Biological Evolutionism in Cuba at the end of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

There seems to be a by now somewhat receding tendency to consider biological and social evolutionism as a single entity¹ A more sober view of the matter would be perhaps to regard these two conceptions—which stem from different roots—as separate elements interacting within a single “evolutionistic movement,” a cultural current that prevailed or at least attempted to do so in the intellectual milieu of many European and American countries during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. It is quite evident, and this is especially true of England and the United States, that the intellectual mood favoring an evolutionary approach to virtually all phenomena strongly contributed to the acceptance of Darwin’s theory alongside Spencer’s; but, in other countries, this reception was linked also to a resurgence of Lamarckism, the diffusion of Haeckel’s monism and/or Hegel’s evolution of the Spirit, as well as other similar doctrines (such as Krausism in Spain). It was certainly difficult to find “thoroughbred” Darwinians at the time: “To confuse matters for the historian, the exponents of widely differing interpretations called themselves `Darwinians’ because they acknowledged Darwin’s lead even if they did not accept all the details of his theory.”²