The Reception of Darwinism in the Iberian World: Spain, Spanish America and Brazil (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science Book 221)

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. Front Matter....Pages i-xii The Evolutionist Mentality in Argentina: An Ideology of Progress....Pages 1-27 The Reception of Darwinism in Uruguay....Pages 29-52 Biological Evolutionism in Cuba at the end of the Nineteenth Century....Pages 53-64 The Introduction of Darwinism in Brazil....Pages 65-81 Natural History, High-Altitude Physiology and Evolutionary Ideas in Peru....Pages 83-93 Repercussions of Evolutionism in the Spanish Natural History Society....Pages 95-110 Darwinism and Botany....Pages 111-126 Darwinism in Spanish Physical Anthropology....Pages 127-141 The Mexican Eugenics Society....Pages 143-151 Darwinism, Eugenics and Mendelism in Cuban Biological Education: 1900-1959....Pages 153-169 The Theory of Degeneration in Spain (1886-1920)....Pages 171-187 The Moral Economy of Nature....Pages 189-203 “Desvío al Paraíso”: Citizenship and Social Darwinism in Bolivia, 1880-1920....Pages 205-227 The Scientific and Popular Receptions of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein....Pages 229-238 Darwinism: Its Hard Core....Pages 239-261 Back Matter....Pages 263-283 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