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What did it mean to “know” something in an age of profound epistemological shift? This course explores the revolutionary transformations in scientific thought during the late Renaissance and early modern period (approximately 1550–1650), with particular focus on the cultural and intellectual world that produced Miguel de Cervantes. Students will examine how the Scientific Revolution unfolded alongside Spain’s so-called Golden Age of literature and art, investigating the tensions between emerging empirical methods and traditional scholastic authority, the impact of New World discoveries on European natural philosophy, and the relationship between literary imagination and scientific inquiry. Topics include the Copernican revolution, advances in anatomy and medicine, alchemy and chemistry, navigation and cartography, engineering and technology, and the role of observation and experiment in challenging Aristotelian cosmology. Through readings from various early modern scientific thinkers, and alongside Cervantes’s own works, students will consider how Don Quixote’s world was one where old certainties were crumbling and new ways of understanding nature were taking shape. Class will be conducted in Spanish.