## 1. Historical Background



It is useful to begin with a brief historical background. Science and
scientific thought have long functioned in Latin America as beacons of
civic hope and progress amidst multiple recurrent frustrations that
vary in kind and texture from place to place. In most of the region,
the Enlightenment ideals that fueled independence movements of the
early nineteenth century were quickly disappointed by the chaos and
general barbarism that followed in much of the region until the 1860s.
It was different in Brazil, where emancipation from Europe occurred
gradually and orderly during the century, but there too problems
grew as did also tensions between the economic elite and the
country's leading liberal thinkers.



Reacting against expanding frustration, many Latin Americans saw a
solution in the "scientific" ways of thinking dominant in
the industrialized countries. In the 1850s a progressive philosophy
was in full flight in the larger world, ready-made for Latin American
visionaries: French Positivism, a doctrine of progress and secular
religion, centered on hope in modern science, led by Auguste Comte.
Committed to fighting the temptations of barbarism, the positivists
sought to continue the project of the Enlightenment. Against the
impulsive approach to decision-making then prevailing in most of Latin
America, local positivists sought to extend scientific thought to
philosophy and political action, convinced it would promote
objectivity, rational consensus, publicly accessible cumulative truth
in all spheres, along the material success characteristic of modern
science. Between about 1870 and 1910 positivism took strong hold in
much of Latin America, with an agenda that called for methodological
improvement in the local practice of the natural sciences, medicine,
and education, also greatly influencing activity in philosophy,
history, art, and law (see, e.g., Frondizi 1943, Zea 1943-44,
Nachman 1977, Quintanilla 2006). In Argentina, scientism and
Comte's philosophy had influential defenders, notably Domingo
Faustino Sarmiento, many scientists (e.g., paleontologist Florentino
Ameghino), physician-philosophers (e.g., Jose Ingenieros and
Alejandro Korn), educators (e.g., Pedro Scalabrini), and lawyers
(e.g., Carlos Octavio Bunge, whose nephew Mario A. Bunge would become
an international figure in philosophy of science in the following
century). A conviction these thinkers shared stated that a modern and
efficient system of public education was indispensable for achieving
the desired transformations. Interest in advancing the positivist approach
grew to religious heights especially in Brazil, where it was
championed by distinguished political figures, notably Miguel de
Lemos, a reorganizer of the country's curriculum and a decisive
force in the construction of the first Humanity Temple for the
propagation of Comte's ideas in the world. When Brazil became a
republic in 1889, positivist doctrine made its way to the new flag,
the motto "Order and Progress" lifted from Comte's
writings--in *Systeme de Politique Positive*
(1851), the preliminary discourse's conclusion begins with the
words "Love for principle, order for base, and progress for
aim" (*L'amour pour principe, l'ordre pour base, et le
progres pour but*; p. 321).



The influence of positivism in Mexico was nearly as strong,
particularly in education, as exemplified by the labors of the
respected chemist and medical doctor Gabino Barreda, who banned
religion and traditional philosophy from the school curriculum and
centralized access to higher education and culture. In Chile, the
brothers Jorge and Enrique Lagarrigue were two leading advocates of
Comte's philosophy and his Humanity Religion. In Colombia, Rafael
Nunez, an educational reformer and three times president of
Colombia, actively promoted positivism, as did in Peru (with touches
of Herbert Spencer's evolutionism) such figures as Javier Prado,
Manuel Gonzalez Prada, Celso Bambaren, and Manuel
Vicente Villaran. In Bolivia, positivism also had influential
defenders from the 1870s through the 1890s, notably a circle of
writers, "*Circulo Literario*", in whose
journal works by Charles Darwin, Luis Dumont, Ernst H. P. A. Haeckel
and other naturalists appeared in translation.



With all this intellectual and progressive enthusiasm in the air,
hopes of imminent general improvement ran high, but
"positive" results were slow in coming. The expectations
of economic advancement and civic improvement did not materialize as
advertised. To compound matters, the devastation caused by the Great
War in Europe badly compromised social faith in the products of
science. Positivism waned accordingly in Latin America, replaced in
the 1920s by a more radical social thought, especially Marxism, as well
as approaches distrustful of naturalist reasoning (Bergsonian
spiritualism, phenomenology, and later existentialism). Metaphysics
unbridled by standard logic became dominant in many university
circles.


 Reactions to excessively "high philosophy" began to
arise in the 1940s, helped by the arrival of thinkers from Europe, for
example Juan David Garcia Bacca in the cases of Ecuador,
Mexico, and Venezuela, Hans Lindemann in Argentina, and Gilles-Gaston
Granger in Brazil. Along the way came a revival of interest in logic,
science-friendly epistemology, and the study of conceptual structures.
Thanks to these developments, when philosophy of science became a
professional field in the late 1940s, Latin America had some
scientists and philosophers ready and willing to fully join their
counterparts in Europe and North America. Since then, for the past
seventy years, a number of philosophers of science based in Latin
America, often in uncooperative environments, have managed to produce
work of the highest international standards (something not so clearly
apparent in the developing world in other branches of international
philosophy).



By the mid 1990s, academic centers in Latin America began to benefit
from the kind of world-wide interaction made possible by the Internet,
electronic libraries, and improved forms of institutional support for
integration and travel. With geographical and institutional barriers
greatly reduced, the field expanded considerably. Over the last
three decades virtually every theme in philosophy of science would
develop a presence in works produced in Latin America. Dialogue and
collaboration between researchers now transcend the traditional local
boundaries. This new global environment makes less relevant the
traditional geographical approach to philosophical production in the
region. Accordingly, Sections 3 and 4, devoted to activity from the
mid 1990s on, structure the subject around themes, concepts, and
principles (rather than around geography and individuals).


## 2. The Early Decades


### 2.1. Mexico



Philosophy of science developed a robust presence at Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), a major institution
at the forefront of intellectual life in the country and the
Spanish-speaking world. The discipline gained strength in the 1960s
and early 1970s through the efforts of prominent faculty members,
especially Fernando Salmeron, Luis Villoro, and Alejandro Rossi
who encouraged rigor and clarity in philosophy and provided
scholarship support to enable students to do post-graduate work in
Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Together they
founded the journal *Critica* in 1967, a choice venue
for philosophy in Latin America and Spain. An influential work by
Salmeron, *La Filosofia y las
Matematicas*, came out the following year. Major
international seminars and meetings became a regular feature at
UNAM's Institute for Philosophical Investigations (*Instituto
de Investigaciones Filosoficas*--IIF), which in the
1970s and 1980s hosted some now legendary seminars and short courses
led by world-class figures. One of these international seminars
focused on the history and philosophy of science, started by Mario
Bunge (Argentina and Canada). IIF became the host of many spirited
philosophical debates, those between Bunge and Hector-Neri
Castaneda (Guatemala and the United States) being among the
most prominentely remembered. With Bunge's help, in 1976 an
epistemology forum was established--*Asociacion
Mexicana de Epistemologia*. At the beginning of the 1970s,
Mario Otero (Uruguay) formally joined IIF with a considerable effect
on the studies of the philosophical history of science.



