El imperio visible: la mirada experta y la imagen en las expediciones científicas de la Ilustración

Abstract

This essay examines the Spanish natural history expeditions to Latin America in the late 18th Century —particularly the Real Expedición Botánica a Nueva Granada, directed by José Celestino Mutis— as an approach to an analysis of the importance of visual culture in European natural history, especially in imperial contexts. It explains the connections between economic botany and taxonomic botany, and highlights the role of visual epistemology in bringing them together. It proposes that the scientific expeditions constituted visualization projects that, through the circulation of images and collections, transformed locally rooted natures into global natures in motion.