For a North American seeking to know the Mexican mind, and especially the sciences today and in their recent development, a great light of genius is to be found in Mexico City in the late 17th century. Tbe genius is that of one who surely may be counted as the first Mexican philosopher of nature, a nun of the Order of Saint Jerome: Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Sor Juana must speak for herself, from her penetrating exercise of an independent mind within a political and religious formation which denigrated women and circumscribed reason itself. To understand this world of ours, to join in an enlightenment which would be both natural and inspired, Sor Juana clearly understood the requirements of leaming, observing, logic and reasoning. In darkness foundering Words fail the troubled mind. For who, I ask, can light me When Reason is blind? Even now, after the great steps toward liberation of women, and the substantial scientific contributions toward sheer empirical awareness of both the multiple orders ofNature and the subtle aesthetics ofindividual art and social harmony, we too in the earthly world of the 20th century must affirm what she affirmed.

Klappentext

The editors have selected a number of papers that represent recent studies by Mexican philosophers and historians of science. While attention is paid to several main developments of science in Mexico, the book does not deal only with national or even regional issues. Moreover, Mexican works on the philosophy of science are no new phenomenon. Although originating in the need to construct a national identity during the 19th century, and stimulated by the European Enlightenment, Mexican scholarship has now reached maturity, both in terms of an awareness of their historical situation and creative competence with respect to the live issues at the international level. This book presents topics of biology and physics, historical explanation and the historiography of science, and foundations of mathematics, with particular concern for Hilbert, Russell and Wittgenstein.

Inhalt
A. Mexican Studies.- 1. Logic in Mexico With a Postscript: Eli de Gortari.- 2. Contributions of Santiago Ramírez to the History of the Colegio de Minería.- 3. Gabino Barreda and the Introduction of Darwinism in Mexico: Positivism and Evolution.- B. Social Studies.- 4. Psychoanalysis and Marxism.- 5. Functional Explanations in History.- 6. The History of Science: Internal or External?.- C. Natural Sciences.- 7. Genetic Mutation: The Development of the Concept and its Evolutionary Implications.- 8. Galileo's Revolution: The Use of Idealized Laws in Physics.- 9. Among Men, Closets to God.- D. Mathematics.- 10. The Philosophy and the Program of Hilbert.- 11. Some Logical Remarks Concerning the Contrunuum Problem.- 12. On the Relation of Hilbert's Second and Tenth Problems.- 13. Three Metaphysical Theses on Mathematical Philosophy.- 14. The Principles of Mathematics of Bertand Russell.- 15. Wittgenstein, On Mathematical Proof.- 16. To Show and to Prove.- 17. A return to Vienna.- List of Contributors.