The structuralist approach came to Mexico in a big way with Carlos
Ulises Moulines who moved to IIF from Munich in the mid-1970s. Born in
Venezuela, he studied in Europe, first under the supervision of
Jesus Mosterin in Barcelona and then of Wolfgang
Stegmuller in Munich. His early focus was on the rise of the
logical empiricist approach, particularly the projects of logical
reconstruction of the empirical world variously advocated by Bertrand
Russell, Rudolf Carnap, and Nelson Goodman; Moulines developed these
investigations in his first monograph, *La Estructura del Mundo
Sensible* (1973). He took an interest in integrating some of
Stegmuller's original contributions into earlier
structuralist work by Patrick Suppes in the United States and Gunther
Ludwig in Germany, an effort displayed by some of his articles from
this period (notably Moulines 1975, 1976). Responding to the
historical turn in philosophy of science, Moulines, like Joseph Sneed
in the United States and Stegmuller in Germany, focused on the
issue of theory change. He devoted much of his research during the
1970s and 1980s to the dynamics of theories, applying the resources of
diachronic structuralist reconstruction and Kuhnian analysis (in terms
of disciplinary matrices) to the development of Newtonian mechanics
and equilibrium thermodynamics. The resulting investigations were
presented in the book *Exploraciones Metacientificas*
(1982). Moulines became an important intellectual force at IIF where
he stayed for over a decade, engaged in cutting-edge research that
made him a leading figure in the international structuralist
movement. In Moulines' view, scientific theories are cultural
constructs of philosophical interest. He regards philosophy of science
as a discipline whose epistemology is primarily interpretive rather
than prescriptive or descriptive--a theorization about
theorizations. A good proportion of the philosophy of science
conducted at IIF during his tenure was directly influenced by him. A
relevant point for present purposes is that his work in Mexico during
these years reached the highest levels within the worldwide
structuralist movement. In 1984 Moulines left the country, first to
Bielefeld University, then to Berlin, and finally to the Center for
Mathematical Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich,
where he became Stegmuller's successor and is now a
Professor Emeritus. Many of his subsequent publications had a lasting
impact in Latin America, notably *An Architectonic for Science: The
Structuralist Program* (Balzer, Moulines, and Sneed 1987), along
many papers.


 Research seminars at IIF continued to develop and strengthen in
the 1980s with a series of international symposia of philosophy
started by Enrique Villanueva and continued by Leon
Olive, a venture of impressive scale that brought together
world-class figures from many parts of Latin America, the United
States, Britain, and Europe. The high-quality interactions these
venues generated proved remarkably fruitful as starting points of much
subsequent research activity in Mexico and elsewhere in the
subcontinent. This period was also marked by institutional investment
in specialized research libraries and the reinforcement of publishing
programs at UNAM and other institutions in Mexico. Scholarship
programs helped researchers and students spend periods at major
international centers. At IIF philosophical research reached a level
of support never seen before in Latin America. Significant papers and
monographs began to flow regularly from seminars on general philosophy
of science, the philosophy of physics, and the philosophy of
biology.



Activity in the field also became more diverse at IIF in the 1980s.
One major area focused on the limits of scientific knowledge,
represented by Luis Villoro's 1982 critique of scientism in
*Creer, Saber, Conocer*, where he advocates a revaluation of
"wisdom" (characterized as knowledge drawn from lived
experiences), which in Villoro's view is richly found in the
"wise men" of traditional cultures; in this book he
explores how human reason has operated throughout history and the
extent to which it has led to situations of domination and/or
emancipation from subjection.



It is important to emphasize that the professionalization of the
philosophy of science in Mexico was achieved mainly through the
creation of specialized degree programs. Nowadays, the *Posgrado en
Filosofia de la Ciencia*, founded at UNAM in 1993, is the
program where most of the new generations now working in the
discipline in Mexico have been trained.


### 2.2. Brazil



An influential textbook by Gilles-Gaston Granger, *Logica e
Filosofia das Ciencias* --first published in
1955--is acknowledged as the first introduction to the field in
Portuguese. A disciple of Gaston Bachelard, Granger taught at the
University of Sao Paulo (USP) from 1947 to 1953 and was a major
force in the development of philosophy of science in Brazil. His work
favored a historically-oriented approach hospitable to the Anglo-Saxon
analytic style. Back in Europe he associated himself with various
philosophical and social projects; in 1986 he was elected to the Chair
of Comparative Epistemology at the *College de France*.
The research projects Granger started in Brazil continued after his
tenure, especially thanks to the efforts of Oswaldo Porchat.



In 1964 a military coup led to government action eradicating academics
suspected of leftist sympathies, seriously disrupting many fields,
including philosophy of science. Nevertheless, faculty groups were
soon able to restore activity. In 1970, at USP Joao Paulo
Monteiro managed to start *Ciencia e Filosofia*, a
journal dedicated to logic and philosophy of science from a plurality
of perspectives. Revitalization of the discipline continued throughout
the decade with timely research projects, often carried out in
conjunction with international visits and courses, notably ones
organized by Porchat, first at USP and after 1975 at State University
of Campinas (UNICAMP), where he headed a new unit, *Centro de
Logica, Epistemologia e Historia da Ciencia*
(CLE), whose members included Zeljko Loparic and other distinguished
scholars. In 1977 CLE launched the prestigious journal
*Manuscrito*, supplemented in 1980 by *Cadernos de Filosofia
e Historia da Ciencia*, and in 1987 by a book series
(*Colecao CLE*). CLE quickly became a symbol of
hope for philosophers and historians of science as well as logicians.
In particular, CLE is involved in the articulation of
"Paraconsistent Logic", a field Newton C. da Costa began
to develop in the late 1950s and early 1960s when he was working at
Federal University of Parana. Da Costa is one of the most
charismatic and energetic thinkers in Latin America, a world-class
figure in mathematics, logic, and philosophy of science, with a widely
recognized reputation for original works on non-classical logics, the
axiomatization of scientific theories, and structuralist philosophy of
science, orientations that continue to be active in Brazil with such
figures as Itala D'Ottaviano and Walter Carnielli.



