THE CIRCULATION OF SCIENTIFIC

KNOWLEDGE:
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
SCHOLARS AND PRINTERS
(NEW SPAIN, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY)
MAURICIO SÁNCHEZ MENCHERO

ABSTRACT. The representation generated within a specific historical context—

religious or cultural—promotes and inhibits certain cognitive developments.
In this we follow constructivist epistemology, who studies history as a labora-
tory of knowledge. Hence the interest to locate, contextualize and compare
cognitive processes in different eras and cultures. The historical narrative
should explain the spatial and temporal distribution of knowledge, for exam-
ple, between New Spain, the metropolis and the Europe of the eighteenth
century. Here it is investigated how the scientific information was obtained,
managed and used by the readers and writers, appealing to their material
means of communication.

KEY WORDS. Circulation, knowledge, symbolic representations, cognitive de-

velopments, New Spain, eighteenth century, scholars, printers.

1.
Among the adventures narrated in a novel by Mexican author José Joaquín
Fernández de Lizardi, we find the protagonist as a doctor in the city of
Tula, where he achieved certain renown and made a comfortable living.
Then the arrival of an epidemic upset everything: “It came to pass in that
town [...] a devil of a plague, that I never understood; because the people
taken ill were smitten by a sudden fever accompanied by retching and
delirium, and in four or five days they succumbed.” In vain the new doctor
tried to deal with the epidemic through purges and books: “I read—re-
mark the protagonist—the Tissot, Madame Fouquet, Gregorio López, the
Buchan, the Venegas i and all the available authors of compendia; but it
was no use; the afflicted died by the thousands ii.” So our character was
forced to flee the town as best he could.

Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades, Universidad

Nacional Autónoma de México. / mauricio_merino@yahoo.com.mx

Ludus Vitalis, vol. XXI, num. 39, 2013, pp. 97-109.

98 / LUDUS VITALIS / vol. XXI / num. 39 / 2013

Until the nineteenth century, it was customary for a doctor starting out
in his profession to win over his clientele by prescribing the ailing medi-
cines that, although they did not cure them at all, at least did not have an
unpleasant taste iii. In New Spain, for example, “martial tablets” or “subtle
iron” were produced, which boasted a “color, odor, taste (to) reconcile the
most delicate of senses,” such as those of “squeamish sick people, who
have the bad habit of suffering horror, revulsion and disgust for all kinds
of medication without exception iv.” In principle, those compounds were
prepared according to the method of José Ignacio Bartolache of New
Spain, and sold in a drugstore in Mexico City.
In any case, the novelty of these “martial tablets” arrived in New Spain
twenty years later, as they were already being used in Europe v thanks to
the formula created by the Genovese doctor Facinio Gibelli. However, the
compound had been “considerably advanced and improved,” according
to Bartolache. In addition, the novo-Hispanic drafted a guide to the use of
these tablets, which he translated into Nahuatl for use by indigenous
peoples. Bartolache so trusted his compound that he did not hesitate to
call for public sessions of the members of the Protomedicato (medical
board), who rose up against him because of the new medicine. Even so,
although he was not forced to flee, as was Fernández de Lizardi’s charac-
ter, the novo-Hispanic saw his tablets fail and his debts mount.
What interests us about this anecdote is to show, through the method-
ology of cultural history,

how the specific and innovative appropriations of the particular readers [...]
depend, in general, on the effects of meaning constructed by the works
themselves; on the uses and meanings imposed by the forms of publication
and circulation, and the skills, categories and representations that govern the
relationship each community has with written culture vi.

