Newton in the Iberian Peninsula
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1 # Newton in the Iberian Peninsula Malet, Antoni Introduction: A common background for Portugal and Spain? Was there anything particularly Iberian about the Iberian peninsula? Or, to put it more sharply, have eighteenth-century Spain and Portugal anything in common? Ostensibly, the answer is yes, since the geographical, linguistic, and political proximity of the two countries hardly needs be stressed. In fact, Portugal and Spain are usually lumped together in the European imagination as well as in much scholarship. There are easy arguments for packing and selling the two countries together. During the Middle Ages, Portugal and Castille had construed their identities to lie in the relentless conquest of territories from Muslim neighbours. In early modern times, they subjugated vast colonial empires in which greed and Roman Catholicism uncannily mixed. Not only were both kingdoms homogeneously and aggressively Roman Catholic, but in each of them the Catholic Church was also enormously influential. Each had its own Holy Office, or Inquisition, to police social mores but, more particularly, to regulate matters of faith. Indeed, the Iberian Inquisitions consistently considered the most heinous crimes to be Judaism, crypto- Judaism, and Protestantism. Last but not least, in the eighteenth century, both countries shared an acute awareness of being no longer at the centre of contemporary political and philosophical developments. Such a feeling of becoming peripheral, declining countries found social expression in the archetypes of the Portuguese estrangeirado and the Spanish afrancesado . The words themselves are impossible to translate into English, where not to be one-self and to long to become similar to or like another, or to renounce to one's identity, carries a negative burden. Yet this is the primordial meaning of estrangeirado and afrancesado : these terms were applied to people (and applied to themselves by people) who made a public point of
Transcript of Newton in the Iberian Peninsula
1
# Newton in the Iberian Peninsula
Malet, Antoni
Introduction: A common background for Portugal and Spain?
Was there anything particularly Iberian about the Iberian peninsula? Or, to put it more
sharply, have eighteenth-century Spain and Portugal anything in common? Ostensibly, the
answer is yes, since the geographical, linguistic, and political proximity of the two
countries hardly needs be stressed. In fact, Portugal and Spain are usually lumped together
in the European imagination as well as in much scholarship. There are easy arguments for
packing and selling the two countries together. During the Middle Ages, Portugal and
Castille had construed their identities to lie in the relentless conquest of territories from
Muslim neighbours. In early modern times, they subjugated vast colonial empires in which
greed and Roman Catholicism uncannily mixed. Not only were both kingdoms
homogeneously and aggressively Roman Catholic, but in each of them the Catholic Church
was also enormously influential. Each had its own Holy Office, or Inquisition, to police
social mores but, more particularly, to regulate matters of faith. Indeed, the Iberian
Inquisitions consistently considered the most heinous crimes to be Judaism, crypto-
Judaism, and Protestantism. Last but not least, in the eighteenth century, both countries
shared an acute awareness of being no longer at the centre of contemporary political and
philosophical developments.
Such a feeling of becoming peripheral, declining countries found social expression in
the archetypes of the Portuguese estrangeirado and the Spanish afrancesado. The words
themselves are impossible to translate into English, where not to be one-self and to long to
become similar to or like another, or to renounce to one's identity, carries a negative
burden. Yet this is the primordial meaning of estrangeirado and afrancesado: these terms
were applied to people (and applied to themselves by people) who made a public point of
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their preference for values, ideas and tastes that were foreign to Portugal or to Spain. That
is to say, they liked to identify themselves with political, philosophical, and artistic
developments that not only originated abroad, but that influential parts of Portuguese or
Spanish society construed as being foreign and, above all, inimical to Portuguese or
Spanish identity. Estrangeirados and afrancesados thought that their backward, declining
countries needed to have grafted on to them the ideas and values that characterized the
most powerful and intellectually advanced nations. Particularly in Portugal, estrangeirados
therefore acted as vectors of Newtonianism. Typically, they had connections with foreign
correspondents and learned societies, and shared an ideology of progress and a reformist
agenda.
For all the similarities, recent scholarship has pointed out substantial differences
between 18th-century Portugal and Spain in crucial matters such as economic
development, the role of the universities, the Church’s influence, and the political and
social role of the landed aristocracy. As a consequence of such distinctions, Newton was
received in the two countries differently as well.
This essay begins with the reception of Newton in Spain (parts 1-5) and then turns to
the reception of his ideas in Portugal (parts 6-11). A short comparison completes the
chapter (part 12). With respect to Spain, the impact of the new philosophy will be
discussed first of all. Then the essay will deal with Benito Feijoo's account of the
Newtonian system, which was probably the most influential depiction of Newton's ideas to
circulate widely in eighteenth-century Spain. Subsequently, the focus will turn to the
controversial evidence that survives about the teaching of Newton's mathematics and
mechanics in military institutions. Next, the chapter will discuss Newtonian lessons in
Jesuit colleges. Finally, it will consider the role of Newtonianism in the Barcelona
Academy of Sciences (which was founded in 1764), a provincial institution that was the
only scientific academy to work regularly and efficiently in eighteenth-century Spain.
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1 Spain and the new philosophy
As Olga Quiroz's classic study demonstrated, the highly conservative intellectual context
of the mid-seventeenth century was first questioned by the novatores or neoterici, mostly
physicians working in Seville, Zaragoza, and Valencia who began publishing in the late
1680s (Quiroz-Martinez 1949; Ceñal 1945, 1-99). Calling themselves atomists and
iatrochemists, they quoted Bacon, Descartes, Gassendi, Maignan, and Boyle. They
questioned received natural philosophy and its implications for medicine while advocating
a diffuse experimentalism. University professors (almost to a man) strongly resisted them,
as did some sections within the Catholic Church. They were routinely accused of
weakening the foundations of the Catholic faith, and the Inquisition kept a vigilant eye on
them (Sánchez-Blanco 1999; López Piñero 1979; McClelland 1991; Herr 1958; Lopez
1976; Défourneaux 1963). Sometimes the Inquisition took action, but it rarely made an
open accusation of philosophical heterodoxy. Those whom it threatened would refrain
from publication. An example was the physician Diego Mateo Zapata (1664-1745), who
was brought before the Inquisition in 1725 under the charge of crypto-Judaism. His Ocaso
de las formas aristotélicas, which was written in 1720, appeared in print only in 1745, the
year of his death (Pardo 2004; cf. for the circle of Mayans, Lopez 1976, 90-7).
Copernicanism was a subject that the Inquisitors carefully watched. Throughout the
century, it was presented as being merely a hypothesis, rather than a true system. In the
1770s, the unwritten prohibition on Copernicanism was challenged by Jorge Juan’s
prestige and high political standing, nevertheless in the 1780s a convinced Copernican
(Joan Antoni Desvalls), who submitted a memoir to the Barcelona Academy of Sciences,
still had to dissimulate about his cosmological convictions (Peset 1965, 309-24; Iglésies
1964, 245). Under such a climate of fear and suspicion, Spanish novatores never expressed
the view publicly that atomism or Cartesianim were true while Aristotelianism was untrue.
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Instead, they either declared themselves to be sceptics, or they attempted to synthesize the
old and the new, for example by making modern philosophy probable (in the Aristotelian
sense), by adopting an Aristotelianizing stance, or by presenting as Aristotelian what was
evidently not (Sánchez-Blanco 1999, 15-77; Glick 1965; Quiroz-Martinez 1949, 189-94,
352-8; McClelland 1991). Hence the fascination inspired by the works of Emmanuel
Maignan (1601-76), a French Minim friar, praised as the equal of Descartes, who produced
a synthesis of Aristotelian and mechanical ideas (Whitmore 1967, 163-86; Ceñal 1952).
Typically, novatores denounced astrology or magic as superstitions embraced by ignorant
people (Sánchez-Blanco 1999, 78-97; Quiroz-Martinez 1949, 344-6). They may not have
been wrong. Literacy rates in Spain in the eighteenth century were probably the lowest in
Western Europe. By the end of the nineteenth century, indeed, literacy rates barely
equalled those of England in 1675 (i.e. 45% of males were literate). At the upper social
levels things were not better. According to François Lopez, during the eighteenth century
‘in the upper and middle level of the social structure, the Spanish cultural tissue was one of
the thinnest in Western Europe’ (Lopez 1981, II, 629-71, at pp. 650, 652).
All of this is consistent with Anthony Pagden's thesis that the new philosophy
(including Cartesianism, atomism, Lockean psychology, and Newtonianism) never fully
took root in eighteenth-century Spain (Pagden 1988). This thesis receives strong if indirect
support from the absence of scientific or philosophical journals in Spain (prior to Anales
de Historia Natural, which started in 1799), the lack of original elaborations in Newtonian
topics (including rational mechanics and experimental philosophy in general), and the
scarcity of scientific institutions (Enciso Recio 1992). Nollet's Lecciones de Physica
experimental (1757) and his short essay on the electricity of bodies (1747), or J. A. Sigaud
de la Fond’s Elementos de física teórica y experimental (1787), were the only works of
experimental philosophy translated into Spanish between 1700 and 1800. The Abbé
Pluche's French and English bestseller, El espectáculo de la naturaleza (1753-5), was
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popular in Spain and went through four printings. Interestingly, this piece of Christian
apologetics was intended for juvenile audiences in France and England but was sold to an
adult audience in Spain (Serrano 2012). To these, may be added Buffon's Historia natural
(1785-1805), two works by Linnaeus (1784-8), and Lavoisier's Tratado elemental de
Química (1798) (Étrienvre 2006; Herr 1958, 35; Lopez 1976, 67-78).
By emphasizing royal patronage, many Spanish historians provide a more positive
view of eighteenth-century Spanish science. Four kings reigned in Spain during the
eighteenth century. There is wide consensus that whatever Enlightenment there was in
Spain came after the death of Philip V (1713-46). Concerned above all in pacifying and
organizing a new state born from civil war (1700-14), he did little to promote science.
Ferdinand VI (1746-1759) patronized the Jesuit colleges in Madrid, and founded both the
Naval Observatory in Cadiz (1753) and the Botanical Garden in Madrid (1755). He
promoted advanced mathematical teaching within the military (if with little success).
Charles III (1759-88) set up chemistry chairs and founded a cabinet of natural history
(1772). A Royal Observatory in Madrid and a Spanish Academy of Sciences (for which a
grand building was raised, which now houses the Museo del Prado) were planned during
his reign, but the Academy was not founded until 1847 and the Observatory did not started
in earnest until the 1790s (Rumeu de Armas 1980b; Lafuente and Pimentel 2002). The
reign of Charles IV (1788-1808) was marked by a conservative reaction to the French
revolution and war with France. The fact remains that Newton left few traces in
eighteenth-century Spain, either in terms of scientific developments or in accounts for the
layman (cf. Lafuente and Peset 1987; Lafuente and Pimentel 2002; Lafuente 1982 and
1985; Navarro 1983; Ten 1980; Lafuente and Peset 1988).
2 Feijoo, the Baconian friar (1676 – 1764)
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What sets the Benedictine friar, Benito-Jerónimo Feijoo (1676 – 1764), apart from
contemporary Spanish authors is that he provides a sophisticated understanding of
experimental philosophy for a wide non-specialist audience (Maravall 1991; Delpy 1936b;
Sánchez Blanco 1999, 61-122; Browning 1981; Lafuente and Sellés 1980; Flecniakoska
1966). In 1726, he published the first of the nine volumes of his Teatro crítico universal, of
which the last volume appeared in 1740. In a similar genre, the five volumes of his Cartas
eruditas (Learned letters) appeared between 1742 and 1760. These collections of essays
were an instant success. Printings followed hard on one another’s heels until the 1780s. At
a conservative estimate, 200,000 volumes of the Teatro crítico and 150,000 of the Cartas
eruditas had been sold up by 1800 (Delpy 1936b, assuming an average of 3,000 copies per
volume). These are huge figures, unequalled at the time by any other Spanish work.