In philosophy of science CLE supports significant research on the
character and structure of modern science as well as its concepts and
theories--conducted from a variety of perspectives, including
investigations in science teaching and the uses of philosophy of
science in education. Critical dialogue has been fostered through
seminars, distinguished international visits, research funding,
faculty and student exchanges, interdisciplinary studies, and the
publication of monographs and papers by Brazilian authors as well as
translations of major works into Portuguese. Post-graduate studies and
postdoctoral fellowships in logic and philosophy of science are
thriving accordingly at UNICAMP. One scheme developed by CLE to
attract promising faculty recently graduated from institutions
worldwide produced excellent results. In the 1980s Michel Ghins and
Harvey Brown energized analytic activity on space-time physics. Steven
French did likewise in advancing the model-theoretic approach and the
metaphysics of quantum mechanics at Campinas. With the help of these
and other recruits, philosophy of physics, mathematics, and formal
approaches to the philosophy of science thrived. At Campinas, French
and da Costa started a long-lasting collaboration that proved
remarkably fertile, resulting in influential contributions to current
debates on the metaphysics of quantum mechanics, structuralism, and
the semantic approach to theories, as well as a fresher way of looking
at the concept of truth ("pragmatic truth" and
"partial truth"). These collaborations led to many papers
(Da Costa and French 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993) as well as a book in
2003, *Science and Partial Truth: A Unitary Approach to Models and
Scientific Reasoning*, which received international acclaim for
the light it casts on philosophical logic, structuralism, and
realism. Brown and French made Brazil their country, and it is easy to
imagine how different the geography of philosophy of physics and
mathematics might have turned out had circumstances in Brazil been a
little kinder to academic life in the 1980s. Together with da Costa,
the international recruits and the local talents they began to nurture
would have probably turned CLE and USP (where Otavio Bueno had
worked with da Costa) into top centers for philosophy of science in
the world. Destiny dictated otherwise, however; Ghins left to a
professorship at Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Brown moved to a
distinguished career at Oxford, where he is now professor of the
philosophy of physics; and French went to the United States and then
back to England where he is now professor of philosophy of science at
the University of Leeds and Editor-in-Chief of *The British Journal
for the Philosophy of Science*. Brown and French have each served
terms as presidents of the prestigious British Society for the
Philosophy of Science. Happily, all these international old members
maintain productive ties with Brazilian groups. CLE has continued to
prosper over the last two decades.



Philosophical activity has expanded in Brazil at many other
institutions since the 1990s, as described in the following
sections.


### 2.3. Andean Countries



As with the previous countries, the field developed a presence in the
Andean countries in the early days of professional philosophy of
science.



In Venezuela, Juan David Garcia Bacca, a critic of Francisco
Franco, was forced to leave Spain and arrived in Caracas in 1946 after
periods in Ecuador and Mexico. He led a productive career at the
Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, Central University (*Universidad
Central de Venezuela*, UCV). In the mid-1930s, after completing a
doctoral dissertation on the logico-genetic structure of the physical
sciences, Garcia Bacca joined the Vienna Circle. In Latin
America he became a prolific writer, his works including
*Teoria de la relatividad* (1941), *La
fisica* (1962), *Historia filosofica de la
ciencia* (1963), *Teoria y metateoria de la
ciencia,* Vol. I (1977) and Vol II (1984). He remained a major
force in Caracas until 1971. In the 1970s and 1980s, Andres
Kalnay led a small group interested in the foundations of quantum
mechanics, first at UCV's School of Physics and then at
Venezuela's leading center for scientific research,
*Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones
Cientificas*. Presently UCV runs a master's program
in logic and philosophy of science coordinated by Franklin
Galindo.



Philosophy of science in Colombia has long-enduring ties with
Continental European schools, but analytic philosophy of science has
not been absent. Already in the 1950s Mario Laserna at *Universidad
de los Andes* (Uniandes), Bogota, promoted the study of
logic and the scientific philosophy of Hans Reichenbach. Subsequently,
local groups, helped by international visitors, have played a
consistent role in the country, notably Gonzalo Munevar, a
Colombian philosopher of science now based in the United States, who
visits regularly his country.



Activity in Peru started early in the 1950s, as attested by gatherings
organized at *Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos* (UNMSM,
Peru's oldest university) and *Sociedad Peruana de
Filosofia*, both in Lima. Broad interest is also reflected
in articles published in the 1950s and 1960s in the weekly literary
supplement of "*El Comercio*" by Oscar
Miro-Quesada, Francisco Miro-Quesada, and other
intellectuals interested in logic, science, and mathematics. Francisco
Miro-Quesada, the country's leading philosopher, was one
of the pioneers in the development of modern philosophical logic and
science studies in Latin America, where he has indefatigably
encouraged hope in the power of human reason. Miro-Quesada
taught at UNMSM for more than two decades, and then at *Universidad
Cayetano Heredia* (UPCH) and other centers in the country. He also
headed institutes for philosophical research, first at *Universidad
de Lima* and subsequently at *Universidad Ricardo Palma*.
Miro-Quesada was the author of numerous works in the area of
philosophy of science, including a book in the philosophy of
mathematics, *Filosofia de las Matematicas*
(1954). He has also been a champion of research in logic in the region
(it was Miro-Quesada who suggested to name Newton da
Costa's approach "paraconsistent logic", which he
helped to promote). Miro-Quesada's most heartfelt project
focused on the study of human reason, regarded as the capacity to
reach truth, broadly understood, as outlined in his preliminary book
*Apuntes para una Teoria de la Razon* (1962),
followed in 2013 by *Esquema de una Teoria de la
Razon*, in which Miro-Quesada discusses the pursuit
of rational validity in logic, science, metaphysics, and ethical
theory. In the early 1970s, young faculty trained in Europe and the
United States expanded and updated the philosophical study of science
in the country, particularly at UNMSM. Timely contributions were made,
especially by Luis Piscoya (philosophy of psychology and general
philosophy of science), Juan Abugattas (philosophy of science),
Julio-Cesar Sanz-Elguera (philosophy of science), and David Sobrevilla
(philosophy of the social sciences). Ever since, at San Marcos,
Luis Piscoya has been working on the interface between
philosophy of science and education; he is the author of
*Investigacion Cientifica y Educacional: un Enfoque
Epistemologico* (1995), and numerous papers (e.g., Piscoya,
1993). In the late 1970s, an innovative program in philosophy opened
at UPCH, one of the leading research universities in the
subcontinent. Under Francisco Miro-Quesada, many international
workshops, seminars, and courses took place in Lima as part of this
venture. From the late 1980s on, activity at UPCH continued through a
program named "Scientific Thought", headed by Alberto
Cordero, with the collaboration of Sandro D'Onofrio and other
faculty members.