In this instance, we are attempting to formulate questions that will explain

how knowledge circulated between Europe and America in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries vii. That is to say, what medical news
Bartolache read and how he made these his own, since he considered
himself a public servant; what was the circuit of novelties that made it
possible for some news to reach him and some not; how could he distin-
guish, within the news arriving from Europe, what was scientific progress
and what was mere charlatanry; what was the material presentation—pa-
per size, typography, illustrations—of these novelties, and if he aspired to
keep up to date through his readings.
One possible answer to these questions comes from an analysis of
scientific books in their materiality and content. Based on the contribu-
tions of cultural history, we can rethink the history of science. This is an
 SÁNCHEZ MENCHERO / CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE / 99

appropriate means of studying the practices and representations made,

for example, by educated novo-Hispanics like José Ignacio Bartolache.
Hence, it is crucial to analyze the keys to the readings of this novo-His-
panic doctor based on his books—manifest in his library and his writings—
that became materialized in his printed works viii. Bartolache wrote and
published at his own expense the medical newsletter Mercurio Volante. To
do so, he hired the printer and surveyor Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros,
whose entry into the world of printing was purely circumstantial. The new
editor was unaware of the art of printing, but the commercial success of
his Pronósticos (Forecasts), which he issued every year since 1751, led him
to try his hand at the printing industry. Thus, in early 1761, Felipe, together
with his brother Cristóbal, acquired “3 700 pounds of type-letters,” which
be bought from don Francisco Leñero for 2 000 pesos.
After ten years of constant use, Zúñiga used those same molds to print
the sixteen issues of the Mercurio with which—in Bartolache’s words—
”one writes and reads in print and shakes the cobwebs from the printing
boxes ix.” If the spiders disappeared, other scratches are visible in the
doctor’s gazettes: the worn type, bad cuts as the paper was refined, and
even lack of ink on some of them. It was a broadsheet for popular
distribution that cost half a real each. All of these material components aid
or hinder the reading of printed texts. It was not until 1777, that Zúñiga
was able to start to use a new press which he bought and had to ship from
Spain. Thereafter, with more experience and new equipment, Zúñiga
published for José Antonio de Alzate, another scientist of New Spain, the
high quality Gacetas (Gazettes), to which he added, for example, very well
printed engravings.
We must remember that most of the authors left their manuscripts in
the hands of the printer and his typesetters and compositors, or, in the
best of cases, in the hands of the proofreader, if there was one. “It is no
accident then that most of our writers have neglected to preserve their manu-
scripts x.” Although in the eighteenth century, authorship achieved a
prominent role, still,

[...] as a general rule, others, and not him [the author], made a clean copy for
the printers, following certain conventions; others, and not him, transferred
the text to the mechanical system of moving type; others, and not him,
disposed and set the format, appearance, placement on the page, chose the
type, decoration, illustrations according to precise strategies of dissemination
and specific reading programming, control of which remained beyond the
author’s reach. And this is not all: commonly, the new productive process and
the laws of the market also influenced the rhythms and modalities of the
elaboration of the text, making it necessary to endure mandatory deadlines
and pauses between editions, printings, launchings and their times xi.
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2.
The field of history of science has, for quite some time, privileged the study
of scientists and their works. Yet, the analysis of their works has focused
on them only as containers for ideas, regardless of how they were written,
printed or disseminated through books or periodical publications. How-
ever, in recent decades, research has broadened to include, for example,
the study of how these were received by the public.
Many of the new theoretical and methodological contributions have
come from cultural history, the sociology of knowledge, and epistemol-
ogy, which have sought to rethink history of science. Therefore, it is not
only a question of explaining, for example, how the learned produced
science and great ideas, this is, the climactic situations where the author
alone cried “eureka!” It is a matter of reconstructing temporal and spatial
contexts from everyday life and social history in order to discover, for
example, the contributions of artisans who made scientific instruments
and laboratory assistants who carried out the experiments xii.
The goal is to show how scientific knowledge has been transferred,
translated, innovated and constructed xiii. Thus, the focus must be en-
riched by multidisciplinary approaches xiv that study periods of the past
based on new questions: what works were produced and how—as in our
work—by the scholars of New Spain in collaboration with printers? What
were the results of the printing of books and periodical publications in
New Spain? What socio-cultural factors conditioned the results of the
dissemination of scientific ideas?
Now then, why is it important to study the processes set into motion
by the circulation of scientific knowledge during the eighteenth century?
First of all, because understanding the goals—conscious or not—of the
dissemination of thinkers and printers of New Spain can show how
knowledge was limited by socio-cultural policies adopted by the monar-
chy, the church or the university. Clearly any act of communication
includes or excludes audiences. Then we must broadly and systematically
examine scientific practices to see whether or not they had consequences
regarding to the dynamics translation and transmission of ideas, and what
these results were. We have to establish the conditions and circumstances
that favored certain effects, as well as the processes that led scientific
developments to have greater or lesser dissemination and impact.
In any case, what is the purpose of this examination of the consequences
of the circulation of knowledge in eighteenth century New Spain? Basi-
cally, to understand and contribute to a better understanding of one of the
least studied aspects of the history of science that is a basic component of
scientific creation and dissemination. In addition, it is worth noting that
not all circulation of knowledge has been equal. The possibility for com-
munication in the seventeenth and eighteenth century was not the same
 SÁNCHEZ MENCHERO / CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE / 101

