Sacred Habitat

“This work is an important intervention into scholarship concerning early modern science and into Spanish imperial culture and religion. It resituates Iberian authors as significant contributors to the early modern ‘New Science’ through appraisal of how new approaches to geography, cosmography, and zoology were incorporated into or affected by the Tridentine Catholic renewal. Ultimately, this argument undermines the long-standing assumption that science and religion diverged in the early modern period.” —Jessica Boon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “Sacred Habitat is a novel and much-needed perspective on an important corpus of early modern Spanish works dealing with the Americas that often seems perplexing to the modern reader, especially when understood solely as ‘scientific’ works. Ran Segev lucidly explains that science and religion of the era were mutually constitutive and fully integrated into knowledge-making approaches.” —María Portuondo, author of The Spanish Disquiet: The Biblical Natural Philosophy of Benito Arias Montano “This concise, elegantly argued study constitutes a veritable watershed in our understanding of the relationship between science and religion. Segev’s compelling narrative and well-chosen case studies lay the foundations for a non-Eurocentric and truly global alternative to the tired story of the ‘scientific revolution.’ This book is therefore to be warmly welcomed. It is a considerable achievement and deserves the widest possible readership.” —Simon Ditchfield, University of York