Three Centuries of Scientific Culture and Catholicism in Argentina: A Case Study of Long-Term Trends

Abstract

Recent efforts have sought to expand the scope of historical studies on science and religion to creeds other than Christianity and to non-Western cultures, but the amount of historical work about the relationships between science and religion in Latin America is still surprisingly small. I am trying to fill the void with a long-term study of science and Catholicism in Argentina, spanning two centuries, from 1750 to 1950. Implied in this project is the selection of an interpretive framework universal enough to allow for future comparative studies but also sensitive to local circumstances. It should be noticed that leaving aside the period of aboriginal cultures, mainstream science in Latin America belongs squarely in the Western tradition. Argentina may be taken as a representative case of the countries of the southern cone of South America.If we take a long view of the history of Argentina, including its colonial past, it seems possible to distinguish three large periods in the exchanges between religion and science. The first corresponds to colonial times (1750-1810), the second to a highly conflictive long nineteenth century (let us say, until WWI), and the third to a short twentieth century. Relations between science and religion in each of these periods could be broadly characterized as respectively, harmonious, conflictive, and indifferent. I am well aware of the long and notorious history of these familiar tags and the extent to which they mask the diversity of interactions that can be discerned in each of the historical episodes considered.