On the voice filosofía (“philosophy”) in 15th-century American authors' works

Abstract

In the Eighteenth century a new way of thinking arises and develops, where the reason replaces the authority. In Spain the transition from Scolastic to Modern philosophy represents an essential incentive for the scientific thinking. In the American colonies the process is similar but not identical because of the temporal gap and historical circumstances. The aim of this paper is to underline the changes in the concept of philosophy between Spain and Spanish America. Furthermore, I will advance hypotheses about the causes. I will adopt a methodology that combines the Lexicology and the History of Ideas (Lapesa 1978) to analyse a corpus made from Spanish American texts of various genres. I will also show the criteria of this corpus that is the outcome of the research that I’m continuing in the field of the project “Estudio del vocabulario científico y técnico del español del siglo xviii. Ciencia y técnica en América”.