Sergio H. Orozco-Echeverri

I am interested in how knowledge of nature is produced, shared, and used across different societies. My earlier work examined the codification of knowledge into "laws of nature," and how this process shaped emerging views of nature and knowledge in the early modern world, particularly in Italy, France, England, and Scotland. Currently, I am developing what I call a "history of knowledge-in-use" by tracing how almanacs, calendars, and lunarios combined cosmological and scientific knowledge with the activities of daily life — eating, healing, harvesting, praying, and orienting oneself in space and time — while also revealing political and social interests. I focus especially on how almanacs were produced and circulated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries across Spain, Portugal, and the Americas, and on how their transformation illuminates changing conceptions of the natural and social worlds, as well as human action upon them. From a philosophical perspective, I am developing two interconnected notions: hybrid knowledge — knowledge that does not resolve tension but fosters it — and syncretic epistemology — the recombination of heterogeneous knowledge traditions into a functional yet internally contradictory whole. Finally, I am interested in the role of science and scientific research in Anthropocene climate change and the contemporary construction of environmental knowledge. I have explored how people learn about climate change and how science shapes public understanding of it. I have also worked on the validation of environmental knowledge, calling for a reorientation of epistemological standards in response to the urgency of a more nuanced understanding of nature in our current world.