The time between 1640, when Álvaro Alonso Barba published his Arte de los metales ( Art of Metals ), and 1761, when Francisco Xavier de Gamboa published his Comentarios a las ordenanzas de minas ( Commentaries on Mining Ordinances ), was a transitional period in which scientific mining and metallurgical knowledge in Spanish America became operative and practical and replaced the long-standing Spanish (and European) medieval tradition of the theory of minerals and metals. Barba was the last representative of this tradition, inheriting the complex world of the classical writers, the medieval alchemists, the first news from the new American lodes, and the first steps of the Scientific Revolution. On the contrary, Gamboa did not worry about classical and medieval theories, nor did he worry about the problem of metal generation. He was concerned only about the most effective system with which to profit from mining using all the paraphernalia that the science and experience of two worlds could furnish. Both handbooks, very successful in their respective times, show clearly two different approaches to the principal question: how to best manage, from two such different perspectives, the American treasures.

Abstract: This chapter presents one case history – the transfer of the name and virtues of ‘eagle-stones’ to Andean minerals and terebratulid brachiopods such as Clarkeia antisiensis . Eagle-stones, an ancient remedy of Asian origin, were used in early modern Europe to prevent abortion and as a charm to assist obstetric delivery. In the eighteenth century eagle-stones were the subject of what G. Baronti ( Tra bambini e acque sporche Immersioni nella collezione di amuleti di Giuseppe Bellucci , Morlacchi, Perugia, 2008) calls the process of folklorization of European learned medicine, becoming a ‘superstition’ and a popular remedy of medical lore. Based on secondary bibliography and documents from the Archivo de Indias in Seville, the paper discusses the uses of eagle-stones in Spain and Spanish America in connection to the texts published, written or translated in the Iberian Peninsula (lapidaries, early modern medical books). The last section proposes clues to analyse the expansion of the trade in eagle-stones to Spanish America, to finally survey the references to ‘eagle-stones’ in Latin American popular medicine of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eagle-stones are inscribed not only in the longue-durée but also in the intricate networks of commerce.

ABSTRACT A recent fad in the historiography of geology is to consider the Scottish polymath James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth the last of the “theories of the earth” genre of publications that had begun developing in the seventeenth century and to regard it as something behind the times already in the late eighteenth century and which was subsequently remembered only because some later geologists, particularly Hutton’s countryman Sir Archibald Geikie, found it convenient to represent it as a precursor of the prevailing opinions of the day. By contrast, the available documentation, published and unpublished, shows that Hutton’s theory was considered as something completely new by his contemporaries, very different from anything that preceded it, whether they agreed with him or not, and that it was widely discussed both in his own country and abroad—from St. Petersburg through Europe to New York. By the end of the third decade in the nineteenth century, many very respectable geologists began seeing in him “the father of modern geology” even before Sir Archibald was born (in 1835). Before long, even popular books on geology and general encyclopedias began spreading the same conviction. A review of the geological literature of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries shows that Hutton was not only remembered, but his ideas were in fact considered part of the current science and discussed accordingly. The strange new fashion in the historiography of geology has been promulgated mostly by professional historians rather than geologists and seems based on two main reasons: (1) a misinterpretation of what geology consists of by considering methods rather than theories as the essence of the science, and (2) insufficient attention to the scientific literature of geology through the ages. In only one case, the religious commitment of a historian seems a reason for his attempt to belittle Hutton’s contribution and to exalt those of his Christian adversaries, hitherto considered insignificant. To write a history of geology it is imperative that extra-scientific considerations such as religion or political ideology or even the mental state of the scientist(s) examined must not be mixed, overtly or covertly, into the assessment and the writer should have a good knowledge of, and experience in doing, geology. Social considerations may tell us why science is done or not done in a society, but they cannot tell us anything on the origin and evolution of its content . In understanding the intellectual development of geology, in fact science in general, sociological analysis seems not very helpful.