The eradication of the myth

This brief chapter sets out the principal conclusions of the monograph. Having established, especially in chapter 4, that ‘the scientists’ as a whole were not specifically Spencerian, notwithstanding the assertion to the contrary of their contemporary Porfirio Parra and, latterly, Zea, it stresses, on the basis of a detailed reading of the vast corpus of Spencer’s original publications, that Sierra and Bulnes, in particular, had a limited understanding of Spencerian ideas. Reflected in the often superficial nature of the sources, primarily French, to which they had access, this factor tended to distort and misrepresent his ideas, especially on the matters of race and evolution. The myth referred to is Zea’s insistence that the Mexican positivists were Spencerians. The reality is that they were men of their time, struggling to understand and assimilate theideas that reached them from Europe ansd the United States, but whose ideology was determined by their class interests, which would be best protected by the permanence in office of Porfirio Díaz.

Introduction

Here the author explains what led her to question the highly influential historiographical acceptance in Mexico of Zea’s thesis, articulated in his 1968 book on Positivism, that ‘the scientists’ were Spencerians, who provided unquestioning political and ideological support for the long dictatorship of Díaz. It explains the role of Gabino Barreda in diffusing Comtean ideas in Mexico, in the National Preparatory School, founded in 1868. It then examines Zea’s intellectual formation, in particular the influence upon him of the Spanish scholars José Ortega y Gasset and José Gaos. It goes on to survey recent scholarship in Mexico and beyond on ‘the scientists’. Having explained the need to analyse the original writings of Spencer in order to test Zea’s thesis, it introduces the theme of the links and differences between the theories of Spencer and Darwin on evolution.

Porfirio Díaz, Positivism, and ‘The Scientists’

This chapter introduces the reader to the socio-ideological environment of the Porfiriato - as the 27 years of Diaz’s uninterrupted dictatorshp (1884-1911 is known - and the years immediately before. This discussion establishes the context for the popularity in intellectual and elite circles of a philosophy, Positivism, which stressed the need for order and control of the masses in order to secure economic progress. The chapter concentrates upon the ideas and careers of two of the most controversial and prolific ‘scientists’, Sierra and Bulnes. It examines their links with other supposed member of the group, including José Yves Limantour. It shows that the documents in the archive of Bulnes clearly reveal the identities of its members, who constituted an intellectual clique rather than a political party.

Spencerian evolution

Using primary sources - both published and archival - this chapter looks at the varied, often contradictory, attitudes of Bulnes and Sierra towards in particular social and racial issues considered to be of great importance in the modernisation of Mexico during the Porfiriato. Although they and other members of ‘the scientists’ (an ironic term devised by their political enemies because of their insistence that they had mastered science) circle attempted to use Spencerianism for the construction of their proposals relating to education, health, and race, they were hampered, it is shown, by Spencer’s increasingly rigitive attitudes in his later works towards landed property, and his insistence upon the need to reduce the role of government in organising society. Both Bulnes and Sierra regarded Mexico’s large Indian population as a barrier to progress, although the latter was less racist than Bulnes, supporting the idea of educating them in order to permit their assimilation into civilised society, whereas Bulnes regarded their ignorance and stupidity as beyond redemption. The chapter concludes that other thinkers, such as the Swiss-born biologist and naturalist naturalist Louis Agassiz, were also very influential in shaping the ideas of Meixican intellectuals during the Porfiriato.

The evolution of Spencerianism

This chapter’s focus is upon the reception and assimilation of Spencerian philosophy in Mexico, underpinned by a discussion of the sources of information available to the Mexican positivists. It establishes that their fragmented understanding of his ideas was acquired primarily and indirectly from reviews of his works published in fashionable French journals which arrived in Mexico spasmodically. Thus, their apparent erudition was acquired, at best second-hand, and combined with their own traditional liberalism to produce an eclectic and contradictory discourse. Although many were comfortable with the French language (and, of course, Spanish), most did not read well English or German. Therefore, the ideas that originated in Britain, the United States, and Germany were less influential than French notions in the construction of the Positivism of Porfirian Mexico. However, Mexican intellectuals did what they could to absorb new philosophical currents in their quest to modernise Mexico, insisting that they had mastered science, the new truth that was replacing religion as the source of authority.

The origins of the Spencerian theory of evolution

Conscious of the need to explain clearly the fundamental ideas of Spencer, as a preliminary to establishing what ‘the scientists’ made of them, this chapter concentrates upon his theory of evolution. This serves in part to reveal the differences between his philosophy and that of Comte and other important thinkers in Britain and elsewhere of the nineteenth century. It also shows how Spencer gathered together the knowledge and the notion of the world as part of a universal system governed by immutable laws, which ever since the time of Isaac Newton, had been present in British culture, shaping the identity of Victorian Britain, which Spencer captured and unified in order to give it a universal meaning. The chapter concludes with an explanation of the reasons for the popularity of his elegant model for the universe, led by the immanent law of evolution, with tycoons in the United States such as Andrew Carnegie and Edward Livingstone Youmans, who provided him with financial support