Feijoo had read widely (in the works of Bacon, Descartes, Gassendi, Fontenelle, and
’s Gravesande), but had no first-hand knowledge of Newton (Feijoo 1786, II, 291, 295).
The Journal de Trévoux and the works of French Jesuits were crucial sources for the
Spanish novatores generally and for Feijoo in particular. He also brought them in as
authorities that supported the new philosophy (Delpy 1936a; Ceñal 1966; cf. Feijoo 1737,
III, 326 (Discurso 13); VII, 321, 323 (Discurso 13); Feijoo 1786, IV, 299-304 (carta 21);
see also Quiroz-Martinez 1949, 357). Feijoo took ‘philosophical scepticism’ for granted on
the part of his readers: ‘to doubt of many things is prudence, although to doubt everything
is madness’.1 He ruled out certainty or true demonstrations in physical things. Yet,
although natural philosophy might not be a ‘science’ (ciencia) in the Aristotelian sense of
‘an evident knowledge of the effect from its cause’, Feijoo claimed that it is possible to
1 ‘assi como dudar de muchas cosas es prudencia, dudar de todas es locura’ (Feijoo 1737, III, 279 (Discurso
13)
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gain ‘experimental certainty, or knowledge gained from experience’.2 He divided
philosophers into three kinds: ancient, modern, and experimental. Ancient philosophers
(the Platonists and Aristotelians) did not really explain nature, whereas the systems of
modern philosophers (Cartesians and Gassendists) explained too much. Experimental
philosophers were not to be confused with modern philosophers, since the former ‘examine
nature in itself’ and conduct their search through experience (Feijoo 1737, III, 43-4
(Discurso 3)). Typically, Feijoo’s hero was ‘the great and sublime genius of Francis
Bacon’.3
Feijoo opposed the modern, systematic philosophers (such as Descartes, Gassendi
and Maignan) to experimental philosophers (such as Boyle and Newton) by telling the
story of the imaginary kingdom of Cosmosia. Two educators competed for the favours of
its people, wise and simple Solidina and ignorant and garrulous Idearia. Idearia promised
that everybody attending her courses would become learned without making any effort.
The simple, ignorant people of Cosmosia, overcome by Idearia's powerful rhetoric, filled
her school, and were taught chimerical fancies hidden beneath high-faluting words. Idearia
soon convinced most of them that they knew everything that there was to be known. By
contrast, modest Solidina taught useful, certain knowledge, using ordinary and clear
words. Not to deceive her pupils, she taught them that many more things remained to be
2 ‘Lo que afirma el systema Sceptico Physico, es, que en las cosas physicas, y naturales no hai demostracion,
ò certeza alguna cientifica, sì solo opinion. Por consiguiente, a la Phylosofia natural no se debe dar nombre
de ciencia, porque verdaderamente no lo es, … Tomamos aqui la Ciencia en el sentido en que la tomò
Aristoteles, … que la difinen, un conocimiento evidente del efecto por la causa. Por lo qual, no excluìmos la
certeza experimental, ò un conocimiento cierto adquirido por la experiencia, y observacion de las materias de
Physica; antes asseguramos, que este es el unico camino por donde puede llegar a alcanzarse la verdad;
aunque pienso que nunca se arribarà por èl à desenvolver la intima naturaleza de las cosas.’ [stress in the
original] (Feijoo 1737, III, 292 (Discurso 13)).
3 ‘el grande, y sublime genio de Francisco Bacon’ (Feijoo 1730, IV, p. 150-151 (Discurso 7))
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known, and that even to make small progress in knowledge required strenuous application.
Idearia’s followers denigrated Solidina for being ‘base, mechanic, and rude’. Abandoned
by her public and by the powerful, Solidina found refuge among country people and
craftsmen. Then Idearia, who was now the sole authority in matters of learning, ruled that
what people might see or touch was less important than her teachings.
After a while, however, a new Master appeared in Feijoo’s imaginary kingdom:
‘Papyraceo’. He offered new and more exciting teachings: for example, that all animals
(other than human beings) are dead matter; that only a tiny part of man’s body touches the
soul; that the world is infinite; that space is body; or that the imagination is to be believed
but the senses are not, and so on. He attracted many followers, took new rooms, and set up
his own school. Idearia and Papyraceo battled with each other pugnaciously. Eventually,
people recognized the sterility of their methods and turned their attention back to Solidina,
remembering that her teaching had been cogent and accurate. She was called back to the
town where, according to Feijoo, she continued to teach with ever more credit under the
patronage of illustrious magistrates such as Galindo and Anglosio. Feijoo glossed the story
by pointing out that Solidina stood for ‘experience’, which demonstrated things with
‘solidez’ (cogency); Idearia stood for ‘fancy’; Papyraceo’s name came from papyrus, in
this case alluding not to things that have been written down but to its approximate
synonym in French (the word, ‘carte’), and hence to the author, Descartes. The eventual
patrons of Solidina were supposed to be the kings of France (Gallia) and England (Anglia)
(Feijoo 1733, V, 248-51 (Discurso 11)).
Feijoo’s tale of Solidina belonged to an essay that was devoted entirely to extolling
the role of experience in natural philosophy. Here, Newton’s experiments on colours
exemplified that fact that untutored sense experience might be insufficient to allow the
investigator to make good use of experiments (Feijoo 1733, V, 266 (Discurso 11)).
References to Newton’s optical experiments and to his ‘mysterious’ theory of universal
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gravitation appeared early in Feijoo's volumes, but he did not discuss Newtonianism in full
until 1745. The delay, according to Feijoo, could be justified by the difficulty of Newton's
work and by ‘the Spanish climate of opinion.’ This was opposed to subtle new ideas such
as Newton’s theories of colours, attraction, or central forces. Feijoo added that the
strongest reason for caution with regard to Newton’s system was that it implied
Copernicanism. Feijoo suggested elsewhere that the reason why this topic excited so much
violent opposition was because of the supposed contradiction between Copernicus and the
literal meaning of the Scriptures, which, he felt, was something that was best avoided
(Feijoo 1786, II, 291-2 (Carta 23, numbers 20-2)). There can be little doubt, in fact, that
Feijoo was a convinced Copernican. For example, his discussion of the velocity of light
rests on the measure of light’s motion by observation of the satellites of Jupiter at different
distances between Jupiter and the earth, which made no sense in a geocentric universe.
Even so, he always presented Copernicanism as hypothetical (Feijoo 1733, V, 292-4
(Discurso 12); see also VII, 5 (Discurso 1); Feijoo 1786, III, 245 (Carta 20)).
Feijoo's essay of 1745, ‘On philosophical systems’, presents Newton the
experimental philosopher in opposition to Descartes and Gassendi, the builders of new
‘systems’ based on ‘first principles’ that might substitute for Aristotle's old one.4 Feijoo
located the origins of the London Royal Society and the Paris Académie Royale des
Sciences in the years ‘between the 60th and the 80th of the last century’, when the quest
for first or metaphysical principles had been abandoned and philosophers had instead
decided to make experiments. This was ‘the time of the birth and infancy of Experimental
4 ‘la máxima general, y transcendente, que en las materias Filosóficas … yo abracé ya ha no pocos años …
[es] la de abandonar la investigación de los principios, suponiéndolos absolutamente inaccesibles al ingenio
humano’ (Feijoo 1786, II, 283-4 (Carta 23)).
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Physics’.5 Then came Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which
was ‘a prodigy produced by a prodigious genius’, but which was difficult to appreciate
because it was grounded on the most profound use of geometry. Newton’s system of the
world was not a traditional philosophical ‘system’, according to Feijoo, because it was not
based on ‘first principles.’ He added, however, that in a different sense of the word
‘system’, Newton’s work might be called by that name, since it reduced all phenomena of
Nature to their reciprocal gravity.6 In discussing the phenomenon of gravitation or
attraction, Feijoo adopted an interpretation that echoed that of Richard Bentley and was
sympathetic to natural theology. The essence of universal attraction cannot be understood,
he suggested, yet the existence of a force that might reciprocally move bodies according to
fixed laws cannot be denied. For Feijoo, the force of mutual attraction among bodies was
‘the force of God’s Hand’, which preserved the proportion of masses and distances
according to laws that had been established by the Almighty:
5 ‘el intervalo, que hubo del año de 60, hasta el 80 del siglo pasado, se puede tomar como época del
nacimiento, e infancia de la Física Experimental, ocurriendo felizmente en el mismo tiempo la invención de
aquel instrumento fecundísimo en Experimentos, digo de la Máquina Pneumática’ (Feijoo 1786, II, 286
(Carta 23))
6 ‘Hallándose en este estado las cosas de la Filosofía, salió al público aquella grande Obra de Newton, cuyo
título es : Principios Matemáticos de la Filosofía Natural, parto prodigioso de prodigioso ingenio, pero que
tardó algún tiempo en granjear toda la estimación que merecía […] siendo la basa de la Obra muy
profundísima Geometría […]. [A] la doctrina Newtoniana […] muchos Autores le dan el nombre de Sistema.
Acaso será esta una mera cuestión de nombre. Si por Sistema se quiere entender un complejo, o un todo de
doctrina, cuyas partes están ligadas, o como contenidas debajo de alguna razón genérica, y común a todas,
Sistema es el de Newton, pues cuantos fenómenos hay en la Naturaleza, reduce a la recíproca pesantez de los
cuerpos.’ (Feijoo 1786, II, 287 (Carta 23))
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this force, which makes one body move relative to another is the force of the Divine
Hand, and… it preserves by its reciprocal tendency the proportion of the masses and
the distances, and is only obedient to the laws which the Almighty has established
for motion.7
Feijoo stressed that by leaving open the question of the precise nature of attraction,
Newtonianism allowed the first Cause to act in nature directly. Thus we might believe that
the Almighty was immediately pushing (‘impeliendo’) bodies, according to the laws that
he had established, and that Newton had discovered. There was therefore no place here for
occult or scholastic qualities (Feijoo 1786, II, 288-89 (Carta 23)). Newton, who was
himself a devoted experimenter, had given us a world system that ‘by computation and
observation’ agreed with phenomena more accurately than did the system of Descartes,
and that must be called experimental because it was grounded on a comprehensive
observation of motion in nature.8
In the first half of the eighteenth century, Feijoo was unique among Spanish writers
in appreciating the originality of experimental philosophy and, in particular, of
Newtonianism, and in distinguishing it from the metaphysical physics of modern
philosophers such as Gassendi and Descartes, Leibniz or Wolff. Contemporary works
about the new philosophy, including those that circulated widely, such as Tomás V.
7 ‘esa fuerza, que hace mover unos cuerpos hacia otros, es la fuerza de la Divina Mano; y [el] guardar en su
recíproca tendencia la proporción de las masas, y las distancias, no es más que obedecer las leyes, que para
ese movimiento estableció el Altísimo’ (Feijoo 1786, II, 287-8 (Carta 23), at p. 288)
8 ‘restará examinar por la observación, y el cálculo a qué leyes corresponden con más exactitud los
fenómenos, si a las que señaló Descartes, o a las que propuso Newton. Y […] creo que los más que han
profundizado la doctrina de uno, y otro Filósofo, hallan grandes ventajas de parte de Newton’. Feijoo adds
later on: ‘la valentía extraordinaria del entendimiento de [Newton] puso en tortura á la Naturaleza, para que
le revelase sus mas íntimos secretos’ (Feijoo 1786, II, 288, 290 (Carta 23)).