In Chile, meanwhile, Gerold Stahl, Nathan Stemmer, and Augusto
Pescador made logic a major field in Chile in the 1960s. Later in the
decade, Roberto Torretti published a seminal book, *Manuel Kant.
Estudio sobre los Fundamentos de la Filosofia
Critica* (1967; revised edition 2005). His subsequent work
on Kant led him to wider research on the philosophical history of
science, a field that had a growing audience, especially in Santiago.
However, life in Chile became increasingly challenging as the decade
progressed. In 1970 Torretti left to Puerto Rico, where he continued
to develop his philosophical work, especially on nineteenth-century
geometry and the theory of relativity. In 1973 a ruthless military
dictatorship took over the government. It was a difficult time for
academia; Chile's leading journal, *Revista de
Filosofia*, ceased publication and remained dormant until
1977. Although the institutional environment suffered greatly at most
centers, quality research continued in logic, as evidenced by
internationally acclaimed contributions during the period by Rolando
Chuaqui and others.



Nearly always based in Latin American centers (Chile and Puerto Rico),
Torretti is an icon of rigor and philosophical sense and an author of
world-class level contributions; his writings are celebrated for his
insightful commentaries and educated perspectives on the rational
development of ideas, especially in Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Kant,
nineteenth-century mathematics, Helmholtz, Poincare, and
Einstein. Torretti's major publications on these subjects have a
secure place on the reading lists of leading seminars in philosophy of
science anywhere, in particular *Philosophy of Geometry from
Riemann to Poincare* (1978), *Relativity and
Geometry* (1985), *Creative Understanding: Philosophical
Reflections on Physics* (1990), and *The Philosophy of
Physics* (1999), each an authoritative work in the philosophy and
the philosophical history of science. In the years that Torretti spent
at the Rio Piedras Campus of *Universidad de Puerto Rico*, he
led a fruitful career until his retirement in 1995. During most of
this period he was the editor of *Dialogos*, one of the
leading philosophy journals in Latin America.


### 2.4. Argentina and Uruguay



On the eastern side of the southern cone, developments of considerable
international impact took place in Argentina between the 1940s and
1970s. The arrival of Hans Lindemann in the 1940s marked a turning
point in analytic philosophy in Argentina where his discussions of
the philosophy of Bertrand Russell and the Vienna Circle (he had
studied under Moritz Schlick and been a member of the Circle)
encouraged further activity, in particular research seminars and
courses by Mario Bunge, Gregorio Klimovsky, and Julio Rey Pastor.
Throughout the 1950s, the Buenos Aires area enjoyed a decade of
optimism about the academic and cultural possibilities of philosophy
of science and its applications. Several centers prospered,
particularly two that were founded in 1952. In one of them,
*Instituto Libre de Estudios Superiores*, Klimovsky and Rolando
Garcia discussed the "logical empiricist" approach
and gave courses that systematically presented the new philosophy to
wider audiences. The other center was *Circulo
Filosofico*, led by Bunge, where his book
*Causalidad* (1959a) and other works of the period took shape,
and their central materials were presented in lectures and
discussions. Bunge and Klimovsky managed to secure chairs at
*Universidad de Buenos Aires* (UBA) in philosophy of science
and logic, respectively. In the mid-1950s, their research and courses
turned the university into a world-class place in the
field. Bunge's administrative and cultural efforts during this
period put a strong emphasis on making professional philosophical
activity possible in Argentina. A new association for logic and
scientific philosophy, *Agrupacion Rioplatense de
Logica y Filosofia Cientifica*, was founded
in 1956, aimed at drawing together thinkers from Argentina and Uruguay
who wanted to study philosophy in the rational and rigorous style of
the new approach, with Bunge, Klimovsky, Jorge Bosch, Gino Germani,
and Rolando Garcia among its members. A consistent group began to
form, resulting in such achievements as *Cuadernos de
Epistemologia*, a series that gave the whole of Latin
America and Spain access to key works in the field translated into
Spanish.



In *Causalidad*, Bunge (1959a) focused on the empiricist
conception of causality and its shortcomings, blaming the empiricist
outlook for having created unnecessary confusion and pessimism in
philosophy. In this work Bunge distinguishes causal determination from
other forms of determination (structural, teleological, dialectical,
and statistical), telling apart three different senses in which the
term "causality" enters scientific discourse--as a
law stating that same causes produce same effects, as a relation
between cause and effect, and as a principle stating that everything
has a cause. The book came out in 1959, gaining considerable
international reception, especially due to the realist conception it
articulates. *Causality* also marks a turning point: philosophy
books one may call "classics" were now coming out of Latin
America and finding a place in mainstream reading lists in the
English-speaking world and Europe. A citizen of the world, perhaps the
most universalist of philosophers in the subcontinent, Bunge is
nonetheless very South American (it is hard to imagine him growing up
anywhere else but in cosmopolitan Argentina). Bunge has always been a
socially engaged intellectual, a trend already present in his efforts
as founder and secretary general of a college for workers,
*Universidad Obrera Argentina*, from 1938 until 1943. He has
remained a spirited spokesman for the need to maintain in Latin
America cultural and educational institutions capable of promoting the
practice of philosophy by minds free from ideological pressure,
financial oppression, and political or governmental control. First in
Argentina and then elsewhere, Bunge has been at "war"
against, as he puts it, the kind of uncritical understanding of
philosophy he found prevailing at the Faculty of Philosophy and
Letters when he joined in the 1950s, laboring to inspire a lasting
sense of professional rigor in his students and collaborators. The
series he launched, *Cuadernos de Epistemologia*, had a
substantial impact on scientists, philosophers, and the educated
public in the Spanish-speaking world. Bunge's production during
these years was remarkable; apart from *Causality*, other works
of relevance are Bunge (1959b, 1960, 1961a, 1961b, 1962a, and
1962b). Unfortunately, these accomplishments were not achieved without
friction with colleagues and groups sympathetic to alternative ideas
Bunge could not respect. In addition, the country's political
and economic conditions were deteriorating. Early in the 1960s,
internal fractions within the Argentine army began to make civic life
increasingly difficult. Bunge left the country in 1963, first to the
United States (where the Vietnam War and other political developments
made him uncomfortable), then moving in 1966 to McGill University,
Montreal, where he remains to this day.



