Abstract
Towards the end of the decade of 1940 Mario Bunge began to be acknowledged, in Argentina’s intellectual circles, as a young theoretical physicist seriously interested in philosophy, and also, deeply committed to social and intellectual advance. Mario came from a family that moved to Argentina in the early nineteenth century, soon after Independence, and acquired a dominant financial position through its activity in the international grain exports business. In the late 1930s there was, in Argentina, a small group of scientists and philosophers interested in exploring the boundaries of their disciplines. Among them Julio Rey Pastor, who had a profound influence in the development of mathematics there; the philosopher Francisco Romero, and the historian of science Aldo Mieli. In 1955 there was a new military coup; its leaders, with more experience in dealing with vocal university students, allowed for some changes to take place at the universities; some were definitely positive. In turn, these changes made possible a creative period that extended from 1956 to 1966, partly under military, partly under obedient civilian rule. However, it ended in disaster, with massive emigration of scientists and intellectuals in 1966. It was in that decade that Mario Bunge was reinstated as a physics professor at the Faculty of Science of the University of Buenos Aires. However, he soon moved to the Philosophy Faculty of the same university, as a full professor of Philosophy of Science. There he began the difficult task of updating the teaching of his subject to more recent and advanced standards, with reference to more modern authors and methodologies. Bunge’s activities, mainly in the 1950s, just before he left his country, and their impact in Argentina’s intellectual life, are the subject of this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
Universidad Popular Mexicana.
- 2.
Escuela Nacional Preparatoria Nocturna para trabajadores.
- 3.
Universidad Obrera de México.
- 4.
Instituto Científico de la Universidad Obrera Argentina.
- 5.
From 1958, it came to be known as Universidad Tecnológica Nacional.
- 6.
Instituto de Historia y Filosofía de la Ciencia.
- 7.
North-east of Buenos Aires.
- 8.
On Babini see Ortiz and Pyenson (1984) and the references given there.
- 9.
Revista de la Unión Matemática Argentina; we will refer to it as RUMA.
- 10.
On 18–20 September 1945.
- 11.
The first date is uncertain, referring to his designation at the Universidad del Litoral, (Boletín Oficial1935, p. 532) gives 1893 as his date of birth.
- 12.
Comité Contra el Racismo y el Antisemitismo de Argentina.
- 13.
Bunge has indicated to me, in conversation, that he regarded Rey Pastor’s contribution to Minerva as one of the most worthy in the collection.
- 14.
A brother of the already mentioned Arturo Frondizi.
- 15.
Centro de Estudios de Filosofía y Humanidades.
- 16.
At the time that institution was called the Faculty of Engineering, an Engineering School created in the nineteenth century; it had service sections on chemistry, physics, mathematics and natural science. Later, towards the end of the nineteenth century, these sections were allowed to offer degrees in their own fields.
- 17.
On Würschmidt’s scientific personality see Gaviola and Beck (1946).
- 18.
Later, Birkhoff invited him to Harvard University; later Cerncuschi moved to Princeton and to other leading centres. Much later, in the mid-1950s, he returned to Argentina as a professor of physics, head of the physics department and dean at Buenos Aires University’s Engineering Faculty.
- 19.
“[O]rganizadas por el profesor Doctor Guido Beck (Córdoba) con el fin de estimular los estudios sobre la moderna orientación de la física”.
- 20.
Also called Camp de la Viscose.
- 21.
Which was also the third gathering of Argentina’s physicists, taking into account Pequeña Reunión of 1942.
- 22.
Before AFA was organised there were already two informal, but active, groups of physics students: Agrupación de Estudiantes de Física in La Plata and Núcleo de Estudiantes de Física in Buenos Aires.
- 23.
But he did so, acidly, in personal correspondence with his friend António Monteiro; see Archivo Monteiro (1946).
- 24.
Fondo José Babini, Universidad de San Martin.
- 25.
The correspondence between Babini and Bunge is preserved in ‘Babini’s Correspondence Archive’, at the Universidad de San Martin, Buenos Aires; the paper (Busala and Hurtado de Mendoza 2000) uses this source.
- 26.
Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas.
- 27.
An older version, called Consejo de Investigaciones Técnicas y Científicas (note the inversion of words) had been created by Gen. Perón’s government on 17 May 1951 by decree Nr. 9695/51.
- 28.
Editorial de la Universidad de Buenos Aires.
- 29.
Marcelino Cereijido, a distinguished former student of Houssay, has described life at his laboratory in Cerijido (1990).
- 30.
A full list of teachers who resigned was only compiled and published in 2016, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of those events. A list is available at University of Buenos Aires: List of Resignations (1966).
- 31.
The Institute Milstein refers to is a bacteriology research centre known as Instituto Malbrán, founded in Buenos Aires following the yellow fever epidemics of the 1870s. At the time, its director was a distinguished scientist, Dr. Ignacio Pirosky (1901–1989), who has written an important document, (Piroski 1986), that discussed the nature and motivations behind the attacks against Instituto Malbrán.
- 32.
See Guest (1990).
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Ortiz, E.L. (2019). Mario Bunge in the Complex Argentina of the 1940s–1960s. In: Matthews, M.R. (eds) Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16673-1_3
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