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Tosca's Compendium philosophicum (1721), or Andrés Piquer's Física moderna, racional y
experimental (1745), had a broadly Cartesian or atomistic inspiration, which they
presented under the protective guise of eclecticism (Moreno González 2002, 366-7;
Navarro 1983). One of the most advanced texts of this period, Antonio Herrero's Physica
moderna, experimental and systemática (1738), was more radical than Feijoo had been in
criticizing Aristotelian physics. Herrero, a leading light in the Academia Matritense de
Medicina, and very active in the late 1730s and early 1740s, proclaimed that experiments
needed to be decisive in arbitrating philosophical disputes. However, he added that
because experimental evidence was not fully reliable, clear definitions and geometrical
axioms remained crucial. He may be considered one of Wolff's early followers (see the
chapter on Wolff by Ahnert in this volume). In 1737, the Academia embarked on the
systematic collection of medical data and meteorological observations for publication
(Férnandez Navarrette [n.d.]; see Valverde Pérez 2007). Even if indirect evidence suggests
that, by the 1730s, Newton’s work was already known to the people who founded the
Academia Médica Matritense, the Academia itself appeared to be inclined towards a form
of post-Cartesian mechanism (Sánchez Blanco 1999, 78-94; Santos 1997). Until the
printing in 1757 of a Spanish translation of the Portuguese Verney's Verdadero método de
estudiar (on which see below), Feijoo's interpretation of Newton was the only one
available to non-specialist audiences in Spain.
3 Newton and the military
In the context of the country’s political subordination to France after the War of the
Spanish Succession (1700-14), Spanish possessions in Peru were chosen in 1735 as the
location for geodesic measurements in equatorial latitudes for one of the expeditions
funded by the French Académie Royale des Sciences to settle the issue of the earth’s
shape. By Spanish request, the expedition took along two young naval officers, Jorge Juan
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y Santacilia (1713-73) and Antonio de Ulloa (1716-95) (Guillén 1936; Lafuente and
Mazuecos 1987; Lafuente and Delgado 1984; Ulloa 1795). Collaboration with French
savants during the ten-year-long expedition gave Juan and Ulloa mathematical and
philosophical competence well above the normal standard of their Spanish contemporaries.
They returned by way of Paris and London, where they befriended leading scientists and
became fellows both of the Royal Society and of the Académie Royale des Sciences. Juan's
Observaciones Astronómicas y Phísicas (1748), published as part of the five-volume
official account of the journey to the Equator, provided a magisterial, first-hand account
not only of the triangulation around Quito but also of advanced experimental research on
the obliquity of the ecliptic; the periods of Jupiter satellites; metal dilation; atmospheric
pressure; the speed of sound, and the periods of pendula (Juan and Ulloa 1748; Merino and
Rodríguez San Vicente 1978). Juan took for granted the motion of the earth, but was
forewarned of potential trouble as a result with the Inquisition. His printed Observaciones
therefore claimed that the Copernican account of celestial motions were simply convenient
hypotheses (Peset 1965).
Juan became a life-long advisor to the Crown on the reform of arsenals and shipyards
and on sundry other technological projects. In 1752, he was appointed as Director of the
Cadiz Naval Academy, where he was able to test some of his new ideas about naval
design. To modernize the Academy, Juan appointed his old acquaintance from the Peru
expedition, Louis Godin, as professor and academic director. In 1753, Juan and Godin set
up an astronomical observatory, for which they bought the necessary instruments from
Paris and London. While some systematic observations were published in the 1770s (under
the name of Vicente Tofiño, Juan's successor as Director of the Academy from 1768), the
Royal Observatory at the Naval Academy was mostly put to didactic rather than research
uses (Tofiño 1776-77; see also Lafuente and Sellés 1988; González González 2005). From
1755, Juan hosted weekly ‘philosophical’ meetings at his home. This informal academy
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was known as the Asamblea Amistosa Literaria. Its members, mostly lecturers from the
Naval Academy and the Cadiz College of Surgeons, hoped to open the way for a Spanish
Academy of Sciences. Juan, Godin, and another member of the Asamblea, José Carbonell,
drafted bye-laws for a national Academy. Nothing came of it (Guillén 1941; Baíls 1779, I,
43-56; Navarro 1983, 335). In the last few years of his life, Juan settled in Madrid as a
respected political adviser. His two-volume Examen Marítimo Theórico-Práctico (1771)
provided an introduction to advanced mathematics, dynamics and hydrodynamics, and
their application to shipbuilding and navigation. In the year of his death, he published
Estado de la Astronomía en Europa (1773, first printed prefacing the second edition of the
Observaciones Astronómicas y Phisicas; it appeared separately in 1774; cf. Juan 1978 – a
facsimil of the 1773 edition). This parting shot from a dying man criticized the
Inquisition's effective block on the teaching or practice of Copernicanism and respectfully
requested that the Crown should put an end to it (Navarro 1983, 334). Juan presented
Newton’s system as being the culmination of a historical process. Copernicus had shown
that the heliocentric system was the easiest. Tycho Brahe had demonstrated that the
Ptolemaic system could not match his observations. Kepler discovered the laws that
supported the Copernican system. Up to this point, however, the strongest argument for
heliocentrism remained one of simplicity. Then there appeared ‘the great Newton, the
greatest of Philosophers.’ His system, Juan argued, derived necessarily from universally
accepted observations and mathematics that were beyond objection, and was further
corroborated by the work of Clairaut, Euler, and Mayer. As Juan put it, the immobility of
the earth ‘knocked down all the principles of mechanics, of physics, and even of
astronomy.’ He concluded:
[all over Europe] no kingdom fails to embrace Newtonianism, and therefore
Copernicanism; … Even the very ones who convicted Galileo today regret they did
15
so, as is best demonstrated by developments in Italy itself: … Is it appropriate,
therefore, to have our Nation forced (whenever the Newtonian System and
Philosophy are explained) to add to every phenomena that depends on the earth's
motion: ‘but do not believe in such motion, since it goes against Holy Scripture?’ It
cannot be that her Sovereign, all wise and full of love [for his people] as he is,
countenances such a thing.9
Spanish historians accord the military an outstanding role in ‘modernizing’
eighteenth-century Spanish science. According to them, the military academies that the
Bourbons set up in Barcelona (1716), Cadiz (1717), Madrid (1751), and Segovia (1762)
taught advanced mechanics and mathematics, while the Naval Observatory in Cadiz, the
Colleges of Surgeons (in Cadiz and Barcelona), together with the reform of arsenals and
shipyards, mobilized scientists and technicians. They argue that the ‘militarization of
science’ was both ‘necessary’ and ‘perfectly coherent’ with eighteenth-century Spanish
culture (Ten 1980, 299; Lafuente [and others] 1996, 966; see also Capel, Sánchez, and
Moncada 1988; Lafuente and Peset 1982; Lafuente 1985). While the evidence is far from
conclusive, this thesis is itself best understood within the ongoing debate that questions the
role of the Bourbon dynasty as a major reformist and modernizing actor in Spanish history.
According to the traditional interpretation, darkness shrouded eighteenth-century Spain
until enlightened Bourbons came to dispel the shadows cast by benighted Habsburgs. This
9 ‘Estas reflexiones se han hecho ya en casi toda la Europa: no hay Reyno que no sea Newtoniano, y por
consiguiente Copernicano; […] Hasta los mismos que sentenciaron a Galileo se reconocen hoy arrepentidos
de haberlo hecho, y nada lo acredita tanto como la conducta de la misma Italia: […] ¿Será decente con esto
obligar a nuestra Nación á que despues de explicar los Systemas y la Philosophia Newtoniana, haya de
añadir a cada phenomeno que dependa del movimiento de la Tierra: pero no se crea este, que es contra las
Sagradas Letras? No es posible que su Soberano, lleno de amor y de sabiduria, tal consienta.’ (Juan 1978, pp.
[12-13])
16
cliché was fully articulated between the 1750s and 1780s, but seems still to be forcefully
alive (Graef 1996, 113-27; Sempere y Guarinos 1785, 15; cf. Rumeu de Armas 1980a,
108-18; Capel, Sánchez and Moncada 1988). As critics have recently highlighted, this was
precisely the best image that the Spanish Bourbons could project of themselves. To be
perceived as the force driving the modernization of the country was the best political
legitimation available to a foreign dynasty coming to power through civil war (Lopez
1976, 41-2). While it is not appropriate here to enter into the larger historiographical
debate about the nature of the eighteenth-century Bourbon regime, it is necessary to
question the competence and political agenda of this supposedly modernizing dynasty.
Under the Bourbons, Spanish universities were not reformed, the Inquisition was neither
dismantled nor experienced effective checks on its power, and the Crown lacked the
political will to set up an Academy of Sciences (cf. Mestre 1976; Mestre 1990; Fontana
1988; Albareda Salvadó 2004; Albareda Salvadó and García Espuche 2005; Lopez 1981;
Sánchez-Blanco 1999; Sánchez-Blanco 2002; J.L. Peset 2002; Moreno González 2002;
Garma 2002). In general, it is acknowledged that by 1800 the intellectual and scientific
gulf between Spain and the other countries of Western Europe was wider and deeper than
it had been in 1700. As Paul Chaunu put it, it was during the eighteenth century that, to
European eyes, Spain became ‘weird’, ‘ridiculous’, and even ‘outrageous’, so much so that
by 1800 Spain ‘was no longer [considered] part of Europe’ (Chaunu 1982, 38).
Royal patronage for scientific institutions was important in eighteenth-century Spain,
but it is far from clear whether the most effective part of it went through military
institutions. In particular, the evidence concerning the reception of Newton's ideas in those
institutions is scanty. Of course, the Cadiz Guardias-marinas Academy is a significant
exception, but this can be easily explained through the interests of its effective founder,
Jorge Juan, who was anything but representative of eighteenth-century military officers.
Beyond Cadiz, it remains hard to find traces of the teaching of advanced mathematics or
17
mechanics. In 1756, Pedro Padilla, Director of the Madrid Academy of the Guardias de
Corps, published the first introduction to the calculus printed in Spain, as part of the fourth
and final volume of his Curso military de mathematicas. His treatment was competent but
derivative, and did not display much understanding. It appears to have been derived largely
from the writings of Colin MacLaurin and of Wolff (Cuesta Dutari 1985, 134-7).
Moreover, Padilla only taught mathematics in Madrid for a few years before the short-
lived Academy (1751-60) was closed because it had failed to attract enough students
(Lafuente and Peset 1982, 196-7, 199). Another case in point was the military Academy of
Barcelona, founded in 1716 and active through the century. It appears not to have fully
incorporated mathematics into its curriculum until 1736, when Pedro Lucuce (or Lucuze)
was appointed mathematics lecturer (Capel, Sánchez, and Moncada, 1988, 110-31).
Lucuce, the Academy’s Director for forty years from 1739 had responsibility for the
mathematical syllabus. Although some contemporaries praised his mathematical abilities,
he was principally a man of good political standing, whose surviving papers contain
limited and old-fashioned mathematical knowledge (Cuesta Dutari 1985, 148-54; cf.
Capel, Sánchez, and Moncada 1988, 224-7). Moreover, the manuscript mathematical
lessons of the Academy and other contemporary accounts indicate that just arithmetic,
basic geometry, and basic algebra (first and second degree equations) were taught, with no
infinitesimal calculus or transcendent curves (Garma 1988, 102-3; Garma 1980; Cuesta
Dutari 1985, 138-54). Finally, it is also relevant that there was no trace of scientific
collaboration between the military Academy and the Barcelona Academy of Sciences
(which had been founded in 1764). The Barcelona military Academy played its part in the
military occupation following the War of the Spanish Succession, in which Catalonia had
backed the losing Hapsburg pretender: it was first and foremost a Bourbon stronghold
rather than an educational centre (Cuesta Dutari 1985, 153, quoting Archivo de Simancas,
‘Guerra moderna’, leg. 3030: ‘Inventario de los papeles de Lucuze’).
