Dissertation Research: Pilots Versus Cosmographers: Theory and Utility in Early Modern Spain

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This dissertation project examines a sixteenth century dispute in Spain over navigation and cartography, which pitted educated cosmographers against practical pilots in arguments about the relative value of theoretical knowledge and practical utility. The researcher will use legal records preserved in Seville, writings on navigation, and maps and navigational instruments to explain the goals and positions of the main factions in this debate -- the pilots who navigated the ships, the cosmographers their examiners, and the instrument makers who mediated between them --as well as those of one man, Sebastian Cabot, who affiliated himself at various times with all three groups. The researcher will use the dispute to probe the reasons for the consistent misunderstandings between pilots and osmographers. The dissertation will look beyond the pilots' conservativism and ignorance, invoked in most of the historiography, to explore their reasons for rejecting the new knowledge and techniques of the cosmographers. The dissertation will also explore the vastly different conceptions the pilots, cosmographers and instrument-makers had both of what constituted valid knowledge and of why one would want to acquire it. By examining the different goals of the pilots and cosmographers, and by focusing attention on the ways the pilots chose what methods to adopt, the researcher hopes to understand the problems inherent in trying to make theoretical knowledge practically useful.