The theater and economy of nature: religion and the investigation of nature in seventeenth-century Dutch colonial Brazil.

Historians tend to agree that the investigations by Piso and Marcgraf into nature in northeastern Brazil during the brief Dutch rule in that region were guided by a profound utilitarian approach. This article broadens this perspective by demonstrating how religious elements were heavily involved in their investigations of the natural world. We suggest that for both, like many of their contemporaries, the study of nature was also a way to contemplate the wisdom and omnipotence of the creator's work and demonstrate how religious elements, like the idea of the economy of nature, influenced the understanding of the natural world.