An enlightened path to positivism?
reflections on the institutionalization of science in Bourbon Spain
pp. 111-135
in: Johannes Feichtinger, Franz Fillafer, Jan Surman (eds), The worlds of positivism, Berlin, Springer, 2018Abstract
This chapter analyzes the evolving institutional base for modern science in Spain, beginning with the late-seventeenth-century novatores and ending with the flourishing of Krausopositivism in the period between the First Republic and the Spanish Civil War (1868–1936). Such a longue-durée approach builds upon a critical examination of the significance of "proto-positivist" conditions, which, according to Carlos-Ulises Moulines, resulted from the intersection of French Cartesianism and British empiricism. The authors trace the broadly defined "proto-positivism" that prevailed in various political, economic, cultural, and artistic projects sponsored by the ideologues of the Spanish monarchy throughout the eighteenth century and connect the strength of anti-encyclopédisme during the reign of Charles III to the non-materialistic variety of positivism that continued to shape nineteenth-century Spain.