as in the nineteenth, nor were the conditions in Europe equal to those of

America or Asia. Thus, it seems necessary to closely examine in what
context and through what means these occurred, in order to discover what
socio-cultural factors were the conditioners and so gain a more complete
picture of scientific practice in eighteenth century New Spain xv.
Therefore, when studying society at a given historical moment, the
researcher must ask what basic intellectual categories—such as space,
time, good, evil, and so forth—structure awareness in order to find out

to what extent these categories are linked with its existence, what horizons
[limits] of the field of consciousness they give rise to, and finally, what infor-
mation lies beyond those horizons and cannot be received without a funda-
mental social transformation xvi.

3.
We begin with a basic question: “How do human groups represent and
present the world around them xvii?” Moreover, representations that have
to consider its permanence and changes over time. More specifically
framed within our project, how do these representations affect the devel-
opment and circulation of scientific thought in a period such as the
eighteenth century xviii?
Of course, we must realize that in studying human representations
there are some structures that resist movement and evolution, but even
these permanent arrangements experience flows and currents that affect
opinions and moral values. It is up to the researcher to determine and
point out the orientation and strength of these social representations by
choosing a long term period and through a comparative study in various
scales of interaction that are social, racial, generational and gender related.
In our case, the eighteenth century is more than justified since we are
dealing with a history that must account for the process by which enlight-
ened institutions concerned with scientific education and dissemination
were created and developed, together with their agents and specialized
discourse. In addition, it is a period of vigorous growth in the practice
of reading and writing in New Spain, with a parallel increase in the
production and dissemination of writings. This is a privileged moment to
study the processes of cultural transformation that arise from the circula-
tion of knowledge. Historians are interested in cultural exchanges, so our
work is an attempt to examine cultural exchanges in their various expres-
sions xix.
We must remember that we are in a period that produces an imbalance
between the increase and use of the written word and writings on an
upper level of society, and the development of teaching and learning on
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a low one. We must bear in mind that written culture can be viewed from
several spheres, such as race and gender. Cities witnessed the rise of an
intermediate social class, whose culture was between written and oral,
made up mostly of guilds of artisans and tradesmen. This social space
includes professional practices that were disqualified, even denounced
and persecuted, by orthodox religion and secular authorities. For example,
agents specializing in conceiving, printing or divulging pamphlets on
forecasts or calendars that people bought and consulted for practical
knowledge applied to agricultural, medical or navigational chores.
A cultural object such as a book calls for a multiple historical analysis
on each and every one of the various stages of gestation, creation and
consumption. In the first place, considered as merchandise, the book has
been studied from the productive sphere: the location and context of
workshops, commercial routes and volume of trade. This dimension in-
cludes the social sphere that runs from the author to the book producers
and sellers: apprentices, typesetters and pressmen, master printers, book
sellers and editors. This stage of distribution and commerce has inspired
works on the networks of trafficking, contraband and localization of
supply and demand of the markets xxi.
In second place, there are some studies that stress the materiality of the
texts. This means that together with the intention of the author or editor,
the research includes the features of the book—format, page layout,
pagination modes, typographical conventions—as signs of an expressive
function aimed at controlling the reception, qualifying the text, structuring
the unconscious reading xxii (or listening). Likewise, in the sphere of editing
and printing, an analysis is made on the effects of the manual press and
its specific work models that modify the texts it produces. That is to say,
what changes between the original handed in by the author and the
printed work? What truth or falsehood is manifested in the printed texts xxiii?
From his part, Roberto Moreno has reconstructed bibliographies within the
scientific sphere. We might also note the analysis of the circulation of a
book based on the reconstruction of the bibliographies of private libraries xxiv.
In third place, from the point of view of a retrospective of reading, we
might study access and the representativeness of the book, not only as it
is purchased and used privately, but in terms of oral mediation or its public
use in libraries or schools. Of course, the heading of consumption offers
interesting approaches that range from forms of censorship and read-
ings—private or collective xxv—to a comparison of library listings xxvi,
autobiographical manuscripts in the form of diaries or accounting led-
gers xxvii, marginal annotations or comments xxviii. At times, those brief
notes could almost be considered commentary, as lengthy opinions were
written in the margins and blank pages of books owned by the readers xxix.
 SÁNCHEZ MENCHERO / CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE / 103