Few thinkers associated with analytic philosophy strive to produce a
comprehensive philosophical system. Bunge is one of them, a thinker
trying to integrate ontology, metaphysics, epistemology, semantics,
psychology, and science coherently and fruitfully. Thus far
Bunge's publications make more than fifty books and hundreds of
philosophical and scientific articles, mostly in English and Spanish;
his main works were also translated into German, Italian, Russian, French,
Hungarian, and Portuguese among other languages. His works of
greatest impact in mainstream philosophy of science are arguably
*Causality* (1959a), *The Myth of Simplicity* (1963),
and *Foundations of Physics* (1967). Bunge's search for a
naturalist vision worth having was given systematic expression in his
*Treatise on Basic Philosophy* (an eight-volume work published
between 1974 and 1989). More recent publications by Bunge include
*Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of
Knowledge* (2003), *Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism*
(2006), and *Medical Philosophy: Conceptual Issues in Medicine*
(2013), as well as his much-awaited autobiography *Memorias entre
Dos Mundos* (2014), to mention a fraction of his abundant
production.


 In his oral presentations and seminars, Bunge pays forceful and
particular attention to the evaluation of the arguments at hand,
championing the use of logic as an expediter of clarity of thought. He
is renowned for his scathing critiques of positions that demean
reason, the search for truth, and the universality of science,
scientific naturalism, as well as positions that fail to respect human
beings as individuals. Bunge enthusiastically endorses the way in
which the Enlightenment tried to disseminate conceptual and moral
tools to revise and improve human thought and life in general.
Bunge's works steadily emphasize the idea that science can lead
(and has often led) to what he regards as the only sensible foundation
for social and political action: relevant knowledge of the world.
Importantly, early on in Latin America Bunge played the role of a
much-needed exemplar, a leading thinker who in the 1960s became a
"possibility proof" that philosophers working in the
subcontinent could, despite the often bizarre difficulties academics
face, stand up and join the philosophical conversation at the highest
levels. No Latin American philosopher had achieved anything comparable
before in cosmopolitan philosophy.



Losing Bunge was a major blow, one of many as the decade unfolded.
When the military intervened the universities in 1966, many of the
most talented minds in science and the humanities fled the country.
Klimovsky remained, however, and his presence helped keep the
discipline active during this difficult period, first at UBA and then
at Belgrano University from the late 1970s until his death. Philosophy
of science did not stop in Argentina, young talent continuing to
arise, notably Alberto Coffa, at Universidad de la Plata until he too
left to the United States. The surrounding turmoil was a negative
factor, yet a remarkable period of expansion began at the end of the
decade, marked by the foundation of the *Sociedad Argentina de
Analisis Filosofico* (SADAF), a model institution supported
by its own members, in which fellows and invited international guests
meet around topics of philosophical interest, including many of
central importance in philosophy of science. A major journal saw the
light in Buenos Aires in 1975: *Revista Latinoamericana de
Filosofia*, followed in 1981 by another important
periodical, *Analisis Filosofico*.



Activity in philosophy of science has grown in the country since then,
as the remaining sections of this article describe.


## 3. General Philosophy of Science


### 3.1. Scientific Method



Although Gregorio Klimovsky was one of the founding fathers of the
philosophy of science in Argentina, he was still active until the
first decade of the twenty-first century. He introduced mathematical
logic and axiomatic set theory in Argentinian universities and
defended a hypothetico-deductive method close to that of Popper, not
only for natural sciences but also for social sciences. At the turn of
the century, he published three books that were very relevant in
university education (Klimovsky 1994, Klimovsky and Hidalgo 1998,
Klimovsky and Boido 2005). Moreover, his autobiography (2008) presents
a vivid portrayal of the inception of analytic philosophy of science
in Argentina. But perhaps the most important merit of Klimovsky was
having been the teacher of several generations of Argentine logicians
and philosophers of science such as Tomas Moro Simpson,
Raul Orayen, and Alberto Coffa.



The interest in Popper's theses reappears in the work of Carlos
Verdugo (2009). By contrast, Alejandro Cassini (2003) argues for the
advantages of the Bayesian theory of confirmation over the
hypothetico-deductive method.



The semantic approach to scientific theory was studied by
German Guerrero Pino (2008, 2010), who compared van
Fraassen's proposal with that of the structuralist school. In
turn, Juan Manuel Jaramillo Uribe (2009, 2014) builds a bridge
between metatheoretical structuralism with other philosophical
schools, such as French structuralism and structural realism. Pablo
Lorenzano has also developed sustained work in the field of
metatheoretical structuralism (Balzer and Lorenzano 2000, Lorenzano
and Diez 2002, Lorenzano 2013), particularly applied to
biology, leading a research group with young members of different
Latin American countries.


### 3.2. Rationality and Theory Choice


 We noted that Francisco Miro-Quesada's most heartfelt
project focused on the study of human reason, regarded as the capacity
to reach truth in logic, science, metaphysics, and ethical theory
(1962, 2013). In turn, from a perspective that defends rationality
against the attacks of postmodern thought, Ricardo Gomez (2003)
develops a strong criticism to Rorty's arguments. A very radical
position is adopted by Gonzalo Munevar (1981) who considers the
rationality of science a social property that should be understood in
terms of biological performance.



In Mexico the interest in the rationality of science led to the
publication of two relevant volumes on the subject, one compiled by
Ambrosio Velasco (1997) and the other by Velasco and Ana Rosa
Perez Ransanz, and Ambrosio Velasco (2011); the second contains
more than 40 contributions of Iberoamerican authors and offers a wide
picture of the discussion on the matter in the region. In particular,
Sergio Martinez (2003) focused on the relationship between
rationality and scientific practices.


 More recently, problems of the empirical equivalence between
theories and the underdetermination of theory choice were addressed by
Pablo Acuna, particularly in the case of Lorentz's ether
theory and Einstein's special relativity (Acuna and Dieks
2014, Acuna 2014a). Acuna (2014b) also analyses three
artificial cases of empirical equivalence, arguing that they are not
the result of practice of real science but cooked up by philosophers
of science.


