Aesthetic Survival, Scientific Agnotology: How Mesoamerican Botany was Forgotten
Fabio Lopez-Lazaro
History Department
Santa Clara University
It is not always remembered that Mesoamerican cultures developed complex taxonomic systems for botanical science which were linked to both religio-cultural and political agendas. This study discusses how the particular Mexica use of traditional Mesoamerican botany in the fifteenth and early sixteenth-century project of empire connected with the evolution of sixteenth-century European ecological thought. The focus is in assessing Londa Schiebinger's recent development of the term agnotology--the historically verifiable creation of ignorance--to the particular case of this Mesoamerican imperial botany. Despite having an impact on European cultures, Mexica botany was effectively forgotten in the colonial and colonizing experience of New Spain.