The aim of this work is to discuss "Darwinism: its past, its present, its future", a lecture given in 1875 by Miranda Azevedo as one of the "Popular Lectures of the Gloria Neighborhood, Rio de Janeiro". In this lecture Azevedo elaborates the concepts of evolution, human evolution, progress and the idea of man as the pinnacle of evolution and the master of the selective laws governing nature. We will analyze the article, published in 1876, that contains the full text of (...) Azevedo's lecture. Of particular importance is his affiliation to Haeckel, something already commented on in Brazilian historiography. But, unlike other studies devoted to the theme, I will examine in detail Azevedo's text, attempting to show how he relates hereditary and selective evolutionary processes to thinking about how future Brazilian generations could progress. (shrink)

s book, Hermeneutic Dialogue and Social Science: A critique of Gadamer and Habermas, intends to present an account of debates on objectivity in the social sciences, in stressing the political and epistemological responsibility, in public spheres, to those who want to create a fairer understanding of societies and history, without demonizing natural enterprises or leaving social studies out of acute critical questioning. Key Words: dialogue • hermeneutic • social sciences • natural sciences • method.

The aim of this work is to present the thesis “On the Ontogenetic Evolution of the Human Embryo in its Relations with Phylogenesis,” by Affonso Regulo de Oliveira Fausto, published in Brazil in 1890. To our knowledge, it was one of the first Brazilian academic works focused specifically on evolution. It was also the first doctoral thesis that addressed the topic of recapitulation in order to analyze what was then called the progressive evolution of the human species in tandem with (...) the embryological development of the individuals that would constitute the Brazilian “type.” In the present work, we analyze the author’s thesis in relation to its sources, concepts, as well as the country’s political context at the time of its publication. Fausto’s text, in which he explicitly recognized the influence of Ernst Haeckel’s recapitulation theory, represents a window to understand better a concept of nation based on science and on the idea of inexorable progress that was accepted in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)