El coleccionismo científico en Madrid en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIIIlas colecciones de palacio y las de Benavente-Osuna, infantado y marqués de Santa Cruz

Abstract

During the second half of the 18th century, there was a particular scientific collecting in Spain that reflected the influence and social significance achieved by the changes in methodology and ways of approaching knowledge about the natural world developed in previous centuries. The new experimental scientific method that spread throughout Europe, as part of the profound process of cultural, political and social transformation, led to the independence of physics from metaphysics and limited its field of study to the inorganic world. The exercise of these practices brought with it the creation and use of a specific instrumentation, essential to guarantee the validity and reproducibility of the facts raised, and which would become an indispensable complement for their implementation and development. Despite the existence of numerous bibliography that has addressed the importance of science in our country during the illustrated period, the references to these experimental cabinets in the private sphere have always been partial and the data, scattered, with a greater study in those sets belonging to educational institutions. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to alleviate the absence of studies in this regard by reconstructing some of the most representative collections of the time, establishing their context, nature and use at the time in which arose, characterized of innovation, development and scientific consolidation...