### 3.3. Dynamics of Science



As a consequence of his close collaboration with Jean Piaget (Piaget
and Garcia 1971, 1987), Rolando Garcia became the author
who still represents genetic epistemology in Latin America (1997). In
particular, he developed with Piaget the idea of a parallelism between
psychogenesis and the evolution of sciences (Piaget and Garcia
1983). More recently, Garcia (2000) linked genetic epistemology
with the theory of complex systems.


 Already in the nineties, Oscar Nudler began to develop a view of
the dynamics of science in terms of conflicts (1990). This view became
a well-articulated model based on what he called "controversy
space" (Nudler 2002, 2004): a dynamic structure composed of
inter-related controversies, with a "focus", composed by
the issues that are the main object of the disagreements, and a
"common ground", which consists of the commitments not
subject to discussion within the controversy space. Controversy spaces
typically change by re-focalization which occurs when certain
assumptions move from the common ground to the focus. This model was
successfully applied to different scientific cases, such as the
origins of chaos theory, the debate about the relations between
chemistry and physics, the origins of molecular biology, and the
development of twentieth century American linguistics, among others
(see Nudler 2011).



The philosophy of Thomas Kuhn attracted the interest of many Latin
American philosophers of science. For instance, during the 1980s, some
Cuban scholars focused on the Kuhnian concept of scientific revolution
(Nunez 1985, 1989). In Uruguay, Mario Otero (1997)
edited a volume about Kuhn with contributions from his research
group. After his retirement, the group was left in the hands of
Lucia Lewowicz, who continued that line of research (2004,
2005), focusing particularly on the Kuhnian notion of taxonomic
category (2007). In Colombia, the research group of Jaramillo Uribe
also compiled a collective volume devoted to the philosophy of Kuhn
(Jaramillo Uribe et al. 1997) and, in a more recent book, Guerrero
Pino (2003) considered the relevance of the Kuhnian philosophy for
science education. In Argentina, Nelida Gentile (2013)
published a book on incommensurability commemorating the 50th
anniversary of *The Structure*. The book *Kuhn y el Cambio
Cientifico*, by Ana Rosa Perez Ransanz (1999),
deserves particular attention, for it has been much discussed in the
Spanish-speaking world and, as a consequence, was reprinted two times
(2000, 2012).


 After getting his PhD under the supervision of Paul Feyerabend,
Gonzalo Munevar became one of the main international
specialists on the philosophy of the author (see the compilation of
his articles in Munevar 2006). Moreover, Munevar (1998)
advocates for an evolutionary philosophy that leads to a thorough
evolutionary relativism of scientific knowledge which, nevertheless,
is not an obstacle to a theory of relative truth.


### 3.4. Scientific Realism


 Christian Carman worked extensively on the problem of
realism in science. He offered a detailed elucidation of the term
"scientific realism" (2005a), and he considered the
theoretical-observational distinction in light of the problem of
realism (2005b). Carman also critically analyzed Harre's
inductive argument for scientific realism (2005c). Moreover, he
reformulated the no-miracle argument in order to apply it to
simultaneous predictions (2010b), in particular in the context of
Ptolemy's planetary theory (Carman and Diez 2015).



Recently, some surveys of the arguments regarding the problem of
realism have been produced. For instance, Bruno Borge (2015)
reconsiders the no-miracle argument 40 years after its formulation,
and Borge and Gentile (2019) compiled a volume on the subject with
contributions from Latin American authors.


### 3.5. Pluralisms in Science



After the strong influence of logical empiricism and its claim for the
"unity of science", in the last decades of the twentieth
century many pluralist approaches were proposed from different
perspectives. In Latin America, different pluralistic views have been
advanced.



Although Felix Schuster was a student of Mario Bunge and
Gregorio Klimovsky, he directed his interest to social sciences. In
this field, he defends methodological pluralism as the way to access
social reality (Schuster 1992).



Roberto Torretti's view of scientific knowledge finds its roots
in his interpretation of Kant's philosophy (Torretti 1967).
According to Torretti, it does not follow from the transcendental
deduction of the categories that they are contained in a definitive
and immutable list; by admitting that the patterns ruling the
constitution of the objects of knowledge may change, "Kant opens
a wide door to intellectual pluralism" (2008: 87). From this
perspective, Torretti (2000) explicitly rejects the scientific realism
that conceives the aim of science as the development of a discourse
that "cuts reality at its joints", and agrees with Hilary
Putnam's *pragmatic realism* (Putnam 1987) on the basis
of some examples drawn from past and present scientific practice.


 Also under the influence of Putnam, but now of his internal
realism (Putnam 1981), Olimpia Lombardi and Ana Rosa Perez
Ransanz (2012) propose an ontological pluralism that, instead of being
applied to the problem of theory change, finds its main fertility in a
synchronic sense: when theories embodying different conceptual schemes
are simultaneously accepted, it must be admitted that different
ontologies may coexist since each one of them is constituted by its
corresponding theory. This view, which denies the ontological
dependence of the supposedly "secondary" disciplines or
"phenomenological" theories regarding those fields
conceived as "fundamental", has been applied to the
relationship between chemistry and physics with the purpose of
defending the ontological autonomy of the physical world (Lombardi and
Labarca 2005); this view has sparked an intense debate in the field of
the philosophy of chemistry (it will be considered below, in the
subsection about the philosophy of chemistry).


### 3.6. Representation in Science



The role played by models in science was studied in Latin America
since the first years of the twentieth century. In Mexico,
Alfredo Lopez Austin (2005) compiled a volume including five
contributions that explore the meaning and the nature of scientific
models. Recently, Mario Casanueva and Ximena
Gonzalez-Grandon (2016) edited a special issue of the
journal *Scientiae Studia*, whose articles fall into two
groups: those in the first group emphasize that models amplify our
capacities of representation, perception, and calculation; those in
the second stress the function of models in legitimating scientific
knowledge.


 Also very recently, Alejandro Cassini paid close attention to the
nature of scientific models. In particular, he criticizes
fictionalism, which conceives models as useful fictions (Cassini
2013), and contends that every scientific model has a target against
those who claim that some models do not (Cassini 2018). In turn,
Hernan Accorinti (2015a, 2015b) discussed the problem of the
autonomy of models with respect to theories, with applications to
chemistry; in particular, to atomic and molecular models in quantum
chemistry (Accorinti and Martinez Gonzalez 2016,
Accorinti, Fortin, and Martinez Gonzalez 2018) and to
the different models of electronegativity (Accorinti 2019).



