of the antipodes as an example of following the natural sciences in cases of evident fact or established proof could be found in the commentary on Genesis of the sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit Benito Pereyra, see Richard J. Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), pp. 20–21, note 24.

48 Blackwell, Galileo, pp. 11–14.

49 See Ernan McMullin, ‘Galileo’s Theological Venture’, in The Church and Galileo, ed. by Ernan McMullin (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 88–116.

50 Martínez de Aldunate and Pereyra, Conclusiones sobre toda la filosofía, in Martínez Paz, ‘Una tesis de filosofía’, p. 275.

51 Gregorio García de Tagle, Dámaso Larrañaga, and Melchor Fernández, Theses ex universa philosophia (Buenos Aires: Apud Typographiam Regiam Parvulorum Orphanorum, 1792), in Juan C. Zuretti, ‘Tesis sobre filosofía y ciencias, defendidas en 1792 en el Real Colegio de San Carlos de Buenos Aires’, Revista de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, 44 (1948), 515–53 (p. 541).

52 Rodríguez, Secunda physice pars, Liber I, quaestio 3 (not foliated).

53 Juan M. Fernández, Conclusiones publico-historico-dogmatico-scholastico-phisico-theologicae ex praecipuis Sacrae Theologiae tractatibus depromptae (Buenos Aires: Apud Typographiam Regiam Parvulorum Orphanorum, 1803), p. 8.

54 Martínez de Aldunate and Pereyra, Conclusiones sobre toda la filosofía, in Martínez Paz, ‘Una tesis de filosofía’, p. 281.

55 José Valentín Gómez, Conclusiones ex universa philosophia (Buenos Aires: Apud Regiam Parvulorum Orphanorum Typographiam, 1802), pp. 16–17. Valentín Gómez, born in Buenos Aires, studied in San Carlos, Córdoba (Theology) and Chuquisaca (Civil and Canon Law); he was ordained in 1799.

56 Anastasio M. Suárez, Asserta ex universa philosophia (Buenos Aires: Apud Typographiam Regiam Parvulorum Orphanorum, 1792), p. 8.

57 García de Tagle, Larrañaga, and Fernández, Theses ex universa philosophia, in Zuretti, ‘Tesis sobre filosofía y ciencias’, p. 547.

58 Fernández Conclusiones publico-historico, pp. 9–10.

59 See for instance, Fortunatus a Brixia, Philosophia sensuum mechanica … Tomus quartus (Venice: Ex Typographia Remondiniana, 1755), pp. 5–26; Joseph A. Ferrari, Philosophia peripatetica … Tomus tertius (Venice: apud Thomas Bettinelli, 1754), pp. 13–16 and 156; Antonio Goudin, Philosophia iuxta inconcusa, tutissimaque Divi Thomae Dogmata … Tomus tertius (Venice: Typis Dominici Lovisa, 1729), pp. 11–14.

60 For Larrañaga, see Rafael Algorta Camusso, El padre Dámaso Antonio Larrañaga (Montevideo: Barreiro y Ramos, 1922); Alfredo R. Castellanos, ‘La biblioteca científica del Padre Larrañaga’, Revista Histórica [Montevideo] 16 (1949), 589–626; Edmundo Favaro, Dámaso Antonio Larrañaga. Su vida y su época (Montevideo: Universidad de la República, 1950); Miguel A. Klappenbach, Larrañaga y el Viejo Museo, Publicación Extra del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural y Antropología, no. 53 (Montevideo: MNHN, 2004). For his writings, see Dámaso Larrañaga, Escritos, 5 vols. (Montevideo: Instituto Histórico y Geográfico del Uruguay, 1922-30).

61 Asúa, Ciencia de Mayo, pp. 117–29.

62 Larrañaga to the Apostolic Vicar in Montevideo (28 October 1837), in Alfredo R. Castellanos, ‘Contribución al estudio de las ideas del Pbro. Dámaso Larrañaga’, Revista Histórica [Montevideo], 17 (1951), 1–118 (p. 44).

63 Miguel de Asúa, ‘Linneo entre nosotros’, Ciencia Hoy, 18.104 (2008), 19–27. Haenke, the editor of the eight edition of Linnaeus’s Genera plantarum (1789) lived in the Andean region of Cochabamba (present-day Bolivia) and died in 1816.