Finally, a book as the bearer of a text is, especially, a material which

presents a testimonial of everyday practices xxx. Hence, the interest in an
object such as the book has appeared in studies attempting to understand
what a society writes and reads, as well as the usages based on their
readings xxxi. However, for some time now, the main focus of the analysis
of the history of books has been “practiced as though its techniques and
discoveries had no bearing on the history of the producers of texts, or
as if this were completely lacking in importance in understanding the
works xxxii.” This has also been true for the field of history of science.
As we have mentioned, when the history of scientific books has been
studied in Europe and the United States, for example, the approach has
been to consider only the material expression of the author’s thoughts. In
other words, scientific literature has served science historians, by and
large, to analyze—from several theoretical approaches to knowledge—the
discourse, practice and representations of their authors. Only exception-
ally has it dealt with the angle of the editor or bookseller xxxiii. Being so, it
comes as no surprise that, traditionally, more has been studied and taught
about the theory of science than about scientific theory as a communica-
tion act xxxiv. In Mexico, for example, the work of Elías Trabulse has made
important contributions in terms of the development of scientific thought xxxv.
Nonetheless, in general terms, there has been a lack of interest in answer-
ing the questions of who, where, when, how and for what purpose
scientific books were edited and disseminated, or what was read or how
it was received, appropriated and reinterpreted by the diverse range of
readers.

4.
This said, an analysis of a book or scientific publication calls for an inno-
vative approach; demands an attempt to penetrate and analyze the dia-
lectical process that studies a book as the result of a socio-cultural context
that mediates, impacts and modifies what was thought during some
historical period.
One of the main theses regarding the cognitive process is constructivist
epistemology developed by Piaget and García xxvi, based on the principle
of the functional continuity of the constructive processes of knowledge,
from childhood through the development of science. Thus, an attempt is
made to explain how the representations that arise in a specific historical
context promote or inhibit certain cognitive developments, inasmuch as
they form the epistemic framework that conditions the characteristics of
the conceptualizations and activities of the subjects xxxvii. Therefore, it is
interesting to contextualize and make a comparative analysis of cognitive
processes in different periods and cultures xxxviii.
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Lucien Goldman already remarked that his theoretical concepts of

understanding and explanation were part of an analytical method that went
from the written text and its author to the context of reading in the society
as a whole. He said, for example:

If I study Pascal’s Thoughts as an internal meaning structure, I try to under-

stand; but if I then inset as a partial structure a broader structure such as that
of the Janseist movement I understand Janseism and explain Pascal’s Thoughts
through Janseism. And if I insert the Janseist movement into the global struc-
ture of the Nobles of the Robe, I understand the history of the Nobles of the
Robe and explain through it the rise of Janseism xxxix.

