Science,philosophy and literature in the early Spanish Enlightenment: the case of Martin Martinez

Abstract

Martín Martínez was born in Madrid in 1684 and died fifty years later in the Spanish capital in 1734. He was one of the introducers of medicine and modern philosophy in the Spain of Philip V (Marañón 1962, 130). He is a focus for many of the aspects that bring together scientific research with literary writing and philosophical reflection. In fact, Martinez systematically considered the usefulness of writing science books in Spanish at the same time as he reflected on the scope of Cartesian or Gassendist philosophy and its relationship with scientific research in the sense that some sixty years earlier Robert Boyle had defined it in his The Sceptical Chymist (1661). He is therefore a model figure for observing the penetration of the Scientific Revolution in Spain in the early years of the eighteenth century.