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

这篇论文研究了16世纪西班牙关于导航和地图学的一场争论，受过教育的宇宙学家和实际飞行员在理论知识和实践效用的相对价值上发生了争执。这位研究人员将使用保存在塞维利亚的法律记录、关于航海的著作、地图和导航仪器来解释这场辩论中主要派别的目标和立场--驾驶船只的飞行员、他们的审查员、以及在他们之间进行调解的仪器制造者--以及一个人的目标和立场，塞巴斯蒂安·卡伯特曾在不同时期加入这三个团体。研究人员将利用这一争端来调查飞行员和渗透压检查员之间持续误解的原因。本文将超越大多数史学中引用的飞行员的保守主义和无知，探讨他们拒绝宇宙学家的新知识和新技术的原因。这篇论文还将探索飞行员、宇宙学家和仪器制造商对有效知识的构成和为什么想要获得这些知识的截然不同的概念。通过考察飞行员和宇宙学家的不同目标，并将注意力集中在飞行员选择采用什么方法的方式上，研究人员希望了解在尝试将理论知识应用于实际中所固有的问题。

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.