Although not directly concerned with models, an interesting volume
about the epistemic role of images in science was published as the
result of a workshop held in Mexico D.F. in 2007 (Casanueva and
Bolanos 2009). In the introduction to the volume, the editors
refer to the "*pictorial turn*" to stress the
increasing relevance of pictorial representation as an epistemic
vehicle for science, where "pictorial" includes not only
visual pictures but also tactile and auditory representations.


### 3.7. Causation and Laws of Nature



Although Mario Bunge's already classical book *Causality*
(1959a) was a landmark in the study of causation, it was only several
decades later that the interest on causation took off in the region.
Eduardo Flichman developed a "deflationist" view of
causation according to which causation is not an ontological relation
between events but an anthropomorphic asymmetric relation that
speakers project over reality. From this perspective, Flichman (1989)
criticized the counterfactual theory of causation proposed by David
Lewis (1973) by showing that clear cases of causation can be
meaningfully reversed and, therefore, challenge the supposed asymmetry
of causation.



This criticism sparked an interesting debate in the Mexican journal
*Critica* during the 1990s. Dorothy Edgington (1990) accepted
Flichman's criticism as an argument against the possibility of
analyzing the concept of causation. Horacio Abeledo (1995), in turn,
showed that there would be a "formal" way out of
Flichman's criticism, but with no philosophical support. From an
opposite perspective, Helen Beebee (1997) explicitly responded to
Flichman's argument and to Abeledo's conclusion by arguing
that the putative counter-example presented by Flichman is not in fact
a counter-example after all. Both Flichman and Abeledo reacted to
Beebee's paper. On the basis of a refutation of Beebee's
argument, Flichman (2000) elaborated on his criticism of Lewis's
theory and his defense of an acausal position. Finally, Abeledo (2000)
offered a clear and detailed summary of the whole controversy, adding
new arguments against Beebee's view but stressing his
disagreements with Flichman's position.


 Other Latin American authors were interested in causation. For
example, Sergio Martinez (1997) provides a detailed review of
the role of causation in scientific explanation along the history of
science. In Santiago de Chile, Wilfredo Quezada Pulido leads a
research group mainly devoted to study physical causation. In his
published works, Quesada Pulido (2002) compared the theories of causal
transference, of causal processes, and of conserved quantities, and
analyzed the manipulability theory of causation in the light of the
problem of anthropomorphism (2007). More recently, Fernanda Samaniego
appeals to the manipulability approach to define a notion of
"explanatory depth" (2014) and to account for spin-echo
experiments (2013, 2015).


 His work on causation led Flichman (1990, 1995) to discuss the
concept of scientific law: according to him, the distinction between
laws of nature and accidental uniformities depends on the role they
play in a scientific theory; moreover "hard" and
"soft" accidental uniformities must be carefully
distinguished because the latter are frequently confused with laws of
nature. Pablo Lorenzano (1998, 2007) also reflects upon the concept of
law of nature in relation to the existence of biological laws.


### 3.8. Philosophical History of Science


 The history of science from a philosophical perspective has been
extensively studied in Latin America. For instance, in Argentina
Guillemo Boido has strongly promoted the area; his book on Galileo
(Boido 1996) not only offers a historical narrative, but also explains
historiographic discussions in light of the historical record. In
Colombia, Mauricio Nieto Olarte (2000, 2007) developed relevant
research work on the origins of science in the region during the
colonial period. In Mexico, Laura Benitez published several
works on early science (e.g., Benitez 1993, 2000, 2004), and
developed a long and fruitful collaboration with Jose Antonio
Robles about science in Modern times (e.g., Benitez and Robles
2000, 2006; Robles and Benitez 2004). Also in Mexico,
Godfrey Guillaumin (2005) studied the historical evolution of the
notion of scientific evidence.


 Some philosophers of science of the region also manifested their
interest in particular events of the history of science. For instance,
Pablo Mariconda analyzed Galileo's tide theory (1999), the
simple machines designed by Galileo (2008), and Galileo's
argument for the autonomy of science (Lacey and Mariconda 2012). He
also studied the method of astronomy according to Kepler (Tossato and
Mariconda 2010).


 In turn, Alejandro Cassini and Marcelo Levinas developed a
fruitful collaboration studying different aspects of the history of
physics at the beginning of twentieth century, particularly regarding
Einstein's works: Einstein's reinterpretation of
Michelson-Morley experiment (Cassini and Levinas 2005), his
explanations of photoelectric effect (Cassini and Levinas 2008;
Cassini, Levinas, and Pringe 2015) and of the Compton effect (Cassini,
Levinas, and Pringe 2013), his reinterpretation of Fizeau experiment
(Cassini and Levinas 2019), as well as the role played by the ether in
the conceptual change to special relativity (Cassini and Levinas
2009). In the quantum context, Olival Freire Jr. (2015) published a
book that traces the passionate foundational controversies that
accompanied the ripening of quantum physics during the second half of
the twentieth century.


 The works of Christian Carman deserve a special mention
since they make him a top-ranked international specialist in ancient
astronomy due to their quantity and quality. His first works focused
on Ptolemy's calculations and explanations (Carrman 2009, 2010a,
2011, 2015; Recio and Carman 2018), but soon his interest expanded to
other authors, such as Aristarchus (2014), Martianus Capella (2017a),
Copernicus (2018), and Heraclides of Pontus (2017b). In an additional
line of research, Carman collaborated with the renowned scholar James
Evans in a detailed study of the Antikythera mechanism which resulted
in several very relevant works (Evans, Carman, and Thorndike 2010;
Carman, Thorndike, and Evans 2012; Carman and Evans 2014). Carman
developed further his analyses of the mechanism, in some cases in
single-authored works and in other cases in collaborartion with other
international scholars (Anastasiou, Seiradakis, Carman, and Efstathiou
2014; Carman and di Cocco 2016; Carman 2017c). Finally, Carman has
recently extended his collaboration with Evans beyond the original
interest in the Antikythera mechanism, examining other issues in
ancient astronomy (Carman and Evans 2015).


