The Reception of Darwinism in the Iberian World: Spain, Spanish America and Brazil

ISBN-13: 9781402000829 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 283 str.

T.F Glick;Miguel Angel Puig-Samper;R. Ruiz

Opis

I Twenty-five years ago, at the Conference on the Comparative Reception of Darwinism held at the University of Texas in 1972, only two countries of the Iberian world-Spain and Mexico-were represented.' At the time, it was apparent that the topic had attracted interest only as regarded the "mainstream" science countries of Western Europe, plus the United States. The Eurocentric bias of professional history of science was a fact. The sea change that subsequently occurred in the historiography of science makes 1972 appear something like the antediluvian era. Still, we would like to think that that meeting was prescient in looking beyond the mainstream science countries-as then perceived-in order to test the variation that ideas undergo as they pass from center to periphery. One thing that the comparative study of the reception of ideas makes abundantly clear, however, is the weakness of the center/periphery dichotomy from the perspective of the diffusion of scientific ideas. Catholics in mainstream countries, for example, did not handle evolution much better than did their corre1igionaries on the fringes. Conversely, Darwinians in Latin America were frequently better placed to advance Darwin's ideas in a social and political sense than were their fellow evolutionists on the Continent. The Texas meeting was also a marker in the comparative reception of scientific ideas, Darwinism aside. Although, by 1972, scientific institutions had been studied comparatively, there was no antecedent for the comparative history of scientific ideas.

Spis treści

Preface. Part One: The Reception of Darwinism. The Evolutionist Mentality in Argentina: An Ideology of Progress; M. Montserrat. The Reception of Darwinism in Uruguay; T.F. Glick. Biological Evolutionism in Cuba at the End of the Nineteenth Century; P.M.P. Goodgall. The Introduction of Darwinism in Brazil; H.M.B. Domingues, M.R. Sá. Natural History, High-Altitude Physiology and Evolutionary Ideas in Peru; M. Cueto. Repercussions of Evolutionism in the Spanish Natural History Society; F. Pelayo. Darwinism and Botany: The Acceptance of Darwinian Concepts in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Botanical Studies; S. Pinar. Darwinism in Spanish Physical Anthropology; M.A. Puig-Samper. Part Two: Eugenics, Degeneration and Social Darwinism. The Mexican Eugenics Society: Racial Selection and Improvement; L.S. Y López-Guazo. Darwinism, Eugenics and Mendelism in Cuban Biological Education: 1900-1959; A.G. González. The Theory of Degeneration in Spain (1886-1920); R.C. Marín, R. Huertas. The Moral Economy of Nature: Darwinism and the Struggle for Life in Spanish Anarchism (1882-1914(; A. Girón. `Desvío al Paraíso': Citizenship and Social Darwinism in Bolivia, 1880-1920; M. Irurozqui. Part Three: Theoretical Perspectives. The Scientific and Popular Receptions of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein: Toward an Analytical History of the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas; Th.F. Glick, M.G. Henderson. Darwinism: Its Hard Core; R. Ruiz, F.J. Ayala. Index.