La comprensión europea del mundo: Eurocentrismo y ciencia ibérica en el Atlántico del siglo XVI

Abstract

This article deals with the history of scientific practices in the 16th century Iberian Atlantic and explains the relation of such practices with the emergence of a Eurocentric world order. The author argues that the idea of comprehension, understood as a form of appropriation and as a process of self-construction, can be helpful to explain the political character of science and its role in the configuration of global empires. The text shows that the scientific and technological practices involved in the European exploration of new seas and lands in the early modern period, allowed the emergence of a new European self-perception as the legitimate world master