18
The politically reliable Lucuce was also appointed as Director of the Sociedad
Mathemática Militar, founded in 1756. The Society occasionally advised the
administration on technical matters, but its specific purpose was to produce a mathematical
encyclopedia in Spanish. However, not a single page of the encyclopedia had been written
when the Society was dismissed in 1760 (Cuesta Dutari 1985, 188-239; cf. Capel, Sánchez,
and Moncada 1988, 178-84).10 One of its members, the French military engineer, Lemaur
(or Le Maur), also rose to a prominent position in the Spanish Army. His short but
competent treatise on celestial dynamics, Discurso sobre la astronomía (1762), introduced
Newtonian dynamics, together with the solutions of Clairaut, D’Alembert, and Euler to the
three-body problem, and presented Maupertuis’ discussion of Saturn’s rings and the shape
of the earth. It also included Lemaur’s own observations of the 1761 transit of Venus.
Along with the writings of Jorge Juan, Lemaur’s work may be considered the best
Newtonian mechanics and astronomy printed in eighteenth-century Spain (Navarro 1983,
337).
4 The Jesuits
The Jesuit colleges in Madrid and Barcelona were most active in the reception of
experimental philosophy (Navarro 2003; see also Valverde Pérez 2007). As the name
reveals, the Colegio de Nobles in both towns were restricted to the nobility (high and low).
They offered elementary education and up to three years of university-level teaching in
philosophy and arts (Borràs 1965; Borràs 1983; Carrera Pujal 1957; Andújar 2004; Peset,
J.L. 1981; Simón Díaz 1952-59). For ten years from 1756, the highly competent Tomàs
Cerdà (1715-91) taught mathematics at the Jesuit College of Cordelles in Barcelona. A
10 The Society’s fellows were José Datuli (responsible for the volume on machines), Carlos Lemaur
(mechanics), Juan Garland (architecture and fortification), Francisco Cardoso (artillery), Lorenzo Lasso
(cosmography), Antonio de Córdova (algebra), Manuel de Rueda (arithmetic), Bernardo Fillera (geometry).
19
Jesuit since 1740 and a former professor of natural philosophy in the University of
Cervera, Cerdà’s classes at Barcelona discussed the views of Huygens, Gassendi,
Descartes, Newton (but without treating the Principia), Nollet, and Clairaut (Gassiot 1996;
García-Doncel 1998; Clascar 1918; Iglésies 1949; Cerdà 1753). In 1753, Cerdà was sent to
the Marseille Observatory to study for three years with the Jesuit Esprit Pézénas (1692-
1776), Royal Professor of Hydrography there. The translator of MacLaurin, Robert
Smith’s optics, Desaguliers’s experimental physics, and Henry Baker’s microscopy,
Pézénas wrote treatises on vessels, astronomy, and navigation. In the autumn of 1756,
Cerdà started to teach in Barcelona, while the Jesuits formally petitioned the Crown to
endow a mathematical chair in their college. They stressed the availability of a candidate
who had been trained and recommended by Jesuit French mathematicians. Endorsed by the
town and provincial authorities, their petition was granted in 1757, with the important
proviso that any mathematical courses had to be open to town audiences and not be
restricted to the gentlemen pupils of the College. Indirect contemporary evidence indeed
suggests that Cerdà’s lectures were popular (Garcià-Doncel 1998, 35-7).
Cerdà's published and unpublished works, as well as other accounts, show that he
taught updated advanced courses on a variety of mathematical topics including algebra,
calculus, Newtonian mechanics and astronomy, optics, and artillery (see Cerdà 1758,
which includes the work on infinite series and advanced algebra; Cerdà 1760; Cerdà 1764,
which includes the mathematical analysis of projectile motion). In June 1758, he wrote to
Thomas Simpson asking for advice about ‘good English writers’ on mechanics and
astronomy. In 1767, when the Jesuits were expelled from Spain, Cerdà was at work on a
multivolume mathematical encyclopedia. Substantial parts of it have been preserved,
including his drafts for seven treatises on fluxions, analytic geometry, mechanics,
hydraulics, optics, navigation, and astronomy (see Gassiot 1996; García-Doncel 1998, 37-
9; Cerdà’s manuscripts are now mostly in the Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid).
20
Cerdà’s treatise on fluxions, which gave a full treatment of differentiation and integration
for algebraic, logarithmic, and exponential functions, as well as considering their
application to problems of rectification, quadrature, and so on, and their relation to series
development, was largely based on Simpson’s Doctrine and Applications of Fluxions
(1750) (Cuesta Dutari 1985, 250-52). Cerdà’s more original work on mechanics included
treatments of the laws of motion, projectiles, circular motion, central forces, pendular
motion, and a chapter devoted to motion in resisting media (García-Doncel 1998, 39;
Cerdà (nd) [Cerdà’s manuscript ‘Elementos generales de Mechánica’]). Cerdà's
Copernican astronomical lessons, based on Benjamin Martin’s Philosophia Britannica
(1747) and probably written in 1760, claimed to theoretically and observationally
‘demonstrate’ heliocentrism (Cerdà 1998).11
Cerdà’s teaching was also socially influential as a result of the solemn Actos
académicos that the College of Cordelles organized each year. These lasted for two to
three days, and filled the College’s theatre-room ‘with the most distinguished noble
families’ of Catalonia. They were often attended by the Capitán General (the senior
political and military official) and members of the Audiencia and the Town Hall (Malet
2007). The Act held on 7 and 8 January 1762 was carefully staged since the heir apparent,
the future Charles IV, was expected to be among the audience (Acto Academico 1761[?]).
The distinguished audiences heard of the systems of Copernicus and Tycho Brahe; the
observations of Hevelius and Flamsteed; Descartes’ vortices, and Gassendi's atoms. These
were critical accounts, since the students analysed on stage the main characteristics of
every system (Acto Academico 1757, 8-9; Acto Academico 1758; Acto Academico 1762).
In December 1757, despite the difficulties associated with public endorsement of
Copernicanism, the student Ignacio Aparisi solved on stage a problem that involved
11 Internal evidence dates the manuscript to 1760, while other evidence corroborates its classroom use around
that year.
21
calculating the distance travelled by the town of Barcelona in every minute as a
consequence of the Copernican diurnal motion of the earth. Aparisi had earlier been
involved in demonstrations of the use of the armillary sphere and the astronomical and
geographical globes (Acto Academico 1757, 9). Students also demonstrated on stage the
working of airpumps, barometers, prisms, telescopes, and electrical machines. They then
derived philosophical consequences from these demonstrations, which included the
existence of the vacuum, the weight of the air, and the validity of Newton's theory of
colours. In 1761, a leaflet was distributed which listed ten ‘theorems of experimental
physics’, which it was hoped would be demonstrated by six students before the heir to the
throne at the 1762 Act. These were as follows:
1 The divisibility of bodies is incomprehensible, as is suggested by the prodigious
division of odoriferous matter and by gold’s ductility. 2 All bodies, hard and liquid,
whether organic or not, are porous. 3 Porosity seems to imply compressibility. Yet
liquids cannot be compressed while solid bodies can. 4 All bodies, big and small,
have their own shape (configuracion). 5 Mobility is essential to all bodies. Yet,
continuous and permanent mechanical motion is physically impossible. 6 All bodies,
including water, are full of fire. 7 All light is true fire. This is why Archimedes was
able to set the Roman navy ablaze at Syracuse. 8 Colours are not modifications of
light, as taught by Descartes, but consist of a variety of the seven rays that compose
[white] light. 9 Air has not only relative but also absolute weight and gravity.10 All
motions that the ancient philosophers attributed to horror vacui should be attributed
to the weight and elasticity of the air.12
12 ‘1. La Division prodigiosa de las materias odoriferas, la ductilidad del oro, y de otras substancias
evidencia, que es incomprehensible la divisibilidad de los cuerpos. 2 Todos los cuerpos duros, y liquidos,
organicos, y no organicos son porosos. 3 Parece, que la compresibilidad se infiere legitimamente de la
22
Since the relevant instruments were not in fact available, printed representations of
them (lienzos) were arranged on the stage (Acto Academico 1758, 5; Acto Academico
1762, 5-7). These philosophical novelties were presented as a major break with traditional
scholastic philosophy:
Even today some scholastics believe it to be hardly an honest philosophical exercise
to deal with experiments, as if the study of man's purely theoretical ideas was more
honourable than that of God's works: [He] who everywhere in nature shows the
traces of his Omnipotent hand and infinite Wisdom. Who can deny that, in the
examination of natural things, experience has progressed more in the last few years
than mere ratiocination achieved in a period of many centuries, with its prolix
speculations by so many excellent geniuses?13
porosidad de los cuerpos; con todo, ni los liquidos, ni todos los fluidos son compresibles, mas si lo son todos
los solidos. 4 Todos los cuerpos, assi grandes, como pequeños tienen su determinada configuracion. 5 La
mobilidad […] es esencial a todos los cuerpos; no obstante es fisicamente impossible un movimiento
mecanico continuo, è inalterable. 6 Todos los cuerpos están llenos de mucho fuego, hasta la misma agua. 7
Toda luz es verdadero fuego, y assi pudo muy bien Archimedes abrasar con unos espejos ustorios la Armada
de los Romanos en el Sitio de Zaragoza [sic] de Sicilia. 8 Los colores […] no consisten como enseñó Renato
Descartes en la varia modificación de la luz, sino en la variedad de los siete rayos, de que la luz se compone.
9 El aire tiene peso, y gravedad, no solo respectiva, sino tambien absoluta. 10 Todos aquellos movimientos,
que los antiguos Filosofos solian atribuir al horror del vacuo, ó vacio se deben atribuir al peso, y elasticidad
del aire.’ (Acto Academico 1761[?], 3-5)
13 ‘Ahun hoi dia son algunos los Escolasticos, que contemplan como exercicio poco decoroso à la nobleza
filosofica el trabajar en los experimentos; como si fuesse ocupacion mas honrosa estudiar las ideas
puramente theoricas de los hombres, que las obras de un Dios, que en toda la naturaleza está mostrando los
rasgos de una mano Omnipotente, y de una Sabiduría infinita. Quien podrá negar, que en el exâmen de las
cosas naturales ha hecho la experiencia mayores progressos de pocos años à esta parte, que los que en
23
Events like these provided strong social legitimation for the new philosophy, which
was publicly celebrated as part of the learning and skills taught to the children of the urban
elites. The new philosophy was presented as knowledge that empowered those students.
These academic events not only made more widely known new physical notions,
cosmological systems, and philosophical apparatus, but they also bestowed implicit
authority on the new philosophy. In Spain, therefore, the new philosophy gained crucially
from its recognition by the Jesuits. Most importantly, the order presented this philosophy
as if it were in harmony with Roman Catholic religious teaching, and thereby forestalled
possible attacks from the Inquisition. And, in 1764, some of Cerdà’s students set up a
scientific academy in Barcelona (see below).
