Summary This paper analyzes the Spanish appropriation of one of the great French eighteenth-century best-sellers, the Spectacle de la Nature (1732--1750) by the abbé Antoine Nöel Pluche. In eight volumes, the abbé discussed current issues in natural philosophy, such as Newtonianism, the origin of fossils, artisan techniques, natural history, machines, gardening or insect-collection in a polite-conversation format. It was translated into English (1735), Dutch (1737), Italian (1737), German (1746) and Spanish (1753). But the four Spanish editions were very different from (...) their European counterparts. In Spain, it was delivered in 16 carefully printed and extensively commented volumes. In Pluche's original, there was a concern for the young gentleman's education, new pedagogical methods and an enthusiastic defence of experimental knowledge. However, Le Spectacle in Spain was conceived as a useful tool for modernizing the country, it served political and propagandist goals, defended Spanish culture and science (in particular with respect to American flora, fauna and geography) and the Jesuit contribution to science and aimed to harmonize experimental knowledge and scholastic tradition. The analysis of the more than 1500 footnotes, prefaces, some readers’ comments and other questions related to the format gives insight on how it was appropriated. (shrink)

Algorithmically driven online dating platforms today promise the ability to sort through relevant data and identify one’s ideal amorous matches effectively. Yet the appeal of technological and scientific solutions to the messy problem of finding partners is hardly new. This introduction to the Focus section “It’s a Match!” argues that the history of amorous matching has long been part and parcel of the history of science, in particular the social sciences. Taking matching as an “applied science of social harmony,” the (...) authors argue that concern over more reliable techniques for determining the suitability of partners has formed an essential part of both the maintenance of social order and the shaping of subjectivities, enabling discourses of informed choice and the rational management of the passions, while also reinforcing and subverting structures of age, gender, race, and sexuality. (shrink)

This essay analyzes how the Benedictine monk Benito Jerónimo Feijoo (1676–1764), one of the most popular Spanish natural philosophers in Europe and America, discussed amorous attraction. In an attempt to reconcile Catholic dogma with empirical knowledge, Feijoo explained the origin of love as the result of wave-like interactions between sensual stimulus, imagination, nerve fibers, and the heart. His physiological model considered men and women to be equal in their internal constituents, which had important consequences for a possible science of matching. (...) First, a possible match could only be known by a physical encounter; second, love bonds could be controlled by training the imagination; third, a harmonious society with happy marriages required accepting the intellectual equality of the sexes. The essay suggests how our knowledge about the nature of emotions influences the way we imagine an ideal society, as it is ultimately about the forces that attract and separate people, as well as the mechanisms to control them. (shrink)