Adapting Traditional Ideas for a New Reality: Cosmographers and Physicians Updating Astrology to Encompass the New...

This paper aims to demonstrate that astrology was one of the disciplines that most strongly experienced the process that led European natural philosophers, once they were confronted with the nature of the New World, to recognise that previous knowledge was not as complete or absolute as previously assumed, and that the content of several disciplines had to be renewed, both epistemologically and methodologically. This paper focuses on the work by the cosmographer Henrico Martinez, Repertorio de los tiempos (1606), in which he established the astrological influences specific to Mexico, and the work Sitio, naturatezay propiedades de la Ciudad de Mexico (1618) by the physician Diego Cisneros, who refuted Martinez's astrology for Mexico and created his own instructions for the use of astrology in the practice of medicine in New Spain.