Similar developments took place in Madrid, both in the Real Seminario de Nobles,
founded by Philip V in 1725, and in the old Colegio Imperial (cf. Carrillo 1760; Carrillo
1764 and Carrillo 1766). The King attended some of these Actos académicos, and he
patronized both colleges through the purchase of expensive instruments that were used in
such public events. In 1750, Ferdinand VI had granted privileges to the gentle pupils of the
Seminario who took mathematics courses. These pupils were taught by the Jesuit, Esteban
de Terreros (1707-82), who was also the highly competent translator of Pluche. He was the
author of a four-volume dictionary of scientific and technical vocabulary, Diccionario
castellano (1786-93), which was one of the earliest monuments of European
lexicographical studies (Valverde Pérez 2007). The mathematical chair at the Colegio
Imperial was funded by the Consejo de Indias and traditionally associated with the post of
Cosmógrafo Mayor. In 1752 a Jesuit mathematician, the Bohemian Johann Wendlingen,
was appointed to this post. At his suggestion, the Crown set up an Academia Physico-
espacio de muchos siglos pudo conseguir el mero raciocinio con las prolíxas especulaciones de tantos
excelentes Ingenios?’ (Acto Academico 1762, 5)
24
Mathematica in the college to assist in the teaching of cosmography. It was endowed with
expensive astronomical and mathematical instruments, again bought in Paris and London
(Valverde Pérez 2007). During the 1750s, Wendlingen performed astronomical
observations of eclipses and solar transits, which he sent to Delisle in Paris. But neither
students nor successful results were forthcoming, and the Academia was closed in 1762
(Lafuente and Peset 1988, 198-9; Capel, Sánchez, and Moncarda 1988; Valverde Pérez
2007). A chair of experimental physics was later endowed for Antonio Fernández Solano
in the Colegio Imperial, in around 1780, but its activities remain obscure (Moreno
González 2002, 380-1).
The Jesuit College in Barcelona was closed down when the Spanish Bourbons
expelled the order from their territories in 1767 (Borràs 1988). In Madrid, the Seminario de
Nobles was taken over by the Crown. Lecturers now had to be paid salaries now, so
teaching costs went up, fees spiralled, and enrolment figures fell precipitously. A
procession of directors followed, all complaining of the absence of competent teachers. In
1774, a mathematics professor, Francisco Subirats (or Subirás) resigned, complaining of
pupils’ low motivation and lack of commitment to their studies (Ten 1980, 309-12). In the
1780s, the College became more and more integrated with the military, eventually
becoming an institution for officers and their sons. While the syllabus still mentioned
mathematics and experimental physics, the evidence suggests that no students took lessons
in these subjects (Peset 1981, 533).
5 Newton in Barcelona
During the course of the eighteenth-century, Barcelona became the commercial and
entrepreneurial capital of Spain. With a population growth of 330% between 1714 and
1800 (compared with a 75% increase for Spain as a whole), the town was booming
commercially, industrially and demographically (Fontana 1988; Herr 1958, 73). It had lost
25
its university in 1714 as punishment for Catalonia's military support for the Habsburg
cause. Through the Board of Commerce (Junta de Comercio, 1763), the new
entrepreneurial elites set up a school of pilots (1769) and chairs of ‘noble arts’ (drawing
and painting for the textile industry, 1774), applied mathematics (1787), and chemistry
(1802) (Iglésies 1969; Monés i Pujol-Busquets 1987). Until after 1800, there were close
connections between these chairs and the Physico-Mathematico-Experimental Conference
(Conferencia físico-matemática-experimental), founded by students of Cerdà and others
(Iglésies 1964; see also García-Doncel 1998; García-Doncel 2000; Bofill i Poch 1915;
Balari i Jovany 1895). The President’s opening lecture to the Conference, on January 18,
1764, solemnly declared that Cerdà's teaching and works were to be the foundation for the
new institution. Attendance at its meetings was restricted to Fellows, but Cerdà himself
might attend meetings whenever it pleased him (Balari i Jovany 1895, 34-6). The opening
lecture at the Conference castigated Spanish philosophical conservatism and praised
Bacon, Descartes, and Newton for delivering ‘physics’ from centuries of ‘oppression’ by
‘barbaric Peripatetics’ (Bofill i Poch 1915, 239-252). Perhaps influenced by a reading of
the Essai de physique (1739) of the Dutch Newtonian, Pieter van Musschenbroek, the
crucial role of mathematics for the definition of new notions was emphasized at the
Conference: ‘to calculate central forces, explain the fall of bodies’, to find the motion of
projectiles and of pendula, and so on (Iglésies 1964, 142; Balari i Jovany 1895, 27; García-
Doncel 2000, 90; Bonfill i Poch 1915, 251).
The Conference started its activities by buying instruments (out of Fellows’ own
pockets) and studying Musschenbroek’s textbook (García-Doncel 2000, 44-5). It tried to
obtain royal patronage and financial support, but largely failed. In exchange for nominal
recognition (from 1770 it took the title: Real Academia de Ciencias y Artes de Barcelona),
the Crown required it to teach audiences from the town Newtonian experimental
philosophy and natural history, concentrating on their applications for industry and the
26
arts. No funding for teaching was provided other than that of the mathematical chair from
the Jesuit College, which was transferred to the Academy in 1767. In 1787 the Academia
had 73 fellows (García-Doncel 1998, 63-7). While the memoirs that Fellows submitted
were mostly translations or derivative reports, there were also pieces of original research,
concerned with local fauna, flora, and mineralogy, with some presenting new experimental
results (their titles are listed in Iglésies 1964, 236-90). Newtonian topics were of secondary
importance for this provincial and practical audience, and only eight out of approximately
150 memoirs, which were submitted between 1766 and 1800, deal with them. These eight
memoirs were derivative and published relatively late (between 1786 and 1800). They
were more interesting in what they did not say than for what they contained. For the
memoirs on mechanics were didactic expositions of topics that were already old-fashioned
in the 1780s and 1790s, for example the discovery and application to astronomy of central
forces, or the origins and progress of the vis viva controversy (see the memoirs submitted
by J.-A. Desvalls in 1786 and 1787, F. Capalà in 1788, and F. Santpons in 1799: Iglésies
1964, 245, 250, 280). Optical memoirs and lectures at the Academy, for instance the nine
public lectures deliverd by M. Girona Giralt (in about 1770), were also out of touch with
contemporary research. Girona appears to have had only a second-hand knowledge of
Newtonian optics, since his real sources seem to have been Pluche and the Jesuit
Regnault’s Entretiens physiques (1732). In 1789, J. Vidal’s report on chromatic aberration
ignored the work of Dolland on achromatic lenses (1754), whereas F. Bell in 1796 wrote
about the nature of light as a fluid, simply reporting the work of Bradley and Dortous de
Mairan. In 1800, A. Nicolás Fauverge presented the rival theories of colour of Descartes,
Hooke, and Newton and showed the experiments that supported Newton. He had a first-
hand knowledge of the Opticks from an unspecified French edition (Domènech Pujol 1992,
II.14-22, III.19-21).
27
The relative absence of Newtonian research should not obscure other consequences
of the Academy for the scientific literacy of Barcelona. A comparison of the public view of
Newton given in the Barcelona press and that from elsewhere in Spain seems revealing.
One of the few discussions of Newton to appear in a Spanish periodical is found in El
Censor (a Madrid paper often considered as ‘the most enlightened expression of Charles
III’s reign’) (Aguilar Piñal 1990; Aguilar Piñal 1978; Lafuente and Pimentel 2002, 123;
Caso González 1989, especially 792-9). In 1787, by means of two long Discursos
dedicated to the nature of science (and apparently the only occasion on which it dealt with
the issue) and presenting twelve linked philosophical discussions, El Censor presented
‘attraction’ as an ‘Aristotelian occult quality’, a name for ‘nothing in substance’, ‘a thing
absurd and unthinkable unless it be assumed an immediate effect of the first cause’. Even
this last option was not seriously considered. El Censor also attacked the idea of the ‘void’,
claiming that, if Newton’s system needed a vacuum, then it must be ‘most absurd’. The
journal’s views on ‘space’ also belonged to a metaphysics inspired by mechanistic post-
Cartesianism (Discursos 144 and 145 [January to April 1787), reprinted in El Censor
(1989), 648-68).
By contrast, the main periodical of Barcelona, the Diario de Barcelona (founded
1792), was a daily newspaper with a wide circulation (as opposed to a learned or literary
magazine), which essentially addressed itself to craftsmen and merchants and the growing
urban middle class. It was short, packed with commercial information and announcements,
news of the arrival or departure of boats, requests for help from houses and workshops; in
addition, it featured a single opinion article in each daily issue. This makes it all the more
interesting that science featured prominently in the Diario, and that it offered a less
metaphysical, more sophisticated and updated view of Newton than the supposedly more
enlightened and learned Censor. The Diario wrote about science in short notes as well as in
long articles. Always anonymous, some are brief accounts of experiments or astronomical
28
observations taken from foreign journals.14 Some are complete translations of foreign
articles.15 And some are interesting philosophical articles, such as ‘Sobre la necesidad de
la experiencia en Física’ (11-12 October 1792), which attacked Newtonian attraction as a
metaphysical notion. It suggested that impact or push by contact, whose effects are obvious
everywhere, should be preferred to an immaterial pull, which was ‘a mere conjecture, an
occult quality, an empty word that means nothing’. A thoughtful answer on January 11-12,
1793, that quoted Newton, Musschenbroek, Monge, and others, correctly clarified the
status of Newtonian attraction compared with pre-Newtonian occult forces.16 There are
other similar examples, like the nine articles published in January 1796 (‘Estado de la
14 For instance, note on Mechain’s astronomical observations from the nearby hill of Montjuïc (Diario de
Barcelona, 17 January 1793, num. 17, p. 66-67); note on Priestley’s article on the colors of electrified metals
(23 and 24 Novembre 1793, num. 327, p. 1333-34; num. 328, p. 1337-38); note on Thomas Wedgwood’s
experiments (31 July and 1-2 August 1795, num. 212, p. 845-6; num. 213, p. 849-50; num. 214, p. 853-54);
‘Noticias literarias, sacadas del Diccionario Enciclopédico de Paris, y pertenecientes á la clase de Ciencias
fisicas’, 15-23 March 1799 (not in every issue), num. 74, p. 297-8, num. 75, p. 301 f., num. 77, p.. 309, num.
78, p. 313 f., num. 81, p. 325 f. and num. 82, p. 329 f.
15 For instance, ‘Filosofía-Química, o verdad fundamental de la Química moderna, tratada con nuevo
método, por el Señor Fourcroy’, Diario de Barcelona, 3-5 Decembre 1795, num. 336, p. 1349-50; num. 337,
p. 1353-54; num. 338, p. 1357-58; ‘Astronomía’ (a detailed report on Herschel’s observations [Herschel
1791, 1792a and 1792b]), 26-31 Octobre 1797, num. 299-304, p. 1257-8, 1261-2, 1265-6, 1269-70, 1273-4,
1277-81; ‘Física. Extracto de una Memoria sobre él influxo de la Luna en la atmósfera terrestre: su Autor el
Ciudadano Lamarck’, 27-28 Octobre 1798, num. 299-300, p. 1213-4, 1217-8.
16 Diario de Barcelona, 11-12 Octobre 1792, num. 11, p. 41-3; num.12, p. 45-6. The article attacks
metaphysical notions generally, among which it includes Newtonian attraction. It claims the notion of impact
or push by contact, whose effects are obvious everywhere, is to be preferred to an immaterial pulling, which
is ‘a mere conjecture, an occult quality, an empty word that means nothing’ (Diario, 11 Octobre 1792, num.
11, p. 42: ‘una simple conjetura, una qualidad oculta, una palabra vacía y sin sentido’). The answer appeared
on 11, 12 January 1793 (num. 11, p. 41-3; num. 12, p. 45-7).
29
Física’) that explained the differences between Newtonian science and natural philosophies
grounded on metaphysics, such as that of Descartes (Diario 1796, num. 3-11).
6 Newton in Portugal: The first decades of the century
What were the conditions for the reception of Newton’s work in the other Iberian kingdom,
Portugal? During the relatively prosperous and peaceful reign of Joâo V (1706-50), the
King bought instruments for and otherwise supported the Jesuit and Oratorian colleges in
Lisbon, both of which taught the new experimental philosophy. He also patronized the
philosophical endeavours of some of the estrangeirados. He set up a Royal Academy of
History (1720), where the new philosophy had a place too. The effective prime minister of
José I (1750-77), the ruthless Marquis of Pombal (1699-1782), who had previously served
as ambassador in London, checked the power of the landed aristocracy, launched radical
reforms of the country’s industry, commerce, and universities, and weakened the influence
of the Catholic Church in matters of education and censorship. The significance of his
reforms is still hotly debated. The reign of Maria I (1777-1816) saw a backlash against
Pombal and some of his policies, but the Crown continued to support university and
educational reforms, among which figured prominently the foundation of Portugal’s
Academy of Sciences (1780). By the end of the century, Newtonianism had a strong
institutional presence there.
