«An Inquiry into the nature and cause of a drink»: Henry Stubbe and the bitter taste of Indian cocoa within an English Puritan context

Abstract

The founding of the Royal Society of London in 1660 enabled the public exposure of the debates between empirical science and humanist learning that had been an object of contention in previous decades. The Puritan revolution, leaning towards an essentialist and revelatory notion of the order of things –both in science and in political and religious matters– was heading for a conceptual reshuffling after the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, in which Charles II would seek a professionalization of knowledge, its methodologies and scientific practice. This implied a better grasp of the learning stemming from rival nations, both at home and in the New World.The present article examines the nuances of these scientific and religious debates that brought to light the need to reform and integrate sixteenth-century Humanist learning with more experimental currents. The figure of the physician and writer Henry Stubbe, with his work The Indian Nectar, or a Discourse concerning Chocolata (1662), reveals the difficulties to integrate Humanist and empirical knowledge, as well as its points of contact and adjustments with the new structures of scientific, political, and religious wisdom.