It is worth taking a moment here to review and criticize a recent historical

research proposal. In How to write the history of the New World (Cómo escribir
la historia del Nuevo Mundo xl), Jorge Cañizares uses the term “patriotic
epistemology” to “provide a reading of Hispano-American culture.” Thus,
the author hopes to defy “Eurocentric historiography, obsessed with
discovering the precursors of modernity in the old Spanish colonies xli.”
He describes how, at the end of the eighteenth century in the American
colonies, there arose, “a kind of patriotic epistemology that questioned the
ability of foreigners to understand the history of America and its peo-
ples xlii.” To support this claim, he mentions, for example, novo-Hispanic
historians such as Juan de Velasco and Xavier Clavijero, who claimed to
base their reports meticulously on native sources.
The problem with Cañizares’ approach lies not in his proposal of
historical revisionism, but in the limits and inconvenience of using a term
such as “patriotic epistemology.” A lack of differentiation between the
scientific and political fields lead the author to establish, rather than an
explanation for the development of scientific ideas born in American
lands, a study of the critical position of the children of spaniards born in
the New World toward the Spanish Crown.
To support that statement we need to go no farther than a review of the
terms employed by Cañizares using Piaget’s constructivist epistemology.
On the one hand, we would have the “epistemology,” which refers to
scientific knowledge as the most basic concepts of common knowledge
(space, time, causality). On the other—as Piaget pointed out—an activity
that deals with issues “much broader than knowledge, and which have to
do with the meaning of life, the position of man with regard to the universe
and society,” which, he said, “go beyond not only science but knowledge
in general,” since they are not only a matter of knowing, but “of making
decisions, of obligations, of taking sides” as in the patriotism of the Ameri-
can-born descendents of spaniards xliii.
 SÁNCHEZ MENCHERO / CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE / 105

By contrast, Piaget used the expression “historical-critical analysis of

science” to determine with greater accuracy the type of historical docu-
mentation required “as empirical material for an epistemological analysis
of the development of scientific knowledge xliv.” The Swiss epistemologist
wanted to “make a comparative study of the characteristics pertaining” to
the processes of scientific knowledge “acquired in various civilizations and
various socio-cultural contexts, as they are reflected in the available his-
torical material, regardless of its limitations xlv.”
One material way to tell how the conjectures and abstractions that are
a part of a scientific theory were created is through written culture. In our
case, the written production of the novo-Hispanic thinkers contained in
manuscripts and printed works is where we can read and study their
cognitive processes. Moreover, we must not disregard the interventions
of the printers and editors who, consciously or unconsciously, may have
somewhat modified the author’s originals. Nor can we forget that the
American born authors of Spanish descent themselves were the readers
of works of varied origins that they criticized, and from which they
appropriated certain scientific ideas. These viewpoints, finally, could later
been translated into political attitudes such as a patriotic identity. There-
fore, asking who wrote scientific texts implies knowing for whom they
were written, in other words, it is productive to study the history of the
writings of some learned scholars by linking them to what themselves and
others read.
The manuscripts and books printed by the novo-Hispanic scientists, as
well as the official administrative documents having to do with permits
for printing, buying and selling books, are a crucial material to understand
the novo-Hispanic cultural world of the eighteenth century xlvi. At issue is
the printed matter in its different materiality—typography, illustrations
and formats of books, gazettes or almanacs.
Thanks to these materials, we can be observed important trends within
the conception of knowledge. For example, Bartolache spoke of the im-
portance of “public or general studies schools established by the monarch,
and frequented by the youth of America,” which had “produced a multi-
tude of men of merit.” Therefore, the doctor emphasized that New Spain
had to be content if they said they were “highly skilled, resourceful, and
fine powers,” and easily learn everything they were taught. He concluded
“the rest is born wanting to persuade you taught, as there is no country in
the world xlvii.”
From his part, José Antonio Alzate noted the importance of knowledge
to give an advantage in the nation’s production of goods. Thus, stated that
“science is not affecting homeland, nations change their knowledge, and
this is the practice of all time. Did the Romans shipping to Greece by the
laws of the Twelve Tables?” Even in modern times, no matter the original
106 / LUDUS VITALIS / vol. XXI / num. 39 / 2013

