The Positivism in Mexico

“Positivism in Mexico was primarily and educational philosophy. It tried to break away with the colonial mentality and bring an intellectual emancipation so the modern Mexican mind could step into the future, free from the shackles of obscurantism, superstition and face the truths of science, order and progress. ” Evaluate this assessment of positivism in Mexico. How accurate is it? What does it mean by facing “the truths of science”? What kind of educational innovations did it argue for?

The Positive (and Negative) Truth about Mexican Positivism as a 19th Century Mexican Educational Reform Philosophy The assertion that: “Positivism in Mexico was primarily an educational philosophy. It tried to break away with the colonial mentality and bring an intellectual emancipation so the modern Mexican mind could step into the future, free from the shackles of obscurantism, superstition and face the truths of science, order and progress” (no source) is an accurate one.

Further, according to “Comparative Social Movements: Mexico and the United States”: The Mexican Positivists were a group of elite intellectuals and social scientists that provided guidance and advice to Porfirio Diaz, the dictator that controlled Mexico from 1878 through the eve of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. The cientificos [sic] emphasized the incorporation of Mexico into the modern world system. This was to be accomplished through suppression of the indigenous and mestizo [sic] aspects of he culture and promotion of Mexico’s “European” heritage.

The combination of economic liberalization and political authoritarianism was the hallmark of Mexican Positivism. (December 16, 2002) Philosophies of the founder of sociology, Auguste Compte (“Sociological Positivism”; Auguste Compte), as applied to 19th century Mexican society, i. e. , Mexican Positivism, offered (or imposed, depending on one’s viewpoint) educational and other innovations in the later 19th century and earliest years of the 20th (“The Porfiriato, 1876-1910”).

To those nationals who supported Mexican Positivism (and there were many), “The positivism of Auguste Comte promised progress, discipline, and morality, together with freedom from the tyranny of theology” (Hutto). Further, Mexican Positivism, derived as it was from Compte, emphasized the encouragement of, and a focus upon, scientific inquiry into ways of achieving national social progress measures, while still maintaining the established social order, e. . , a cornerstone Comptean ideal (Marti, “Positivism and Human Values: The Quest for a Social Ideal”, March 26, 1994). Mexican Positivism also espoused empirical, as opposed to abstract, definitions of and goals for social progress; as well as systematic strategies and methods for (as we would call it today) the continual improvement of society, or “Total Quality Management (TQM)” (“Social Positivism”; “August Compte”; “Sociology”).

Mexican-born social philosophers like Jose Vasconcelos and Antonio Caso, however, were comparatively abstract, non-scientific thinkers by comparison. They were, in that sense, both relatively non-Mexican Positivists; that is, each favored a more holistic, less systematic integration of philosophy, science, art, education into already inherent (instead of externally-imposed, European-based) social values (Salmeron; Marti; “Jose Vasconcelos”; “Antonio Caso”; “Auguste Compte”).

Vasconcelos, for example, was “in favour [sic] of the education of the masses and oriented the nation’s education efforts along secular, civic, and pan-American (americanista) lines” (Wikipedia). Vasconcelos’s ideals included, according to Salmeron (p. 267), the concept of: a living experimentalism in which concur, each one in its own function, the data of the senses, the rules of reason, the projects of the will, all in a harmony which engenders love.

The ambition to bring into concert all the resources by which consciousness disposes to relate itself to the world and to penetrate more profoundly its own depths [emphasis added]. As for Caso, who was in many ways (although in a more purely academic sense) (Salmoneda), echoed Vasconcelos’s ideological viewpoint: “Caso’s thought is a reaction against positivism, an affirmation of liberty, of Christian roots, based on the conviction that man is a spiritual reality which constitutes the culmination of nature. ” (Salmoneda, p. 67)

In comparison to Vasconcelos and Caso, Compte, the “Grandfather” (“Sociology”) of positivism as an integrated social philosophy (“Auguste Compte”) might have instead espoused the importance of a quantifiable “blueprint” for Mexican social progress and educational innovation. That, then, could then be empirically tested, and its results quantified and studied, e. g. , a “science of society” (“Auguste Compte”).

This would represent a systematic approach to measuring all areas of societal progress (or the lack of it), including education. Salmoneda; “Auguste Compte”; “Sociology”). Such an approach, Compte no doubt would argue, would help Mexico, a “backward” (i. e. non-European) nation, to now be able to “face the truths of science, order and progress” [whatever those were. They were most likely European truths, which Mexico and Mexicans, being “backward”, simply had not “caught on” to yet]. Mexican Positivism had an especially strong, active, and influential supporter in Gabino Barreda. Barreda clearly regarded Mexican Positivism much more favorably than did either Vasconcelos or Caso.

Perhaps this was due to his own (Paris-acquired) scientific and medical training, as well as his privileged social background (“The Porfiriato, 1876-1910″; Hutto; Marti. Positivism and Human Values: The Quest for a Social Ideal”, March 26, 1994). Barreda was an intellectual, with a predilection for outcomes based on logic; his major concern was the establishment of the sciences and logic as the basal philosophy of education. . . He considered positivist principles necessary in order to educate “a new elite to guide Mexico in the positive era” (Hale, 1989).

Curriculum was defined as “the encyclopedic learning of the sciences in an ordered hierarchy” hat would establish an intellectual order capable of preventing anarchy in all its forms, and thereby lead to the moral regeneration of society (Hale, 1989). Mexican positivism, embodied in the slogan “order and progress,” was the backbone of the modernization scheme supported by the cientificos, intellectual followers of Barreda. Led by Jose Ives Limantour, who served as adviser to Diaz, the cientificos developed a plan for economic recovery that was to be carried out through the next twenty-seven years of the Porfiriato. “The Porfiriato, 1876-1910”)

Mexican Positivism, then, indeed “tried to break away with the colonial mentality and bring an intellectual emancipation so the modern Mexican mind could step into the future, free from the shackles of obscurantism, superstition and face the truths of science, order and progress” (no source). Since the impetus for it came from a European movement, though, rather than from one that sprang from within the movement itself, the efforts of Mexican Positivism were met with mixed enthusiasm within Mexico itself, and also with mixed results.