Scientific Entreprise, Academic Adventure and Drawing-Room Culture in the Geodesic Mission to Quito

• Main Authors: Lafuente, Antonio, Estrella, Eduardo
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Sociedad Latinoamericana de Historia de las Ciencias y la Tecnología 1987
• Subjects: Enlightenment; Colonial science; scientific crontroversies; Quito; globalization; Laponia
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/16361

For many years, a large part of the European scientific activity was focused on the identification of relevant problems concerning the shape of the Earth. This was of course accompanied by the search and development of theoretical and/or experimental solution to these problems. This influenced the decision of the Académie des Sciences (Paris), between 1733 and 1735, to not only revise and amplify the observations carried out by astronomers on French soil but to also send two scientific expeditions to Quito and Laponia in order to determine the longitude of a meridian at two different latitudes and to thus finally resolve the controversy. The purpose od this essay is not to analyze the scientific dimension of the American expedition. On the contrary, our aim is to examine the consequences of the expedition, such as the repercussion it had on the intellectual activity of the Colony. Peer reviewed