language. “Concina, Fleuri, Bosuet and many others are Spanish? But see
how quickly they have been dumped into our language that is what I run
just for the sake of my nation xlviii.”
In addition to these illustrated novohispanos, other thinkers must be
considered who saw their books published under the seal of Felipe de
Zúñiga y Ontiveros’ press xlix. He, in turn, also personally made and
printed maps and calendars or forecasts.
Here we should also note the importance of the accounting ledgers of
Zúñiga y Ontiveros. Year in and year out, the printer recorded the ac-
counts for his workshop, made the drafts for his astronomical calculations
and wrote down personal and family events. “These testimonies show the
literary response achieved by these books, whose content varied between
the annotations he did not wish to leave to the vagaries of memory, and
the more thought-out products for setting down accounts, personal and
family memories or even others of a more social nature l.” It is also
important to bear in mind the bibliography of his private library. Finally,
there is a universe of papers and ink in which we can seek to explain not
scientific theories, but rather the practices of the circulation of knowledge
in eighteenth century New Spain.
 SÁNCHEZ MENCHERO / CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE / 107

NOTES

i Tissot, Samuel (1786), Warning to men of letters and the powerful regarding their
health, or treatise on the most common ailments of that class of people (Aviso a los
literatos, y poderosos acerca de su salud, ó tratados de las enfermedades mas comunes
á esta clase de personas). Madrid. M. Fouquet (1750), Medical-Surgical Works
(Obras medico-chirurgicas). Valladolid. López, Gregorio (1674), A Treasury of
Medicine (Tesoro de medicinas). México. Buchan, William (1785), Domestic medi-
cine or the complete treatise on the method to prevent and cure illnesses with the
regime and simple medicines, and an appendix with the farmacopia needed for
personal use (Medicina doméstica, o tratado completo del método de precaveer y curar
las enfermedades con el régimen, y medicinas simples, y un apéndice que contiene la
farmacopea necesaria para el uso particular). Madrid. Vanegas, Juan Manuel
(1788), Medical Compendium (Compendio de la medicina). México [author’s note].
ii Fernández de Lizardi, José Joaquín (1842), 1979, El periquillo sarniento. México:
Promexa Editores, p. 319.
iii Frevert, Ute and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (2001), El hombre del siglo XIX. Madrid:
Alianza Editorial, p. 127.
iv Bartolache, José Ignacio (1993), Mercurio Volante (1772-1773). México: Univer-
sidad Nacional Autónoma de México, p. 187.
v The case of the German Jew Heydeck, who settled in New Spain at the end of
the eighteenth century is similar. Olagüe de Ros, G. (2007) “On falsifications
in history: Juan José Heydeck (b. 1755) and his ‘prodigious’ discovery of a
vaccine against smallpox” (“De las falsificaciones en la historia: Juan José Heydeck (n.
1755) y su ‘portentoso’ descubrimiento de una vacuna contra la viruela”), Asclepius
1: 275-284.
vi Chartier, Roger (2005), El presente pasado. Escritura de la historia, historia de la
historia. México: Universidad Iberoamericana, p. 29.
vii For the purposes of this paper, we are considering knowledge to comprise
both scientific research and the results of subordinate cultural experiences
and memories. In any case, we will specify the adjective scientific when
necessary.
viii Although other works by J. I. Bartolache were published, this paper will only
deal with the Flying Mercury (Mercurio Volante – 16 numbers). Among other
works by the doctor, we might note the Mathematical Lessons taught at the Royal
University of Mexico by Josef Ignacio Bartolache. First Notebook dedicated to his
Excellency Don Carlos Francisco de Croix (Lecciones Matemáticas, que en la Real
Universidad de Mexico dictaba D. Josef Ignacio Bartolache. Primer quaderno, dedi-
cado al ecelentisimo señor don Carlos Francisco de Croix), Mexico, Imprenta de la
Biblioteca Mexicana (1769). And the Instruction that may serve to cure those sick
with the smallpox epidemic now being suffered by Mexico since the end of summer of
this year of 1779 (Instrucción que puede servir para que se cure a los enfermos de las
viruelas epidémicas que ahora se padecen en México desde fines del estío en el año
corriente de 1779). And the Guadalupan booklet (1790) (Opúsculo guadalupano).
ix Bartolache, José Ignacio (1993), Mercurio Volante (1772-1773). Op. cit., p. 11.
x Martin, H. J. (1999), Historia y poderes de lo escrito. Gijón: Trea, p. 23.
xi Petrucci, Armando (2003), La ciencia de la escritura. Primera lección de paleografía.
Argentina: Fondo de Cultura Económica, pp. 111-112.
xii Burke, Peter (2006), ¿Qué es la historia cultural? Barcelona: Paidós.
xiii “Sociologists, especially those in the so called ‘ethnomethodology’ school,
now tend to consider both practical, local or ‘everyday’ activities, as well as
108 / LUDUS VITALIS / vol. XXI / num. 39 / 2013