During the first decades of the century, the role of estrangeirados and academies was
particularly significant. From 1695, the fourth Count of Ericeira (1673-1743), a prominent
estrangeirado, convened ‘Learned Conferences’ (Conferências Eruditas) in his Lisbon
mansion to discuss the new experimental philosophy and promote a utilitarian
understanding of knowledge. Those who worked under Ericeira's patronage included the
scholar Rafael Bluteau (1638-1734), the engineer Manuel de Azevedo Fortes (1660-1749),
and also, until 1721 when he left Portugal for the London Jewish community, the physician
30
Jacob (Henrique) de Castro Sarmento (1691-1762). They wrote books that introduced
contemporary theories of language, method, and logic into Portugal, as well as dealing
with Newton's mechanics and cosmology (Coxito 1981; Simoês, Carneiro, Diogo 1999, 7-
8; Goldish 1997). From 1717, the private meetings in the palace of Ericeira were formally
called the Academia Portuguesa. Shortly thereafter, the Crown founded the Real Academia
de História Portuguesa (1720), of which Ericeira became one of the directors.
The works and life of Castro Sarmento, the author of the first Newtonian Portuguese
treatise, offer a key to Newton's reception in Portugal. His parents were conversos (that is
Jews who had embraced Roman Catholicism). The Portuguese Inquisition had nevertheless
accused his father of secretly remaining a Jew. In 1710, he was convicted, imprisoned, and
lost all of his possessions. In 1721, Sarmento himself left Portugal before being arrested
under the same charges, never to return. Settling in London, he changed his Christian
forename, Henrique, to Jacob, openly embraced Judaism, and briefly became physician to
the poor of the town's Portuguese-Jewish community. He attended Desagulier's lectures on
the new experimental philosophy, and, in 1725, became a Licentiate of the Royal College
of Physicians and, five years later, a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1737, under the
somewhat misleading title of Theorica verdadeira das mares, conforme a philosophia do …
incomparavel cavalhero, Isaac Newton, he published in Portuguese in London one of the
first works to explain the gist of the Principia to non-mathematical audiences. It contrasted
Descartes’ ‘romance filosófico’, fruit of a ‘fertile imagination’, to Newton's permanent or
‘immutable’ (‘imutável’) system.
For Sarmento, Newton’s work could not be compared to that of Aristotle or
Descartes because its foundations were experimental and mathematical. He stressed that
Newtonian philosophy had spread without resistance throughout Europe, with the
exceptions of Spain and Portugal. He extolled the practical usefulness of Newtonianism
and made a plea that it should be promoted within the Royal Academy of History.
31
Sarmento tried to promote the new philosophy in other ways, many of which testified to
the delicate balancing acts in which he engaged as he looked for patronage and a
livelihood. He acted as intermediary at various times between the global community of
Portuguese letters and English natural philosophers, between English modernity and the
ambitions of the Portuguese state, and between avant-garde Jewish theology and the new
science. In 1731, he urged the President of the University of Coimbra to reform the study
of medicine by setting up a botanical garden and promoting microscopy. Sarmento
presented him with a draft plan for the gardens and a Culpeper microscope. He translated
Bacon's Novum Organum and an epitome of Newton's chronology (to which he had
referred in his Theorica verdadeira das mares), one of which was intended to be dedicated
to King Joao, the other to Prince José (see the essay by Mandelbrote in this volume). Sent
to Portugal in 1737, neither of these works was printed. The impact of Sarmento's Theorica
verdadeira is still debated, but it seems not to have circulated widely (Carvalho 1991, 450-
2; Araújo 2003, 43-4; Calafate 2001, 147-8; Martins 2004, 141).
During the 1720s and 30s, Ericeira remained in contact with Sarmento. Probably
through his good offices, Ericeira himself became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1738,
on which occasion he declared himself a Newtonian (Carvalho 1991, 452).
Notwithstanding its official name, the Royal Academy of History dealt also with matters
philosophical. In the 1730s, Ericeira made extracts for it from the books that it had
received from the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, many of which were about physics,
astronomy and mathematics. In this context, he proclaimed Newton to be the greatest of
English philosophers, who best proved by mathematical principles everything that might
be proved in natural philosophy (Araújo 2003, 46-7).
In Porto during the late 1740s, the Academia Medica Portopolitana, also known as
the Academia dos imitadores da naturaleza (‘those who imitate nature’) or dos escolhidos
(‘the chosen ones’), was founded under the patronage of the Bishop of Braga. In his
32
inaugural lecture to the Academy, the physician João Mendes Sachetti Barbosa (1714-
73/4?) placed the Academy under the principles of the new experimental philosophy.
References to Newton in its correspondence and publications abound. Its statutes
established that membership should be offered by preference to those who were ‘learned in
the Newtonian system’ (Piwnik 1987, 28-49, quotation at 29). The short-lived Academy
also attempted to further collaboration between Spanish and Portuguese physicians and
natural philosophers. By 1751, it counted among its fellows some ninety Spaniards, some
of them distinguished personalities like the eclectic physician Andrés Piquer or the botanist
José Quer y Martínez. However, the extent of this collaboration did not go beyond a brief
exchange of correspondence (Piwnik, 32, 34).
7 Portuguese public lectures on experimental philosophy
In 1725, a certain Luis (sic) Baden, ‘native of Great Britain’, published a leaflet to
announce his course of thirty lectures on experimental philosophy. He claimed that this
would teach the foundations of the experiments of the ‘modern philosophers, but
particularly of the renowned Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, the most celebrated natural
philosophers (naturalistas) of the last century’ (Martins 1997, 121-7). The course was
divided into five parts: mechanics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, optics, and mineralogy. The
leaflet ended with an impressive list of twenty-nine kinds of instruments that would be
used in these public lectures. Each lecture was to be offered three times: once for ‘the
noble and gentle public’; once for the rest of the Portuguese public (these two were to be
given in Portuguese); and once for foreigners (to be given in English) (Martins 1997, 122-
6). No information survives about the success of Baden's lectures, but there must have
been a clear demand for them to judge by indirect evidence. At about the same time, other
lectures in ‘natural science’ were offered under the patronage of Rafael Bluteau, and public
lectures in experimental philosophy were announced as early as in 1720 (Araújo 2003, 40;
33
Carvalho 1982, 65). An entry in Ericeira's diary for 1733 mentioned the presence in Lisbon
of an Englishman who owned a good collection of philosophical instruments and who
would show them to the public (Carvalho 1982, 68). In the 1740s, a workshop (owned by a
certain M. Angelo Vila or Villa) was set up in Lisbon, which catered to a public interested
in physical and mathematical instruments (Carvalho 1982, 69-71).
There is also evidence from a little later in the century that the Oratorians offered
lectures (‘conferências’) on ‘Experimental Philosophy’ in their Lisbon College, which
were highly successful. The Oratorian Joao Baptista (1705-61) began these in 1752. They
attracted crowds of hundreds of people, including courtiers and the members of the new
urban commercial elites (Domingues 1994, 38-54). Baptista's principal student, Teodoro
de Almeida, successfully continued the lectures. Some noble houses, such as the Count of
Cantanhede's, also opened their salons to ‘experimental sessions’, for example with
electrical apparatus (Araújo 2003, 42).
8 Portuguese Jesuits and the Oratorians
It is hard to overestimate the influence that the Jesuits had over Portugal's educational
institutions from the mid-sixteenth century up until their expulsion from Portugal by
Pombal in 1759. They ran almost every college in the country and one of its two
universities, Évora. In addition, they had enormous influence at the University of Coimbra
(Carvalho 1986, 144-6). There is no consensus among historians concerning the contents
and character of the education offered by the Portuguese Jesuits. The traditional view is
that their colleges were strongholds of outdated neo-scholastic philosophy, even if there
were some modern Jesuit lecturers, such as Inácio Monteiro and Manuel de Campos
(Carvalho 1986, 146-7; Carvalho 1982, 34-41; Simoês, Carneiro, Diogo 1999, 5).
Some authors have recently challenged this picture (especially Martins 1997 and
Domingues 1994). They indicate that there were many Jesuit lecturers who cautiously but
34
steadily introduced the ideas, instruments, and methods of the new philosophy, for
example, I. Soares, or A. Vieira, or S. Abreu, or J. Leitao, or I. Vieira (Martins 2004, 143-
148; Martins 2000, 202-13). Similarly, they stress that the ex-Jesuit astronomer José
Monteiro da Rocha was an inspirational force for the scientific modernization of Coimbra
in 1772. They conclude that the Jesuit natural philosopher Inácio Monteiro (1724-1812)
was the visible part of an iceberg rather than a unique exception to a rule. Educated in
Évora, Monteiro taught at the Jesuit College in Coimbra in the late 1740s. There, he
published a two-volume mathematical encyclopedia, Compendio dos elementos de
mathemáticas (1754-6), which covered pure mathematics, mechanics, optics and
astronomy, and explained in modern terms the crucial role that mathematics needed to play
in natural philosophy. Monteiro’s wide erudition and mature eclecticism were more fully
apparent in the seven-volume philosophical encyclopedia, Philosophia libera seu ecletica
(1766), which was written at Coimbra before 1759 and reflected his teaching there. As this
title suggests, Monteiro's philosophy was quite free from adherance to particular
philosophical schools. He was well informed, however, and criticized neo-scholasticism,
while advocating observation, mathematics, and experiments, and finding much to praise
in Gassendi, as well as in Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz. He also published works on
logic, metaphysics, and ethics in Italy (Silva 1973; Martins 1997, 141-51; Calafate 2001,
177-89).
The traditional, negative view of the Jesuit colleges may also be challenged on the
basis of the work and publications of the Jesuit astronomers who ran the observatories of
the Royal Palace and of the Lisbon Jesuit Collegio de Santo Antao, both set up in the early
1720s (Carvalho 1985; Osório 1986). Both were richly endowed with telescopes, clocks,
quadrants, and other instruments sent from Paris and London thanks to King Joao’s
generous patronage, itself to some extent the product of the influence of the King’s Jesuit
tutor, Luis Gonzaga (Martins 1997, 106-7, 115). The Italian Jesuit astronomers, Domenico
35
Capassi (1694-1736) and Giovanni Battista Carbone (1694-1750), arrived in Lisbon in
1722 to be appointed ‘royal mathematicians.’ They were bound for Brazil, to perform
cartographical and astronomical measurements, and, in particular, to fix key Brazilian
longitudes and latitudes. They set up the two Lisbon observatories and many of their
observations were published in the Philosophical Transactions and the Acta Eruditorum in
the 1720s and 1730s (Carvalho 1956a and 1956b). While Capassi did go on to Brazil,
Carbone stayed to tutor the heir to the throne and the infanta, and later to become secretary
to the King and Rector (Principal) of S. Antao College (Martins 1997, 107-13). The
Portuguese Jesuit mathematician, Manuel de Campos (1681-1758), a founding member of
the Royal Academy of History, also worked at the S. Antao observatory in the 1720s. In
the 1750s, he was part of a network involving the French astronomer Joseph-Nicolas
Delisle, and the Portuguese astronomer José Joaquim Soares de Barros (1721-93), both of
whom were working in Paris, the Bohemian Jesuit, Wendlingen, at the Colegio Imperial of
Madrid, and others working at S. Antao, such as Eusebio da Veiga (1718-98) (Martins
1997, 116-20).
