This innovative monograph is of major significance for not only students and academics undertaking research on the history of Mexico during the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, but also scholars specializing in the history of ideas, philosophy and science. Unlike previous discussions of positivism in Latin America, this book presents a detailed analysis of the English thinker, Herbert Spencer's original works as a necessary gateway into the discussion of the thinking of 'The Scientists'. Its principal purpose is to revisit the influential thesis of Leopoldo Zea which proposed that 'The Scientists' throughout this period were Spencerian positivists. This book offers a revisionist analysis of the original papers of 'The Scientists', Francisco Bulnes and Justo Sierra, as well as their political and philosophical ideas and activities. This analysis demonstrates that their eclectic discourses used the ideas of the American Social Darwinists, and those from Spencer, Darwin, August Comte, and other European writers, concluding that 'The Scientists' lacked a clear leader and had an ambivalent relationship with Diaz. It interprets 'The Scientists' not as 'heroes' or 'villains', but as men struggling to appropriate European philosophical advances into their quest to modernise Mexico.

This innovative monograph is of major significance for not only students and academics undertaking research on the history of Mexico during the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, but also scholars specializing in the history of ideas, philosophy and science. Unlike previous discussions of positivism in Latin America, this book presents a detailed analysis of the English thinker, Herbert Spencer's original works as a necessary gateway into the discussion of the thinking of 'The Scientists'. Its principal purpose is to revisit the influential thesis of Leopoldo Zea which proposed that 'The Scientists' throughout this period were Spencerian positivists. This book offers a revisionist analysis of the original papers of 'The Scientists', Francisco Bulnes and Justo Sierra, as well as their political and philosophical ideas and activities. This analysis demonstrates that their eclectic discourses used the ideas of the American Social Darwinists, and those from Spencer, Darwin, August Comte, and other European writers, concluding that 'The Scientists' lacked a clear leader and had an ambivalent relationship with Diaz. It interprets 'The Scientists' not as 'heroes' or 'villains', but as men struggling to appropriate European philosophical advances into their quest to modernise Mexico.

Science has been one of the most powerful tools for the development of modern nations. However, since it has had a differential evolution in different cultures, its forms of transmission defined the ways in wich it was implanted in different societies. This book explores, through the Mexican example, the first attempt to embody modern microbiology by a Latin American country. It shows how a combination of political, economic and personal interests sometimes came to overshadow the process. The demonised Porfirio Diaz (president of Mexico 1880- 1911) and his political circle played a critical role in this process. Dictatorship, Revolution, personal animosities and scientific naivety became important features of the game, to the advantage of European countries (principally Great Britain, France and Germany) which always found ways to preserve their supremacy over 'the others', that is those other trying to be 'modern like the Europeans'. This work is addresed to historians and sociologists of science, historians of Latin America, and every person interested in cultural colonialism, the transmission of knowledge, and the history of Mexico.