the activities of the intellectuals”. Burke, Peter (2002), Historia social del cono-
cimiento. De Gutenberg a Diderot. Barcelona: Paidós, p. 20. Thus, the knowledge
of the learned of New Spain would be taken into consideration, but also that
of the midwives, healers and artisans.
xiv As Schorske says, “the history of science still suffers from the division
between the internalizers and the contextualizers. Nonetheless, the presence
of both as participants in the same enterprise increases the criteria of achieve-
ment”. Schorske, Carl E. (2001), Pensar con la historia. Madrid: Taurus, p. 374.
xv Gramsci pointed out the need to draw an intellectual and moral map of a
country by circumscribing great movements of ideas and great centers. See
Gramsci, A. (1981), Cuadernos de la cárcel 1. México: Era. Buci-Glucksmann, Ch.
(1978), Gramsci y el Estado: hacia una teoría materialista de la historia. Madrid:
Siglo XXI de España, p. 478.
xvi Goldmann, Lucien (1976), Cultural Creation. St. Louis Missouri: Telos Press,
p. 35.
xvii J. P. Rioux and J. F. Sirinelli (1999: 21). “Cultural changes—says Duby—occur
at different faces. Fleeting, and indeed totally superficial, at one level of
society, are changes in fashion and taste, while the deep transformations that
affect the sensitivity, ethics and functioning of reason pertain to the long
term. It is important, then, to carefully distinguish each of the multiple flows
that, at their own speed, make up the global current, [...] Cultural history must
locate itself in the chronology of these turns that shake the life of a culture”.
See G. Duby, “Cultural history” (La historia cultural) in P. Rioux and J. F.
Sirinelli (1999), Para una historia cultural. México: Taurus, p. 26.
xviii “Scientific thought is an inseperable part of the global representational
system of a period”, Koyré, Alexandre, Pensar la ciencia. Barcelona: Paidós, p.
26.
xix In his notes, Gramsci wrote of the need for a comparative study of common
sense, the philosophy of the man on the street and the technique of reflexive
thought. Gramsci, Antonio, Op. cit., p. 140.
xx Febvre, Lucien and Henri-Jean Martin (2005), La aparición del libro. México:
Fondo de Cultura Económica.
xxi Rueda Ramírez, Pedro J. (2003), “Libros a la mar: el libro en las redes
comerciales de la Carrera de India”, in A. Castillo Gómez [ed.], Libro y lectura
en la Península Ibérica y América. Siglos XIII-XVIII. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla
y León.
xxii McKenzie, D. F. (1991), La bibliographie et la sociologie des textes. France: Cercle
de la Librairie.
xxiii Lucía Megías, J. M. (2003), “Escribir, componer, corregir, reeditar, leer (o las
transformaciones textuales en la imprenta)”, in VV. AA., Libro y lectura en la
Península Ibérica y América. Siglos XIII-XVIII. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y
León.
xxiv Gómez Álvarez, C. (2003), “Libros y lectores en México, 1750-1850”, in Boletín
AGN, 1, VI.
xxv Chartier, Roger and Guglielmo Cavallo [dirs.] (2001), Historia de la lectura en
el mundo occidental. Madrid: Taurus.
xxvi Ramírez Leyva, Elsa M. (2001), El libro y la lectura en el proceso de occidentali-
zación de México. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
xxvii Amelang, James S. (2003), El vuelo de Ícaro. La autobiografía popular en la
Europa Moderna. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno. Castillo, Antonio (2006), Entre la
 SÁNCHEZ MENCHERO / CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE / 109

