Event Highlights: Indigenous Knowledge and Modern Science
This presentation by Jaime Marroquín—Hidden in Translation: Indigenous Knowledge and Modern Science—was hosted by the Center for Latin American Studies at Boston University and took place on Thursday, January 28, 2021.
Prof. Jaime Marroquin is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Western Oregon University. His research focuses on the cultural history of knowledge and science in Mexico from a global perspective. Prof. Marroquin expanded on the changes that the traditional history of science had gone through in the past 20 to 30 years. Instead of privilege the logic of heroic individual discoveries, nowadays the history of science focuses more on the cultural context and social networks. From Francis Bacon to the indigenous communities in the Americas, Prof. Marroquin explores the role of indigenous knowledge in the history of science and its disadvantages across common ideas that the traditional scientific revolution brought. Prof. Marroquin highlighted the relevance for the history of science to still make an adequate account of the knowledge that the Europeans gain during the early modern period, not because of the discovery of new things but of the translation across cultures. Since America’s turn to be the epicenter of the most important development in the natural sciences, allow us to understand and unveil the nuances of thinking social sciences and modern nature as transcultural. Not as a way by any means to celebrate colonialism, but rather to have a more complete transcultural history of modern science conquest.