New Science From Old News

Presenting "Sea monsters in the early modern Portuguese production and transfer of knowledge about the natural world "

Capture, trade and collection of marine animals - specimens, remains and products, stories and illustrations - has a documented history that changed dramatically with the European Overseas expansion. Since the 15th and 16th century many exotic animals and several accounts, descriptions and representations, were brought to Europe opening up a new period in the global economy of Nature and in the making of the natural history. Most European naturalists, and practitioners, showed an ability to observe and comprehend the new (local and distant) natural world. Naturalists n their cabinets, through their connections or local journeys, greatly enlarged the knowledge about Nature. But the accounts from pilots, travelers, traders, missionaries and other, offered a significant contribute to the writing of a new Natural History. Moreover, local people in different parts of the world also affected the way these news were perceived, used and disseminated. We know now that many Portuguese accounts detailing their geographic discoveries, newly found natural curiosities and all kinds of eccentricities were retold, written, published, translated, and disseminated in Europe. The European literati and humanists shared a common interest in all novelties from overseas and the Portuguese maritime journeys, and their accomplishments were a common theme among them. Dialogues, correspondence, exchanges and networks of contact were established early on, and several aspects of the maritime enterprise were themes within the European press. Meanwhile news from the Ocean itself and its inhabitants were not so widespread. On the contrary, many stories and accounts remained unpublished, and unknown until very recently. But as we came to comprehend, marine mammals, their products and accounts were typically valuable goods. They soon became agents that changed over time from portents to curiosities and then to subjects of scientific inquiry. However, the Portuguese contribution to, for instance, establishing whaling as an economic activity and creating a natural history of the exotic in Europe is still neglected and lacks a proper discussion in the new historiography.

Most of Portuguese accounts about the exotic marine fauna did not made their way into the European natural history treaties and encyclopedia - Pierre Belon, Guillaume Rondelet, Conrad Gesner, Ulisses Aldrovandi, among others to do not include Portuguese sources, quotations or authors’ references. However, some exceptions did occur and we will try to discuss them. The Sea still has a lot to enrich our understanding of the story of human life in early modern Europe, Africa and the Americas. So far, historians have written extensively about human cultures of the Pacific (and Atlantic), but rarely have they considered other species as significant actors in the creation of oceanic histories. The purpose of this book is to address the past relationship of humans and marine mammals, analyzing their common environmental, scientific and socio-cultural history in the early modern Atlantic, using overlooked Portuguese sources. This book represents a first approach to the understanding of how these contributed to the development and establishment of early discourses regarding Nature and the Sea, monstrosities and curiosities, and to the creation of an all new history of the exotic natural history. In fact, many accounts of sea mammals and other large marine animals from this period offer up significant, but previously ignored, observations on marine species and environments as well as on people’s perceptions about them and the reception and dissemination of such new and exotic knowledge. I expect to show, within the context of today’s historiography, that Iberian contributions to the early modern European natural history made their way into the coeval scientific spotlight as mostly through parallel circles of knowledge dissemination and directed to distinct audiences and different levels of the early modern society.

Read the book: https://issuu.com/escolademar/docs/new_science_from_old_news_bq

Cristina Brito @ CHAM: http://www.cham.fcsh.unl.pt/invdet.aspx?inv=CB_0050

Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRkDMz7baBg&t=435s