BETWEEN OBJECTS AND WORDS. THE PERIODIC PRESS AS A TOOL FOR NATURE COLLECTING IN NEW SPAIN, 18TH CENTURY

Abstract

At the end of novohispanic 18th century, periodic press worked as an important media, communicating a diversity of contents which included not just the latest news about politics, economics or society, but different scientific issues, and discussions made of public knowledge in the pages of the novohispanic press. Scientific and natural history collecting were topics that people could also find and read about in those novohispanic periodic publications. According to that, the notes appearing in the press informed about recent findings related to scientific interest‟s objects, and notified about innovative processes to preserve nature collections, as well as they spread monarchical requests of colonial nature produccions and subscriptions to obtain collections made of objects that were brought from Europe and other continents. Based on the notes related to nature or natural history collecting, published at the turn of the century in novohispanic press, this paper looks forward to show the prominent role of periodic publications in communicating, and improving of emerging american collecting practices, pointing out their agency as paper technologies and their utility as primary sources of information, usefull to the progressive development of latinamerican history of sience.