See you for the Binalot Talk on 11 May, 12:00pm to 1:00pm. Ateneo de Manila University Research Fellow Greg Bankoff  will give a talk entitled 'The Science of Nature and the Nature of Science in the Nineteenth Century Philippines'.

scan QR code (poster below) to join Zoom meeting (916 8237 7971 | BinalotMAY)

Abstract
When Americans occupied the Philippines in 1899, they began the propagation of a second leyenda negra about their colonial predecessors. Rather than depicting the conquest of the New World in lurid and exaggerated details that stressed Spanish brutality, this second black legend was a more measured, scientifically couched denunciation that dwelt on the backwardness, elemental and irrational nature of Iberian culture. Actually, Spanish science in the Philippines was not nearly as rudimentary as it is frequently made out to be and was partly based on different schools of thought.  Twentieth century natural science has been so dominated by Darwinian concepts about the evolution of life that those who have held alternative notions are deemed unutterably backward.  This paper examines ideas about the science of nature and the nature of science in relation to forestry, botany, meteorology and animal breeding.  Far from demonstrating an unsophisticated or uninformed dialogue about the environment, the evidence shows a surprisingly rich fusion of European debates and discourses. It was primarily only in the eyes of the self-assured and self-righteous proponents of the new American imperium that all was darkness and ignorance