The Reception of Darwinism in the Iberian World

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

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2. The Reception of Darwinism

   1. The Evolutionist Mentality in Argentina: An Ideology of Progress

      • Marcelo Montserrat

      Pages 1-27

   2. The Reception of Darwinism in Uruguay

      • Thomas F. Glick

      Pages 29-52

   3. Biological Evolutionism in Cuba at the end of the Nineteenth Century

      • Pedro M. Pruna Goodgall

      Pages 53-64

   4. The Introduction of Darwinism in Brazil

      • Heloisa Maria Bertol Domingues, Magali Romero Sá

      Pages 65-81

   5. Natural History, High-Altitude Physiology and Evolutionary Ideas in Peru

      • Marcos Cueto

      Pages 83-93

   6. Repercussions of Evolutionism in the Spanish Natural History Society

      • Francisco Pelayo

      Pages 95-110

   7. Darwinism and Botany

      • Susana Pinar

      Pages 111-126

   8. Darwinism in Spanish Physical Anthropology

      • Miguel Ángel Puig-Samper

      Pages 127-141

3. Eugenics, Degeneration and Social Darwinism

   1. The Mexican Eugenics Society

      • Laura Suárez Y. Lopez-Guazo

      Pages 143-151

   2. Darwinism, Eugenics and Mendelism in Cuban Biological Education: 1900-1959

      • Armando García González

      Pages 153-169

   3. The Theory of Degeneration in Spain (1886-1920)

      • Ricardo Campos Marín, Rafael Huertas

      Pages 171-187

   4. The Moral Economy of Nature

      • Alvaro Girón

      Pages 189-203

   5. “Desvío al Paraíso”: Citizenship and Social Darwinism in Bolivia, 1880-1920

      • Marta Irurozqui

      Pages 205-227

4. Theoretical Perspective

   1. The Scientific and Popular Receptions of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein

      • Thomas F. Glick, Mark G. Henderson

      Pages 229-238

   2. Darwinism: Its Hard Core

      • Rosaura Ruiz, Francisco J. Ayala

      Pages 239-261

5. Back Matter

   Pages 263-283

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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.

• Charles Darwin
• Darwin
• Nation
• evolution
• ideology
• physiology
• social theory

• Boston University, Boston, USA

  Thomas F. Glick

• Centro de Estudios Históricos, Madrid, Spain

  Miguel Angel Puig-Samper

• Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico

  Rosaura Ruiz

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