History of Science

A distinction between the “hard” and “soft” scientific disciplines is a modern commonplace, widely invoked to contrast the natural and the social sciences and to distribute value accordingly, where it was generally agreed that it was good to be “hard,” bad to be “soft.” I trace the emergence of the distinction to institutional and political circumstances in the United States in the second part of the twentieth century; I describe varying academic efforts to give the contrast coherent meaning; I note the distinction’s uses in disciplines’ reflections on their own present and possible future status; and I document the consequential circulation of the antonym in settings where resources for science were distributed. To follow the history of the “hard–soft” distinction is to open a window on changing sensibilities about what science is, what values are attached to it, and what it is for. I conclude with speculations about more recent changes in the value-schemes implicated in the “hard” and the “soft” and about pertinent changes in the place of the “soft” human sciences in governance and production. I envisage a possible future in which the commonplace distinction might wither away.

The study of science popularization in dictatorships, such as Franco’s regime, offers a useful window through which to review definitions of controversial categories such as “popular science” and the “public sphere.” It also adds a new analytical perspective to the historiography of dictatorships and their totalitarian nature. Moreover, studying science popularization in these regimes provides new tools for a critical analysis of key contemporary concepts such as nationalism, internationalism, democracy, and technocracy.

In the late 1940s in Spain, a group of young scholars, most of them newly appointed university lecturers, gained control of Arbor, the promotional journal of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC: The Spanish National Research Council), the institution that General Franco had founded after the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) to organize Spanish science. This group constituted the intellectual core of the more reactionary, Catholic traditionalist faction of Franco’s regime, and they coveted greater political power, in competition with other factions of the regime. Lacking the opportunity to launch an overt political campaign within a dictatorship, the group started a fight for the cultural conquest of Spain. In this cultural struggle for hegemony, journals, magazines, cultural associations, publishing houses, newspapers, and cultural centers became their weapons. By analyzing this faction’s views on and activities within the popularization of science, particularly regarding theories of evolution, this article argues that popular discourse on science played a critical role in the cultural struggle both as a “safe” channel in which to forward their claims and as a tool to gather popular attention through topics of general interest. A covert political campaign was conducted through the popularization of science and this, in turn, fueled the construction of a public sphere for science in a dictatorial context. Scientific popularization became a much-appreciated tool to achieve cultural hegemony and, as such, it also became a central element in constructing and legitimating the ideological foundations of Franco’s regime.

From 17 to 22 October 1955, Madrid hosted the UNESCO Festival of Science. In the early years of the Cold War, in a dictatorial country that had recently been admitted into the international community, the festival aimed to spread science to the public through displays of scientific instruments, public lectures, book exhibitions, science writers professional associations, and debates about the use of different media. In this context, foreign visitors, many of whom came from liberal democracies, seemed comfortable in the capital of a country ruled by a dictatorship that had survived after the defeat of fascism in the Second World War and was struggling to gain foreign recognition after years of isolation.

This article analyzes the political role of science popularization in Madrid at that time. It approaches the apparently puzzling marriage between UNESCO’s international agenda for peace and democracy and the interests of the Francoist elites. Shared views of technocratic modernity, the fight against communism, and a diplomacy that served Spanish nationalism, paved the way for the alliance.

From 1957 to 1973, Barcelona Zoo was transformed from a small-scale, antiquated establishment harboring very few animals, a place that was still in a poor condition following the Spanish Civil War, into a new, larger, modern, and internationally recognized institution that included up-to-date animal enclosures and that boasted one of the first dolphinariums in Europe, as well as a famous white gorilla as its icon. From its very beginning, this renovation involved an intense popularization campaign.

In this paper, by describing the public discourse generated throughout this transformation and by analyzing the roles played by Antoni Jonch, the director of the zoo at that time; Josep Maria de Porcioles, the then-mayor of Barcelona; and General Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator who was head of state during this period, I will highlight how the context of the dictatorship not only authorized the new Barcelona Zoo but is, in fact, crucial to its understanding. The narratives that surrounded the renovation of the zoo focused on its civic and educational purpose, with a firm emphasis on modernity. The zoo was a modern space for learning about animals in order to become better people. These narratives were not only suitable to the policies, ideas, and aims of Porcioles’ City Council and Franco’s dictatorial regime; in fact, they completely matched them. Both local and national governments benefited from the restructuring of Barcelona Zoo and from its public discourse as a tool for social control and an instrument for their own propaganda, legitimation, and perpetuation.

This Afterword to the special section on Science Popularization in Francoist Spain draws general conclusions from its case studies. Most overarchingly, the different contributions show that popularization existed under this dictatorial regime, and hence does not require a Habermasian liberal-democratic public sphere. Four more specific lessons are also drawn, each shedding new light on either science popularization or dictatorial regimes. (1) Popularization has not only been a way to promote science, it has also been used to prop up dictatorial regimes by associating them with things scientific. (2) Totalitarian regimes are much less monolithic than they appear to be at the surface; they often harbor internal weaknesses and conflicts. (3) The study of science popularization in dictatorships can help open our eyes for comparable forms of propaganda in democracies. (4) Totalitarianism is best understood not as a universal phenomenon, but in its specific historical situatedness. Studying science popularization under Franco brings out the specific traits of this regime: the legacy of the Civil War, Spanish regionalism, and the international dependencies of the Francoist state.