The Literary Reception of Science in Argentina

Abstract

Many a time the author has stressed the fact that there is a historiography applied to "what" and another one applied to "why". Without disregarding the former, which it is absolutely necessary to use so as not to fall into optical illusions, it is also true that without the task of interpretation there can be no valid historiography or historian. The author examines the literary reception of science, particularly the appealing process produced in the field of Darwinism. At the same time, he tries to give a new conceptual course to oíd and new research subjects, which have taken the shape of a corpus, more frequently praised than imitated. Thus, between Hudson and Holmberg, a space is enunciated where the reader will find from an excitingly naive but most acute understanding of Darwinís work to the healthy controversy which will make an ideology of progress out of the evolutionist mentality. They are different interpretations, though both equally necessary in order to understand the historie and social course of what was to become one of the main scientific ideologies in the second half of the nineteenth century.