64 Larrañaga to Bonpland (26 February 1818), in Larrañaga, Escritos, iii (1924), 260.

65 Dámaso Larrañaga, ‘Memoria geológica sobre la reciente formación del Río de la Plata deducida de sus conchas fósiles’, in idem, Escritos, iii (1924), 7–20.

66 George W. Maton, ‘Description of some new species of Testacea’, Transactions of the Linnean Society 10 (1811), 325–33.

67 Larrañaga, ‘Memoria’, in idem, Escritos, iii (1924), 9.

68 Larrañaga, ‘Memoria’, in idem, Escritos, iii (1924), 13; cf. Cuvier, Discours sur les révolutions du globe, ed. by Paul Bory (Paris: Berche and Tralin, 1881), p. 173.

69 Larrañaga, ‘Memoria’, in idem, Escritos, iii (1924), 10–11.

70 Dámaso Larrañaga, ‘Tierra’, in idem, Escritos, iii (1924), 29–36 (p. 30); cf. Richard Kirwan, ‘On the Primitive State of the Globe and Its Subsequent Catastrophe’, Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy 6 (1797), 233-308. For Kirwan’s history of the earth, see Charles C. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), pp. 49-56; Martin J. S. Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time. The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005), pp. 334–37; David Oldroyd and Sally Newcomb, ‘Richard Kirwan (1733-1812)’, Earth Sciences History, 31 (2012), 287–314.

71 Larrañaga, ‘Tierra’, in idem, Escritos, iii (1924), 36.

72 [Dámaso Larrañaga], ‘Note sur le Megaterium de Cuvier, l’Hydromis, et une variété nouvelle de Maïs’, Bulletin des Sciences (de la Société Philomatique de Paris) 1823, p. 83. The letter was reproduced in the chapter devoted to the megatherium, in the third edition of Cuvier’s Recherches, see ‘Extrait d’une lettre de D. Damasio [sic] Larrañaga, curé de Montevideo, à M. Auguste de Saint-Hilaire’, in Georges Cuvier, Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, 3rd edn, 5 vols. (Paris and Amsterdam: G. Dufour and E. d’Ocagne, 1821-1824), v.1 (1823), 191. Larrañaga found the rests of a glyptodont. See also Irina Podgormy, ‘Fossil dealers, the practices of comparative anatomy and British diplomacy in Latin America, 1820-1840’, British Journal for the History of Science, 46 (2013), 647–74.

73 Buenos Aires, Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana Emilio Ravignani, University of Buenos Aires, Dámaso Larrañaga, Diario de Historia Natural, 1808-1814. It has been edited as Dámaso Larrañaga, Diario de Historia Natural: 1808-1814, ed. by Ariadna Islas (Montevideo: Biblioteca Artigas, 2015) and idem, Diario de Historia Natural: 1813-1824, ed. by Ariadna Islas (Montevideo: Biblioteca Artigas, 2017); this second part is also in Larrañaga, Escritos, i (1922), 1–122. In this article, Iquote from the manuscript.

74 Larrañaga, Diario, fol. 83^r.

75 Larrañaga, Diario, fol. 100^v.

76 Larrañaga, Diario, fol. 103^r.

77 Larrañaga, Diario, fol. 127^r.

78 William Mavor, Natural History for the Use of Schools (London: Printed for R. Phillips, 1800), p. 200.

79 I am referring to Linnaeus’s ‘economy of nature’, see Carolus Linnaeus, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Natural History, Husbandry, and Physick, ed. by Benjamin Stillingfleet, 3rd edn (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1762), pp. 37-129; cf. Charles H. Pence and Daniel G. Swaim, ‘The economy of nature: the structure of evolution in Linnaeus, Darwin, and the modern synthesis’, European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (2018), 435–54.