Despite the eclecticism and awareness of contemporary endeavours to be found in
many courses taught at the Jesuit colleges, it seems that in Portugal the order of the
Oratory was even more open to the new philosophy. The Casa das Necessidades (the
Oratorian college in Lisbon) educated many figures of the Portuguese enlightenment,
including the distinguished mathematician José Anastácio da Cunha. From the late 1730s,
Joao Baptista taught natural philosophy there. His work was characteristic of the manner
by which many teachers in the Catholic orders tried to make room for experimental
philosophy without overthrowing the foundations of the received philosophical framework.
He published a two-volume work, Philosophia Aristotelica restituta (1748), whose key
point was that the moderns were usually right, but that, if Aristotle had been properly
understood, there would have been no contradiction between the two sides. Baptista
36
presented Descartes, Newton, and others as providing methods for the rediscovery of the
true Aristotle, whose work had been defiled by centuries of scholastic commentary
(Carvalho 1982, 51-57).
The Oratorian college also featured a substantial library (which contained the works
of Desaguliers, Musschenbroeck, and ’s Gravesande); a rich cabinet for experimental
philosophy, and a printing shop. Joao V was even-handed in his patronage of both Jesuits
and Oratorians, generously endowing the Lisbon colleges with astronomical, physical, and
mathematical instruments, many of them bought in Paris and London. His heir, José I
continued to support Oratorian efforts to teach experimental philosophy. The Oratorian
cabinet of experimental philosophy became ‘the pleasant theatre where father Teodoro [de
Almeida] entertained King José I and his court with innocent and admirable spectacles of
Nature, and the King José himself […] many times with his own hands operated the
machines’ (Martins 2004, 141; Carvalho 1986, 150; Carvalho 1982, 73-5).17
During the 1750s, the astronomical instruments in the Casa das Necessidades were
helpful to the Oratorian Joao Chevalier (1722-1801), who became a Fellow of the Royal
Society in 1754. The Philosophical Transactions published many of his observations in the
second half of the 1750s. In 1760, however, he had to leave Lisbon for political reasons.
Settling in Brussels in 1762, as librarian of the Bibliothèque Royale, he did little further
scientific work (Osório 1986, 125-6; Martins 2001, 337). Over the course of the 1760s, a
number of Oratorians published important works explaining the superiority of
Newtonianism over older philosophical systems. Among these was the Historia da creaçao
do mundo conforme as ideas de Moizes, e dos filozofos: ilustrada com hum novo sistema
(1762) of Manuel Alvares, which updated the Mosaic account given in the biblical book of
17 ‘o theatro deliçioso onde o P. Theodoro entertinha o Snr Rey D. Joze I e a sua corte com os innocentes, e
admeraveis espectáculos da Natureza, e o m. Snr. Rey D. Joze […] com suas Reaes Maos muitas vezes
manejava as maquinas.’ (quoted in Carvalho 1982, 73-74)
37
Genesis by the incorporation of a Copernican view of a universe that is kept in orderly
working by Newtonian gravitation. António Soares Barbosa's Discurso sobre o bom e
verdadeiro gosto na filosofia (1766) dwelt on the opposition between Newtonianism and
earlier philosophical schools, in particular that of Descartes, who was presented both as a
forerunner of Newton and as ‘system builder’. Barbosa claimed that Newton shaped
natural philosophy in a manner that would survive eternally (Carvalho 1991, 456; Calafate
2001, 142-46).
According to the historian Rómulo de Carvalho, the contributions of the Oratorians
‘were among the most valuable… if not the most valuable ones … [to the task of] opening
up [Portuguese mentalities] to the new paths of progress that had been discovered on the
other side of the Pyrenees’ (Carvalho 1986, 149-51; Simoês, Carneiro, Diogo 1999, 20).
This assessment is based on the teaching offered by the Oratorian colleges; on the
scientific contributions of many Oratorian fathers; and also on their crucial role in
explaining the experimental philosophy, and Newton's ideas in particular, to wide lay
audiences. In this connection, the name of Teodoro de Almeida stands out.
9 Verney and Almeida
One of the main works that made Newton's ideas widely familiar to a Portuguese literate
audience was the estrangeirado Verney's controversial and hugely popular Verdadeiro
Metodo de Estudar, para ser util a Republica, e a Igreja (1746) (Andrade 1965; Andrade
1980). Of French origins, Luís António Verney (1713-92) studied in Lisbon, first with the
Jesuits, and then with the Oratorians, moving on to the University of Évora, and eventually
to Rome, where he settled when he was just twenty-three, never to return to Portugal. For a
few years he was secretary to the Portuguese ambassador to the Holy See. Verney’s True
method of study, for the use of the Republic and the Church was a pedagogical manifesto
that sought to improve Portugal's colleges and universities. It attacked Jesuit education
38
harshly and attempted to redraw the boundaries of morals, reason, and the Catholic faith.
In particular, it offered a cogent exposition of the new philosophical foundations required
if one was to accommodate the works of Newton and Locke (Araújo 2003, 51-9; Calafate
2001, 132-42, 149-56). A strong expression of the importance of an understanding of
natural theology pervaded the work.
Verney’s book was successful in Spain as well as Portugal, although sixteen years
had to pass before its translation was authorized. It was also translated into French and
Italian. It proved highly controversial, and scores of books and tracts in response to it
appeared both in Spain and Portugal. Attempts were made to suppress the book, but the
Portuguese Crown provided discreet support. In truth, Verney had been secretly
encouraged to write the Verdadeiro metodo, which provided strong ammunition for
absolutist educational reforms.
By declaring himself a Newtonian and stressing the epistemological value of
experimental natural philosophy, Verney highlighted his differences with the
‘hypothetical’ philosophies of Descartes and Gassendi. In the tenth of the sixteen letters
that make up his work, Verney claimed that all phenomena could be reduced to matter in
motion, but that to discover the true effects and properties of matter it was necessary to
make proper observations (Verney 1949-52). As was typical for a writer of enlightened
philosophical discourse, Verney decried ‘systems’ in a lapidary sentence: ‘the true modern
system is not to have a system, and it is only in this way that any truths have been
discovered’.18 One of the many virtues of Verney’s encyclopaedic work was his plain,
concise, and highly effective style. He chose this deliberately to fight against what he saw
as the baleful influence of the Spanish Baroque, in over-ornate and imprecise prose (Rossi
1966).
18 ‘Este é o verdadeiro sistema moderno: nâo ter sistema, e só assim é que se tem descoberto alguna verdade.’
(Verney 1949-52, III, 203)
39
The Oratorian, Teodoro de Almeida (1722-1804), a student of Baptista, and his
successor as lecturer at the public ‘Experimental Conferences’ in Lisbon, was strongly
influenced by his attempt to salvage traditional philosophy by mixing it with the new
philosophy. As was the case with Feijoo in Spain, Almeida was the author of one of the
compendious bestsellers of the eighteenth century, a ten-volume popularization of the
results and methods of the new philosophy, which was reprinted seven times. The
excellence of experimental philosophy, according to Almeida, came from its description of
the beauty of nature; from its usefulness in improving human material conditions, and from
its provision of a deeper understanding of divine creation (Carvalho 1982, 57-63; Martins
1997, 128-41; Calafate 2001, 142-46, 330-5). Almeida was one of the founding members
of the Lisbon Academy of Science, and delivered the lecture at its inauguration in 1780,
mounting a scathing attack on the policies of Pombal.
The most popular book by Almeida, Recreaçaõ filosofica, ou, dialogo sobre a
filosofia natural, was written over two, separate periods. The first six volumes were
published between 1751 and 1762, before Almeida went into exile, and focussed on natural
philosophy proper. The first volume dealt with mechanics; the second with light, sound
and heat; the third with the four elements; the fourth with instruments; the fifth with the
animal kingdom, and the sixth with the system of the world. After his return to Portugal
following years of exile, Almeida resumed the publication between 1768 and 1778, adding
four more volumes. A final volume appeared in 1800. The seventh volume dealt with logic
and method; the eighth with metaphysics; the ninth with natural theology and the harmony
of religion and reason in general; and the tenth with ethics (Domingues 1988). Almeida
also wrote a three-volume compilation of memoirs in physics and mathematics, Cartas
fisico-mathematicas (1784-98), which was meant to be a complement to the Recreaçao
filosofica. Although he remained eclectic in his philosophy, and was ultimately committed
to making Catholic theology relevant in metaphysics and ethics, in many senses Almeida
40
was the person who ‘by his conviction and lucidity [established] … Newtonian
philosophy’ in Portuguese culture.19
Verney and Almeida successfully addressed their works to a lay readership, for
which they provided a mature and sophisticated understanding of the distinctions between
experimental philosophy and previous schools of philosophy. Together with Feijoo, they
were among the few real intellectual bridges between Spain and Portugal, as well as being
intermediaries between their respective countries and a wider intellectual world (Piwnik
1992; Andrade 1980, 180-200). Each of these writers found important audiences, including
many critics, in both Iberian kingdoms, thus suggesting the existence of deep similarities
between the interests, concerns, and education of the learned elites of both countries.
10 The mixed blessings of Pombal’s reforms
Portugal’s great enlightened reformer, the Marqués de Pombal, was the chief minister of
José I from 1755 until 1777 (Real 2005; Domingues 2002; Maxwell 1995; Thielemann
2001). His draconian reforms reshaped teaching institutions, including the universities.
Some proved short-lived and unsuccessful, but others helped to create conditions in which
experimental philosophy might take root in the country. For all his support for
experimental philosophy, however, and despite his commitment to modernize curricula,
Pombal did not hesitate to gaol or exile philosophers and engineers whom he suspected of
being his political enemies. Thus the engineer, natural philosopher, and projector Bento de
Moura Portugal (1702-76) spent the last eighteen years of his life in jail. Acclaimed by his
contemporaries as the Portuguese Newton, Portugal left twenty-eight manuscript
notebooks of prison writings (most now lost) before he turned mad (Araújo 2003, 47-8;
Martins 2004, 141-3; Almeida 1784-98). Joâo Jacinto Magalhâes (1722-90) (or Magellan,
19 ‘ao padre Teodoro de Almeida […] coube o honroso papel, na historia cultural portuguesa, de impor, pela
sua convicçao e pela lucidez do seu espirito […] a filosofia newtoniana.’ (Carvalho 1991, 453)
41
as was internationally known), the London based intelligencer, natural philosopher, and
instrument dealer, and a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1774, also had to leave Portugal
in 1756 for political reasons (Malaquias and Thomaz 1994; Malaquias 1994). Verney too
suffered even in Italy as a result of the long hand of Pombal, despite the fact that his work
proved crucial in Pombal’s struggle against the Jesuit order. In 1759, Pombal banished the
Jesuits from Portugal and his colonies and closed down all the schools and colleges that
they ran, including the University of Évora. This used to be presented as a necessary step
for Portugal on the road to modernity. However, from 1760, Pombal also harassed the
Oratorians in Lisbon. Most of the lecturers at the college were compelled to leave, and
some of them had to go into exile, among them Chevalier and Almeira. It was eventually
closed in 1768 (Martins 2004, 161-68). Pombal punished Oratorians for opposing his
views on the supremacy of the Crown over the Church, and, by doing so, helped to ensure
that one of his pet projects, the Colégio de Nobres (College for the Nobility) in Lisbon, had
no real competition.
Founded in 1761, the Colégio de Nobres was effective only after 1766. The new
Colégio, according to Pombal’s plans, was supposed to instil values and knowledge in the
sons of the aristocracy that would turn Portugal and its overseas colonies into a major
commercial and political empire. Its foundation responded to the advanced educational
programme of the converso estrangeirado, António Nunes Ribeiro Sanches (1699-1783),
which had been published in his influential Cartas sobre a educaçao de mocedade (Letters
on the education of the youth, 1760). The Colégio’s curriculum emphasised that pupils
should acquire productive, social virtues (such as punctuality), but also stressed the
teaching of mathematics and experimental philosophy. Pombal hired many Italian
lecturers, perhaps because he had gaoled or exiled all the competent Portuguese ones.
