Le déclin d'un savoir. La crise de la cosmographie à la fin de la Renaissance

The Decline of Scienc:e the Crisis of Cosmography at the End of the Renaissance. Cosmography or universal geography was born in the sixteenth century from the encounter between the newly rediscovered Ptolemean cartography and the progress of the Great Navigations registered portolar charts The rapid growth of this scien ce whose theoretical ambition was to describe the earth according to the celestial circles at first brought fruitful results manifest in the amount of free play accorded to the practician and in the role given to the so-called prospective imagination But the same rapid growth quickly led to decline precipitated towards the end of the Renaissance by the suspicion which catholic and protestant theologians cast upon the pride and the vain curiosity presiding over the constitution of any universal science type of science which according to them held authorities in little respect and proudly based itself on the supremacy of mere experienceLestringant Frank. Le déclin d'un savoir. La crise de la cosmographie à la fin de la Renaissance. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 46ᵉ année, N. 2, 1991. pp. 239-260