80 Larrañaga, Diario, fols 201^v-202^r.

81 Larrañaga, Diario, fols 487^r-487^v; 488^v.

82 Larrañaga, Diario, fol. 488^v.

83 Larrañaga, Diario, fols 138^v-139^r.

84 Larrañaga, Diario, fol. 143^v. Larrañaga’s position on the issue of classification was unstable to say the least. In a 1821 letter to Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, the former claimed he had known the French-Spanish botanist Louis Née and other ‘blind sectarian followers of Linnaeus’, who had not paid much attention to the ‘natural method’ of botanical classification (for which he meant Antoine L. de Jussieu’s system); see Larrañaga to Saint-Hilaire (16 February 1821), in Larrañaga, Escritos, iii (1924), 280–82. Larrañaga made extensive notes on Cuvier’s comparative anatomy and drafted tables of the mammals of Río de la Plata classified according to Cuvier’s system; see Larrañaga, Escritos, ii (1923), 297–340. In his lecture on the occasion of the inauguration of the Public Library of Montevideo, he made clear his eclecticism when praising ‘Linnaeus, [nature's] most beloved, most faithful son, whom she has revealed all her arcane secrets; Buffon, the French Pliny, her eloquent eulogizer’. Dámaso Larrañaga, ‘Oración inaugural’, in idem, Escritos, iii (1924), 135–46, (p. 143); cf. Phillip R. Sloan, ‘The Buffon-Linnaeus Controversy’, Isis, 67 (1976), 356–75.

85 Larrañaga, Diario, fol. 376^v, cf. [St. Ildephonsus], “Opusculum de partu Virginis” in SS. PP. Toletanorum quotquot extant Opera, ed. by Francisco de Lorenzana, 3 vols. (Madrid: Joaquín Ibarra, 1782-1793), i (1785), 294–317 (p. 295). The work is attributed to Paschasius Radbertus of Corbie.

86 [Mariano Moreno], ‘El editor a los habitantes de esta América’, in Del Contrato Social … por el ciudadano de Ginebra Juan Jacobo Rousseau (Buenos Aires: Real Imprenta de Niños Expósitos, 1810), no pagination.

87 Luis R. Gondra, Las ideas económicas de Manuel Belgrano (Buenos Aires: Rosso, 1923), p. 71; cf. Oreste Popescu, Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 157–71.

88 [Manuel Belgrano], ‘Educación’, Correo de Comercio 17, 23 June 1810, p. 136 and 18, 30 June 1810, pp. 137–41.

89 [Manuel Belgrano], ‘Metafísica’, Correo de Comercio, 22, 28 July 1810, pp. 174–76 and 23, 4 August 1810, pp. 177–78.

90 Enrique Udaondo, Diccionario Biográfico Colonial Argentino (Buenos Aires: Huarpes, 1945), pp. 245–46; Antonio Lafuente ‘Las Academias Militares y la inversión en ciencia en la España ilustrada (1750-1760)’, Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientarumque Historiam Illustrandam, 2 (1982), 193–209.

91 Pedro Cerviño, ‘Prolusión académica. Discurso en que se procura que para ser buen piloto es necesaria la astronomía’, in Nicolás Besio Moreno, Las fundaciones matemáticas de Belgrano (Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional Belgraniano, 1995), pp. 173–78 (p. 176). The Academy of Mathematics mentioned here is different from the one created in 1810 and mentioned above.

92 Cerviño, ‘Prolusión académica’, in Besio Moreno, Las fundaciones matemáticas, p. 178.

93 Pedro Cerviño, ‘Discurso o memoria sobre la importancia de la Academia establecida por el Consulado de Buenos Aires’, in Besio Moreno, Las fundaciones matemáticas, pp. 182–94 (p. 185).

94 Cerviño, ‘Discurso o memoria’, in Besio Moreno, Las fundaciones matemáticas, p. 186.

95 Pedro Cerviño, ‘El tridente de Neptuno es el cetro del mundo’, in Besio Moreno, Las fundaciones matemáticas, pp. 159–73 (pp. 161–62).

96 Cerviño, ‘El tridente de Neptuno’, in Besio Moreno, Las fundaciones matemáticas, p. 165.

97 Manuel José de Lavardén, Nuevo aspecto del comercio en el Río de la Plata, ed. by Enrique Wedovoy (Buenos Aires: Raigal, 1955).

98 See Julio Caillet-Bois and Roberto F. Giusti, ‘Manuel José de Lavardén’, in Historia de la literatura argentina, ed. by Rafael A. Arrieta, 6 vols. (Buenos Aires: Peuser, 1958-1960), ed. by Rafael A. Arrieta, i (1958), 239–49.

