The Reception of Darwinism in the Iberian World

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.

Klappentext

This book provides both for academic historians and the general reader a broad perspective on Darwin's impact in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds. In Latin American countries with black and Amerindian populations, evolutionary theory was quickly mobilized for theorizing racial differences, while in Spain attention was focused on class differentiation, explained by a series of Darwinian, Social Darwinist, and Eugenic hypotheses. The wide variety of approaches to evolutionary and social theory in countries whose culture was very similar points illuminates those issues thought to be of particular significance for national identity, whether political, ethnic, or racial.

Inhalt
Preface.- One: The Reception Of Darwinism.- Marcelo Montserrat/The Evolutionist Mentality in Argentina:An Ideology of Progress.- Thomas F. Glick/ The Reception of Darwinism in Uruguay.- Pedro M. Pruna Goodgall/ Biological Evolutionism in Cuba at the End of the Nineteenth Century.- Heloisa Maria Bertol Domingues And Magali Romero SÁ/The Introduction of Darwinism in Brazil.- Marcos Cueto/Natural History, High-Altitude Physiology and Evolutionary Ideas in Peru.- Francisco Pelayo/Repercussions of Evolutionism in the Spanish Natural History Society.- Susana Pinar/Darwinism and Botany: The Acceptance of Darwinian Concepts in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Botanical Studies.- Miguel Ángel Puig-Samper/Darwinism in Spanish Physical Anthropology.- Two: Eugenics, Degeneration And Social Darwinism.- Laura SuÁrex Y LÓpez¡ªGuazo/The Mexican Eugenics Society: Racial Selection and Improvement.- Armando GarcÍa Gonzalez/Darwinism, Eugenics and Mendelism in Cuban Biological Education: 1900-1959.- Ricardo Campos MARÍN And Rafael Huertas/The Theory of Degeneration in Spain (1886-1920).- Alvaro GirÓn/The Moral Economy of Nature: Darwinism and the Struggle for Life in Spanish Anarchism (1882-1914).- Marta Irurozqui/ Desvío al Paraíso: Citizenship and Social Darwinism in Bolivia, 1880-1920.- Three: Theoretical Perspectives.- Thomas F. Glick And Mark G. Henderson/The Scientific and Popular Receptions of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein: Toward an Analytical History of the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas.- Rosaura Ruiz And Franscisco J. Ayala/Darwinism: Its Hard Core.