'El influjo del clima sobre los seresorganizadoz' y la retoríca ilustrada en el Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada.

On the basis of an analysis of the debate about the influence of climate on living beings that took place in the Semanario del Nuevo Reyno de Granada, this article aims to illustrate the social and political character of natural sciences in Spanish America during the first decades of the 19th century. Te text offers a description of the argumentative resources employed in this debate and the ways in which reliable knowledge and credible arguments were built. In this sense, it also demonstrates how subjects with both scientific and political authority, the enlightened creoles, were constructed. Te article poses a discussion about the rules of the game of enlightened knowledge arguing that notions such as ‘nature’, ‘technology and ‘society’ are inseparable.