99 Quoted in Furlong, La filosofía en el Río de la Plata, pp. 415–16.

100 See Juan M. Gutiérrez, ‘D. Juan Manuel de Lavardén’, in idem, Estudios biográficos y críticos (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Siglo, 1865), pp. 35–128 (p. 50). Gutiérrez mixes up the biographies of Juan Manuel Lavardén and his son Manuel José.

101 Quoted in Furlong, La filosofía en el Río de la Plata, p. 415.

102 Furlong, La filosofía en el Río de la Plata, pp. 416-20. The work has been attributed to Robert Dodsley and to Lord Chesterfield, but current criticism set for the former, see the discussion in Harry M. Solomon, Robert Dodsley. Creating the New Age of Print (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), pp. 300–301, note 69.

103 Lavardén to Manuel Basavilbaso, 3 January 1789, in Chiaramonte, La Ilustración en el Río de la Plata, pp. 208–11.

104 There are exceptions, see the historical essays in Latin American Perspectives on Science and Religion, ed. by Ignacio Silva (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014).

105 Miguel de Asúa, ‘The “Conflict Thesis” and Positivist History of Science. A View from the Periphery’, Zygon, 53 (2018), 1131–48.

106 Miguel de Asúa, ‘Science, Catholicism, and the French (Latin) pattern of secularization. The case of Argentina (1820-1958)’, Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses (in press).

107 I am taking ‘harmony’ in Brooke’s sense, see John H. Brooke, Science and Religion. Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 42–50.

108 Blackwell, Galileo, pp. 12 and 21.

109 Brooke, Science and Religion, pp. 197–98.

110 Noël-Antoine Pluche, Espectáculo de la naturaleza, trans. by Esteban Terreros, 16 vols. (Madrid: Gabriel Ramírez, 1753-1755).

111 Teodoro de Almeida, Recreaçao filosofica, 10 vols. (Lisbon: Officina de Miguel Rodrigues, Regia Officina Typographica, 1780-1791); Benito J. Feijóo, Teatro Crítico Universal, 9 vols. (1726-1740) and Cartas eruditas y curiosas, 5 vols. (1742-1760). For natural philosophy in Spain, see Federico A. López Silvestre, ‘Dios y la naturaleza. El desarrollo de la Teología Natural en España y en Galicia en el s. XVIII’, Semata. Ciencias sociais e Humanidades, 14 (2002), 417–53.

112 José Torre Revello, ‘La biblioteca que poseía en Potosí don Pedro de Altolaguirre (1799)’, Historia [Buenos Aires] 1 (1956), 153–62.

113 Asúa, Ciencia de Mayo, p. 59.

114 César A. García Belsunce, Pertenencias extrañas. Libros en Buenos Aires en 1815 (Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 2013), pp. 127 and 170–71.

115 Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, ‘Oración pronunciada en el Instituto Asturiano sobre el estudio de las ciencias naturales’, in idem, Obras publicadas e inéditas, 2 vols. (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1858-1859), i (1858), 335–342.

116 Martínez de Aldunate and Pereyra, Conclusiones sobre toda la filosofía, in Martínez Paz, ‘Una tesis de filosofía’, p. 265.

117 Rome, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Paraquaria 16, Sánchez Labrador, Paraguay natural ilustrado (Ravenna, 1771), p. iv.

118 Rome, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Paraquaria 19, Sánchez Labrador, Paraguay natural ilustrado (Ravenna, 1771), p. 174.

119 Rome, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Paraquaria 19, Sánchez Labrador, Paraguay natural ilustrado (Ravenna, 1771), p. 174.

120 Daniel Mornet, Les sciences de la nature en France au XVIII^e siècle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1911), pp. 35–36.

121 Vera Blinn Reber, British Mercantile Houses in Buenos Aires, 1810–1880 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); David Rock, The British in Argentina. Commerce, Settlers, and Power, 1800–2000 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 1–41; Jacques Duprey, Voyage aux origines françaises de l'Uruguay (Montevideo: Instituto Histórico y Geográfico del Uruguay, 1952).