MIXED WORLDS: THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE ROYAL SPANISH ACADEMY

Abstract

Using in part documents from the archive of the Royal Spanish Academy, we study the creation of its Library, as well as how it could get forbidden books, in particular Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. As one of the main characteristics of the Enlightenment was its cosmopolitan spirit, the relations that the Royal Spanish Academy maintained with the St. Petersburg’s Imperial Academy of Sciences, the  Portuguese Academy, and the French Academy are also considered, paying special attention in the last case to the materials that, as secretary of the French corporation, D’Alembert sent to the Spanish Academy Taking into account that science had a special protagonism in the Enlightenment, the role that it, and technics, played in Spain is analysed, something which lead to consider the case of navigation in the Diccionario de Autoridades, the works of Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, the introduction of the works of Newton in Spain, and the role of science and technics in the Spanish Enlightenment.