This book presents the process of circulation and adoption of Newtonianism in the Viceroyalty of New Granada (modern-day Colombia) in the eighteenth century by examining José Celestino Mutis’s lectures at the Colegio del Rosario between the 1760s and 1770s.

Chapter I. The administrative history of a chair.- Chapter II. Newtonianism in Mutis’s lectures on mathematics.- Chapter III. Newton’s physics in New Granada: Mutis’s lectures and mathematisation of nature.- Chapter IV. The circulation of Newtonianism in New Granada after Mutis’s lectures.

Basing his monograph on newly discovered documents, Molina-Betancur compels us to appreciate the plurality of meanings that the term ‘Newtonianism’ could take. He achieves this by looking at the reception of Newton’s ideas from the vantage point of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, rather than from a European perspective. This book not only sheds new light upon Celestino Mutis’s intellectual world, but it is also an eye-opening contribution on rather broad issues concerning the relationships between science and empire. Niccolò Guicciardini, University of Milan, ItalyThis book presents the process of circulation and adoption of Newtonianism in the Viceroyalty of New Granada (modern-day Colombia) in the eighteenth century by examining José Celestino Mutis’s lectures at the Colegio del Rosario between the 1760s and 1770s. Mostly famous for his botanical activities as director of the botanical expedition, Mutis lectured the first course of mathematics ever created in New Granada on his arrival in Bogota in 1762, in which he included several lectures on physics that encompassed multiple aspects of his interpretation of Newton’s experimental physics.Sebastián Molina-Betancur is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy) where he studies the circulation of science in the Spanish colonies between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. He has been lecturer of history of science and history of philosophy at the Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia).

Dr Molina-Betancur offers a vivid portray of the intellectual and teaching activities developed in the mathematical chair set up at Bogotá in the 1760s. The book illuminates the education of the elites in Nueva Granada, one of the major administrative divisions of Spanish America in the 18th century, with interesting asides to discuss the role of scientific education in the intellectual and political movements there. Dr Molina-Betancur's account of the appropriation of Newton's Principia and its adaption to local needs, including his discussion of an 18th-century Spanish translation of the Principia, is a major contribution to understanding the role of Newtonianism in the 18ht-century.Antoni Malet, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Depicts how Newtonianism informed the development of the Spanish colonies in the New World Presents unprecedented textual evidence to characterise the circulation of science in the Americas Examines the earliest translations into Spanish of Newton’s, Descartes’s, Wolff’s, and Gravesande’s works

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