Translating Nature recasts the era of early modern science as an age
not of discovery but of translation. As Iberian and Protestant empires
expanded across the Americas, colonial travelers encountered,
translated, and reinterpreted Amerindian traditions of
knowledge--knowledge that was later translated by the British, reading
from Spanish and Portuguese texts. Translations of natural and
ethnographic knowledge therefore took place across multiple
boundaries--linguistic, cultural, and geographical--and produced,
through their transmissions, the discoveries that characterize the early
modern era. In the process, however, the identities of many of the
original bearers of knowledge were lost or hidden in translation.
The essays in Translating Nature explore the crucial role that the
translation of philosophical and epistemological ideas played in
European scientific exchanges with American Indians; the ethnographic
practices and methods that facilitated appropriation of Amerindian
knowledge; the ideas and practices used to record, organize, translate,
and conceptualize Amerindian naturalist knowledge; and the persistent
presence and influence of Amerindian and Iberian naturalist and medical
knowledge in the development of early modern natural history.
Contributors highlight the global nature of the history of science, the
mobility of knowledge in the early modern era, and the foundational
roles that Native Americans, Africans, and European Catholics played in
this age of translation.
Contributors: Ralph Bauer, Daniela Bleichmar, William Eamon, Ruth
Hill, Jaime Marroquín Arredondo, Sara Miglietti, Luis Millones Figueroa,
Marcy Norton, Christopher Parsons, Juan Pimentel, Sarah Rivett, John
Slater.