Some quickly returned to Italy, but those in charge of chemistry and natural history
(Domingos Vandelli (1735-1816)), and physics (Giovanni Antonio Dalla Bella (1730-c.
42
1823)) stayed (Carvalho 1954). Musschenbroeck’s Elements of Physics was followed in
the teaching of experimental philosophy. The college had a cabinet with more than 560
instruments for experimental philosophy and astronomy, most of which probably came
from the Oratorian college (Carvalho 1986, 152-4; Martins 2001, 336-8, Martins 1997,
134-5).
The new college was a failure. Few sons of the nobility enrolled, and those who did
showed remarkably little interest in mathematics, the new philosophy, or its applications,
the teaching of which lasted for only two years. Recognizing this failure, Pombal
redirected his efforts towards a major reform of the University of Coimbra, which he
launched in 1772. The result was a major overhaul, not only of the University's curriculum
and teaching methods, but also of its very structure. The old Faculty of Arts was closed,
and alongside the traditional four faculties of theology, canon and civil law, and medicine,
Pombal created new faculties of mathematics and philosophy. The Faculty of Mathematics
was endowed with four professorships, in geometry, algebraic and infinitesimal analysis,
mechanics (labelled ‘Phoronomy’), and astronomy. Newtonian topics figured prominently
in the phoronomy and astronomy courses. In the Faculty of Philosophy, pride of place was
given to experimental physics, chemistry, agriculture, and natural history. This faculty
received the philosophical instruments previously allocated to the Colégio de Nobres,
whose lecturers were transferred to it. In the 1770s and 1780s, courses of experimental
physics at Coimbra again followed Musschenbroeck's works (Vlahakis [and others] 2006;
Martins 2000, 213-33).
The old Faculty of Arts was a minor (menor) faculty, and had less prestige and fewer
entitlements than the higher (mayores) faculties of theology, law and medicine. The new
faculties of mathematics and philosophy were higher ones, with the same status as the
Faculty of Medicine, indeed medicine was declared to be one of the parts of natural
philosophy (Martins 2004, 133-6). It was hoped that an elevation in the status and prestige
43
of philosophy and mathematics would enable these disciplines to attract bright young
people, who might thereafter apply themselves to increasing the wealth of the country. To
promote attendance at the Faculty of Mathematics, those who registered were entitled to
wear the habits of one of the military orders and, if they were of noble status, to count the
years spent in the Faculty as military service (Albuquerque 1986).
The reformed statutes of Coimbra required that subjects be taught through a
combination of theoretical and practical approaches. Useful applications should be
highlighted, as well as the historical progress of knowledge (Albuquerque 1986; Teixeira
2006, 177). Students enrolled at the Faculty of Mathematics were required to take natural
history and experimental philosophy courses from the Faculty of Philosophy; conversely,
philosophy students had to follow courses in geometry, analysis, and phoronomy from the
Faculty of Mathematics. Medical students were required to take courses from both the
mathematics and philosophy faculties (Martins 2000, 225-8; Calafate 2001, 153-56).
The excellent collection of instruments that the Faculty of Philosophy received from
the Colégio de Nobres grew to become one of the richest public collections in Europe, with
more of 600 instruments (Martins and Fiolhais 2003; Carvalho 1986, 152-4). Pombal also
planned new buildings, an astronomical observatory, a natural history museum, and a
botanical garden for the university, but some of these facilities only came into being many
years afterwards.
11 The institutionalization of Newtonianism in Portugal
The reform of the University of Coimbra was a mixed success. Dalla Bella's teaching of
experimental philosophy (as exemplified in his three-volume Physices Elementa (1790))
was not more advanced than what had been on offer in the Oratorian college in Lisbon
during the 1750s. It seems that the faculties of mathematics and philosophy failed to attract
students, and that they suffered from absenteeism, internal power struggles, and nepotism
44
(Martins 2001, 339; Carvalho 1986, 164-65; Simoês, Carneiro, Diogo 1999, 12). On the
other hand, the reforms implied the official establishment of Newtonianism in Portugal's
colleges and at the University of Coimbra, which became an active centre for the new
philosophy. Among those who worked there were the military officer, poet, and
mathematician José Anastácio da Cunha, who regarded Newton as his ‘teacher’ (mestre),
or the astronomer José Monteiro da Rocha (1734-1819), who organized the Faculty of
Mathematics, and collaborated in drawing up the statutes of the reformed university, and
later supervised the building of the observatory (Simoês, Carneiro, Diogo 1999, 23).
Shortly after Pombal's fall, the creation of the Lisbon Academy of Science helped to
complete this national institutionalization of experimental philosophy (Domingues 1993).
Notwithstanding its name, the Academia Real das Ciências was the national academy for
both science and letters. It was divided into three classes: mathematical sciences (including
mechanics and astronomy), natural and experimental sciences (including chemistry,
anatomy, botany, and mineralogy), and Portuguese language and literature. It published the
Memorias de matemathica e phisica, of which two volumes appeared in the eighteenth
century (in 1797 and 1799). Although Newtonian influence was obvious in the papers in
mathematics, mechanics, optics, and astronomy, the papers did not represent innovative
developments in these fields (unlike those in chemistry or natural history) (Agudo 1986;
Simoês, Carneiro, Diogo 1999, 16-18; Carvalho 1996).
The mathematician José Anastácio da Cunha (1744-1787), whose chequered life
illustrated the mixed legacy of Pombal’s reforms, made one of the most original scientific
contributions to come from Portugal in the eighteenth century. Born in Lisbon and
educated at the Oratorian college, he was appointed in 1764, when not yet twenty, as a first
lieutenant in the notorious artillery regiment of Porto, which had been newly created in
1762 as part of a major reform of the Portuguese army. He attended regimental classes in
mathematics and artillery (Veira 1990). The Porto regiment was staffed by foreign
45
mercenary officers, most of them Protestant in religion. The local establishment was
shocked by their open, free discussions on matters of religion and philosophy. Anastácio
da Cunha made friends with many of his fellow officers, learned their languages and fully
participated in their intellectual discussions. A gifted man of letters, he translated into
Portuguese contemporary foreign literature, including some of Alexander Pope’s verse
(Anastácio da Cunha 1994; Ferro 1987).
As part of his university reforms, Pombal appointed Anastácio da Cunha in 1772 as
Professor of Geometry in the Faculty of Mathematics at Coimbra. Shortly after Pombal's
fall from power, however, in July 1778, the Portuguese Inquisition put Anastácio da Cunha
under arrest. He was convicted in a public auto de fé of having embraced the errors of
‘libertinism, deism, being tolerant of everything (tolerantismo), and indifferentism.’ His
sentence included mandatory public penance and prayer, the confiscation of all his
possessions, and confinement for three years in the Congregation of the Oratory in Lisbon,
to be followed by four years of exile in Évora, 500 km from Coimbra. He lost his
possessions, and was never allowed to return to his chair at Coimbra, but the three years of
internment were shortened to two and his exile rescinded (Ferro 1987, xi-xvii). The last
years of Anastácio da Cunha’s life were mostly devoted to finishing his Principios
mathematicos (Lisbon 1790), a book that he had begun in Coimbra in the 1770s with a
pedagogical aim that was then at the cutting edge of contemporary mathematical
knowledge (Giusti 1990; Duarte and Silva 1990a). Anastácio da Cunha provided original
foundations for the exponential and logarithmic functions, and particularly for the general
definition of irrational exponents. He used Newtonian fluxions with Leibnizian notation
and organized his work to minimize the need for demonstrations. The result, as Ivor
Grattan-Guinness puts it, is ‘impressive but odd, powerful but cryptic’ (Grattan-Guinness
1990, 59-61). Anastácio da Cunha’s Principios was translated into French in 1811, praised
by Gauss in his private correspondence, and reviewed several times (Youschkevitch 1978;
46
Mawhim 1990; de Oliveira 1990). The similarities between Anastácio da Cunha’s work
and Cauchy’s articulation of some fundamental notions of the calculus are intriguing,
although the connexion between the two remains a moot point (Youschkevitch 1973; de
Oliveira 1988; Queiró 1988). Anastácio da Cunha never became a fellow of the Portuguese
Academy of Sciences (Duarte and Silva 1990b, 133-34; Simoês, Carneiro, Diogo 1999,
19).
12 Conclusion: Newton in Portugal and Spain
Eighteenth-century Portugal and Spain displayed important similarities in their reception
of Newtonianism. In both countries, the religious orders (the Oratorians in Portugal, the
Jesuits and Benedictines in Spain) were important vectors of Newton’s ideas. Advanced
religious thinkers (Verney and Almeida in Portugal, Feijoo in Spain, indeed all three in
both countries) contributed decisively to the dissemination of philosophical novelties. In
particular, they packaged Newton's ideas with those of the experimental philosophy and
declared that old philosophical systems, based on metaphysics or first principles, were
obsolete. In both countries, the Inquisition obstructed the circulation of new ideas, and did
so in an indirect, almost haphazard way. In both lands (but more markedly in Spain)
advanced mathematics and rational mechanics were subjects that scarcely interested the
learned elites. Cultural unease found expression in the social figures of afrancesados and
estrangeirados. As revealed by the words themselves, while Spanish afrancesados
essentially responded to French influences, Portuguese estrangeirados were attuned to and
influenced by a wider range of foreign enlightened sources, among which English contacts
played an outstanding role. There are more differences between the Spanish and
Portuguese experiences. The influence of afrancesados in Spanish society was noticeable
at a markedly later date than that of estrangeirados in Portuguese society. The former are
hardly noticeable in the first half of the eighteenth century, yet the estrangeirados were
47
active from the opening decades of that century. Moreover, estrangeirados played a
prominent role in the introduction of new trends in science and technology, of
Newtonianism in particular, whereas the influence of afrancesados was felt largely in
literature, the arts, and politics.
Nevertheless, Portugal and Spain displayed important differences in the way that
they reacted to philosophical novelties that came from across the Atlantic and Pyrenees. To
simplify, Portugal can be said to have displayed a much more decidedly reformist cultural
agenda. In the first half of the century the Portuguese Crown already supported the
advanced teachings of the Oratorians and their public lectures in experimental philosophy
also promoted within the Royal Academy of History. Nothing similar happened under
Philip V of Spain. From the 1750s, Pombal’s enlightened agenda of curtailing the old
nobility's power, promoting mercantilism, and checking religious influence had no real
counterpart in eighteenth-century Spain. All contemporary attempts to reform the Spanish
administration, economy, and universities, and to reduce the influence of the landed
aristocracy, the Catholic Church, and the Inquisition were short-lived and ultimately
ineffectual. On the whole, Portugal seemed to be more open and more attuned to new
intellectual and social developments that were occurring elsewhere in Europe. This found
expression not only in the many Portuguese intellectuals who were elected Fellows of the
Royal Society or who published in the Philosophical Transactions and other European
journals, but also in the production of Portugal’s own popular Newtonian books. In part,
this was a reflection of the historical ties that existed at a political and diplomatic level
between Portugal and England. Portugal sent many of its intellectuals into exile or to jail,
just as Spain did, but Portuguese networks for the exchange of ideas, information, and
instruments with foreign countries remained nevertheless somehow more open and more
active than Spanish ones. Finally, in the second half of the century, and thanks to Pombal’s
university reforms, and, later on, to the foundation of the Academy of Sciences,
48
Newtonianism and the experimental philosophy gained in Portugal an official, institutional
basis that they never had in Spain during the eighteenth century.
49
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