The main objective of this thesis is to show the appropriation of modern science' elements during the second half of the XVIII century in the New Granada. Such appropriations depended on historical conditions related to cultural and political western enlightened movement in the colonies. This appropriation became evident through educational reforms, government modernization, and scientific exploration. In this process main actors in the colonial society of Nueva Granada gave form and spread

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... new type of knowledge. The scientific reflections, observations and practices of "colonial science" – all of them known as exercises of representation of the science - depended on the patterns of elaboration, local contingencies and the interpretation made by local actors in active work. This thesis focuses on precisely in describing the variety of elements that showed a particular context of the neogranadian colonial culture. On one hand, the gradual appearance of a new enlightened culture, reduced to an small social group, and its mechanisms for the development of modern science due to the improvement of communication, reading, print culture, networks and friends who shared interests in the acquisition of books and scientific instruments. On the other hand, and at the same time, the core development of modern science through practices of observation and exercises of dissemination and socialization carried out also by a very small-enlightened group, whose ideological separation from the traditional colonial world was becoming increasingly clear.