Abstract Summary
This paper explores the intersection of ideas about nature, ingenuity (“ingenio”) and invention in seventeenth-century Spanish thought through an examination of the natural historical and natural philosophical writings of the Jesuit scholar Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1595-1658), the first holder of the Chair of Natural History at Reales Estudios of the Jesuit Colegio Imperial in Madrid (founded in 1629). The paper places particular emphasis on instances of human and animal inventive and ingenious behaviour in the early modern American context: from the unique comportment of certain creatures to various cunning practices involving artefacts and materials. Through a number of books written and published between the late 1620s and the early 1630s, Nieremberg’s writings offer a rich corpus of information on European and American natural history, including a substantial portion of the materials gathered during the so-called ‘Francisco Hernández expedition’ to New Spain (1570-1577). The paper’s aim is to situate Nieremberg’s take on invention and ingenuity within a larger debate on issues like the fabric of the natural world, the nature of God’s craftsmanship, the moral and cultural dimensions of human and animal behaviour, and their natural philosophical and theological implications.
