Cernuschi vs. Papp

The Uruguayan Dispute over the History of Science

Abstract

This paper aims to revisit the intellectual tension in the River Plate region surrounding a dispute between the Hungarian philosopher Desiderio Papp and the Argentine-Uruguayan physicist Félix Cernuschi when they were contenders for the Chair of Scientific Thought at the School of Humanities and Sciences of the Universidad de la República in Uruguay. Their disagreement was personal, political, and philosophical and divided the waters among the emerging community of physicists in the region and a group of actors who, for some time, had been devoted to the History of Science in the universities of the region. The History of Science constituted the battleground out of which it would emerge how science should be understood in a Uruguayan university that, historically speaking, had been remiss in providing an appropriate space for its development. In revisiting this event, this paper seeks to throw light on the present situation of an almost non-existent History of Science in Uruguay.