Clearly, science plays a key role in modern times. Yet, what has its development been over the course of history? What is its relationship with other disciplines? And how has it influenced the building of the two Iberian nations?
Anyone interested in studying these questions in greater depth or starting to learn about them with rigour, but also in an exciting way, can undertake an extraordinary journey through these two exceptional books.
The first of the two, Fantasmas de la ciencia española by science historian Juan Pimentel, offers us a fascinating tour around the interrelations between art and science in Hispanic societies over the last five centuries. The eight parts of the book are interdependent, but autonomous at the same time, so they can be read in any order one chooses.
Therefore, it is possible to dive into this work through, for example, the eighth and closing chapter, titled “‘Naturalia’ en la Pinacoteca”. It analyses the exhibition that artist Miguel Ángel Blanco presented at the Museo Nacional del Prado between 2013 and 2014, which aimed to recover the original design project of this neoclassical building. Its architect, Juan de Villanueva, conceived it as a scientific and technological complex that would provide a prominent place for the treasures of nature of what was, at that time, a tri-continental empire. Decades later, however, art eventually came to overshadow science, so that the images created by artists took precedence over those of scientists, leaving them hidden from view.
This is the idea behind the storyline of this thought-provoking work. The science developed between the 16th and 21st centuries in Spanish society has been a phantom element because it turned into a practice with restricted visibility. For this reason, even though “it continues emitting rays of light from the past”, in our collective conscience it occupies “a remote and shadowy place”.
To bring us closer to these lights and shadows, the author has resorted to the spectral turn. Those who use it pursue individuals and objects from the past that are hidden because they were marginalised. Yet, they have all left trails spectres of their presence that haunt us. That is how phantoms work, as we are reminded by the brilliant introduction to this book. Therein, Pimentel confesses his fascination with images, singular trails left behind by our forebears. They appear and disappear, hence their spectral nature.
Images are fundamental in the structure, discourse, and content of Fantasmas de la ciencia española. With his razor-sharp interpretations, and equipped with solid theoretical tools and supported by a wide range of sources, the author guides us through eight scientific episodes, manifested through powerful visual resources.
Three chapters deal with the interconnection between European knowledge and indigenous know-how during the colonial actions of the Hispanic Monarchy in the Americas. Pimentel explains to us the vital role played by indigenous knowledge in the sighting of the South Sea (the Pacific) by Núñez de Balboa and how it was hidden in a portolan chart. He describes to us the crucial role played by native knowledge in the great “phantom” expedition led by Francisco Hernández, royal physician to King Philip II of Spain, across lands that today form part of the United Mexican States. He also introduces us to the creative work of the indigenous painters who collaborated with botanist José Celestino Mutis in the area today forming Colombia, and whose iconographic treasure remained invisible for a very long time.
Another four episodes reveal to us the importance of iconographic resources in scientific discourses. They correspond to several works from the Baroque or contemporary era that possess a certain phantasmal nature. This is manifested in the microscopic atlas that Crisóstomo Martínez produced in the 17th century; or in the maps in which geologists and palaeontologists tackled the difficult task of apprehending the space and time of the new liberal State of the 19th century, and also in the drawings and photographs that enabled Santiago Ramón y Cajal to achieve glory by winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine 1906 and to consolidate a school, very influential among neurologists the world over (Portuguese included) but that became diluted as a consequence of the “uncivil” war of 1936-1939. Lastly, the author enters into a dialogue with literature about the presence of women in our scientific culture. He studies the images produced by spectroscopist Piedad de la Cierva during the Franco years, and paintings by Maruja Mallo while living in exile. Both the former and the latter are expressive of the relationship between art and science that the author of this work has ably explored and unravelled.