pluma y la pared. Una historia social de la escritura en los siglos de oro. Madrid:
Akal.
xxviii Petrucci, Armando, Op. cit.
xxix Grafton, Anthony (2001), Bring out your Dead. The Past as Revelation. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press.
xxx Certau, Michel de (2007), La invención de lo cotidiano. 1. Artes de hacer. México:
Universidad Iberoamericana.
xxxi Chartier, R. and D. Roche (1980), “El libro. Un cambio de perspectiva”, in J.
Le Goff, J. and P. Nora, dirs., Hacer la historia, III: Objetos nuevos, Vol. 3.
Barcelona: Laia.
xxxvii Chartier, Roger (1994), El orden de los libros. Lectores, autores, bibliotecas en
Europa entre los siglos XIV y XVIII. Barcelona: Gedisa.
xxxviii Such is the case of Eisenstein, who studies the role of the press: “[...] the
printer’s workshop attracted diverse talents in a way that was conducive to
cross-fertilization of all kinds. Printing encouraged forms of combinatory
activity which were social as well as intellectual. It changed relationships
between men of learning as well as between systems of ideas”, Eisenstein,
Elizabeth (1997), The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, p. 76.
xxxiv Secord, J. A. (2004), “Knowledge in transit”, Isis, 4: 661.
xxxv Trabulse, Elías (2003), Historia de la ciencia en México. La ciencia mexicana en
el siglo de las Luces. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
xxxvi Piaget, Jean and Rolando García (2004), Psicogénesis e historia de la ciencia.
México: Siglo XXI.
xxxvii García, Rolando (2000), El conocimiento en construcción. Barcelona: Gedisa.
xxxviii Golinski, Jean (2005), Making Natural Knowledge. Constructivism and His-
tory of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
xxxix Goldmann, L. (1980), “El concepto de ‘conciencia posible’”, en F. Rovalo, et. al
Teoría del diseño II: comunicar, supervisar, evaluar. México: Universidad
Iberoamericana, p. 379.
xl Cañizares Esguerra, Jorge (2007): Cómo escribir la historia del nuevo mundo,
México, Fondo de Cultura Económica.
xli Cañizares, J., Op. cit., p. 368.
xlii Ibid., p. 31.
xliii García, Rolando (2000), Op. cit., pp. 21-22.
xliv Ibid., p. 154.
xlv Ibid.
xlvi Finally, the most widespread writing activity among artisans, and the
writings turned to most assiduously, were those closely related to the daily
routine: accounting. Amelang, J. S., Op. cit., p. 55.
xlvii Bartolache, José Ignacio, Mercurio Volante, n. 1.
xlviii Alzate, José, Gacetas de Literatura, v. 4, pp. 150-151. T. Todorov retrieves a
Bakhtinian concept: “In the field of culture, exotopy is the most powerful
lever of understanding. A foreign culture reveals itself more fully and more
deeply (though never exhaustive, because other cultures come to see and
understand even more) only in the eyes of another culture”, G. Gimenez,
Theory and Analysis of Culture, vol. 1, pp. 142-143.
xlix Over more than thirty years (1761-1792), Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros
published close to 800 titles, of which about a hundred can be classified as
scientific.
l Castillo, Antonio, Op. cit., p. 71.