La physica speculatio, primer libro de física escrito y publicado en el continente americano

Abstract

In 1557, a text written by Friar Alonso de la Veracruz was printed in the capital of New Spain. This work dealt specifically with physics and was written for the sole purpose of teaching that field at the Real Universidad de México. This work was to become the first physics textbook published in America. Here, we discuss its content and its value, comparing it with what was taught in physics in the principal european universities at that time. In particular, we show that not only did de la Veracruz' text introduce the principal theoretical concepts of geocentric astronomy so common at that time but also presents implicitly, but clearly, the ideas of the novel heliocentric model of the solar system, a remarkable fact, since this scientific book of the colonial Mexico appeared only 14 years after the first edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by Nicholas Copernicus in Europe.