The New World and the new science. Introduction

Traditional historical reconstructions regarding the circulation and production of knowledge in the Spanish colonies in the New World have focused on their participation in the birth of Early Modern Science in Europe. Although recent studies have revised this approach by examining how knowledge production in the Americas contributed to the development of seventeenth-century Spanish scientific culture, this focus section intends to enlarge the scope of this revisionist approach by considering study cases that show that the circulation of knowledge informed the development of local contexts in the Americas. This introduction depicts this panorama by considering it in the light of the iconography produced by Europeans after the discovery of the New World.