### 3.9. Science, Society, and Values



In Latin America, the discussions about science and values have
traditionally focused on the question of the dependence of scientific
research in Latin American countries on the agenda set by central
countries. Due to their local interest, most of the material was
written in Spanish. In 1971, a debate, remembered until today for its
philosophical and political significance, confronted Oscar Varsavsky
and Gregorio Klimovsky in Argentina. For Varsavsky (1971), since
science is essentially ideology-laden, ideology must appear explicitly
in scientific policy as a guide toward a new social order. Klimovsky
(1971), by contrast, advocated for a neutral basic science: politics
appear mostly in the application of scientific knowledge. The original
debate was complemented with the contribution of other prominent
Argentine thinkers, and appeared in 1975 as the book *Ciencia y
Ideologia. Aportes polemicos* (Klimovsky et
al. 1975). In the same year, Jorge Sabato compiled a significant book
with articles by more than twenty specialists about ideology in
science, relations between science, technology, and society, the
structural scientific-technological dependence of Latin America, the
production of technology, and the planning of scientific-technological
development in Latin American countries. The lively debates of those
years were drastically interrupted by the military coup
d'etat in Argentina in 1976.


 The claim for a Latin American science, guided by regional
interests and ideological views, is in resonance with those
philosophical and sociological studies, like that of Enrique Dussel
(1995) which denounces the Eurocentric "myth of modernity"
that justifies the superiority of European culture over Native
American cultures. In turn, the need to contextualize scientific
knowledge in the framework of social needs of a particular community
also appears in the works of Rolando Garcia (1981) under the
concept of interdisciplinary research, that is, a research that
combines different theoretical approaches in the search for solving
localized social requirements.


 Whereas the above contributions focused mainly on natural science,
the interest in how social knowledge is produced in Latin America has
grown during the last decades. An example of this interest is the book
of Leandro Rodriguez Medina (2014) which examines the
circulation of knowledge within globalization, focusing on the
differences between centers and peripheries of knowledge production in
the social sciences, and in the ways in which foreign ideas shape
peripheral fields.


 Two philosophers of science, who are well-known in the Latin
American communities, were also very interested in issues connected
with social and political values in science, although from different
perspectives. Since the 1990s, Leon Olive (1988 [1993])
stood at the interface between the philosophy and the sociology of
knowledge, trying to explain the double nature of knowledge as a
social construct and a representation of reality. More recently, his
interest focused on how technology has pervaded contemporary society,
modeling both knowledge and values (Olive 2007). Ricardo
Gomez, by contrast, develops his position in open confrontation
with neoliberalism (2002, 2017a). On this basis, he considers that the
ethical dimension of science and technology should stand against
neoliberal principles from a clear political position (Gomez
2017b).



The interaction between scientific activities and values has been the
interest of Pablo Mariconda (Lacey and Mariconda 2014a, 2014b). In
particular, Mariconda (2014) discusses the technological risks
associated with transgenic agriculture. Along the same lines, Guillemo
Folgera analyzes the techno-scientific discourse regarding genetically
modified organisms (Folguera, Carrizo, and Massarini 2014) and
denounces the omission of risks in the use of such organisms (Francese
and Folguera 2018).


 In the context of science, society, and values, studies that
combine the reflection upon scientific knowledge with gender matters
must be mentioned. For instance, Fabrizzio (now Siobhan) Guerrero Mc
Manus (2016) provides Spanish-speaking readers with an overview of a
feminism that seeks to develop a critical framework aimed at
detecting, exposing, and correcting the many gender biases nowadays
present in the sciences. In this context, the works of Diana
Maffia cannot be forgotten since she has critically analyzed
the links between gender and science in the past twenty years or so
(e.g., Maffia 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007; Rietti and Maffia
2005).


## 4. Philosophy of Particular Sciences


### 4.1. Philosophy of Physics



Although Mario Bunge and Roberto Torretti were central figures for the
philosophy of physics in Latin America, their early emigration
prevented them from starting research lines around their works. As a
consequence, the development of the philosophy of physics in the
region is relatively recent.


 Quantum mechanics is one of the focuses of the research group led
by Olimpia Lombardi which developed its work in two directions: the
interpretation of the theory and the analysis of the meaning of
decoherence. Regarding the first topic, Lombardi and Mario Castagnino
proposed the modal-Hamiltonian interpretation of quantum mechanics: a
realist, non-collapse interpretation that endows the Hamiltonian with
a determining role. The interpretation proved to be effective in
explaining ideal and non-ideal measurements and many other well-known
physical situations such as hydrogen atom, Zeeman effect, fine
structure, etc. (Lombardi and Castagnino 2008). The interpretation was
reformulated in a Galilean invariant form (Ardenghi, Castagnino, and
Lombardi 2009; Lombardi, Castagnino, and Ardenghi 2010), and was
applied to further situations, such as the non-collapse account of
consecutive measurements in physics (Ardenghi, Lombardi, and Narvaja
2013), the understanding of quantum decoherence (Lombardi, Ardenghi,
Fortin, and Castagnino 2011), the view of quantum measurement in
informational terms (Lombardi, Fortin, and Lopez 2015), and the
problem of optical isomerism in chemistry (Fortin, Lombardi, and
Martinez Gonzalez 2016, 2018). In addition, the
modal-Hamiltonian interpretation proposes a bundle-of-properties
ontology that adequately accounts for contextuality and
indistinguishability (da Costa, Lombardi, and Lastiri 2013; da Costa
and Lombardi 2014), but without preventing the emergence of particles
under certain particular circumstances (Lombardi and Dieks 2016).


 By stressing the distinction between collapse and decoherence,
Osvaldo Pessoa (1997) criticized the assumption that decoherence
solves the measurement problem. Following Pessoa's view,
Castagnino, Sebastian Fortin, and Lombardi (2010) deepened the
criticisms of the orthodox approach to decoherence (see also Lombardi,
Fortin, and Castagnino 2012; Fortin and Lombardi 2014, 2017), proposed
a new approach for closed systems (Castagnino and Lombardi 2004;
Fortin and Lombardi 2018), and developed a general conceptual
framework for decoherence in closed and open systems (Castagnino,
Laura, and Lombardi 2007). On the basis of this new perspective, the
research group offered a particular view of the classical limit of
quantum mechanics (Castagnino and Lombardi 2005; Fortin and Lombardi
2016) and applied it to the problem of defining the quantum ergodic
hierarchy (Castagnino and Lombardi 2007; Gomez and Castagnino
2014).



In the subtle frontier between logic and physics, Decio Krause
developed an impressive work related to the quantum challenges to
the notions of identity and individuality. Already in his PhD
dissertation, under the supervision of Newton da Costa, Krause
supplied a semantics to the so-called "Schrodinger
logic" (da Costa and Krause 1994, 1997) designed to account for
elementary quantum particles. This work led him to formulate his
*quasi-set theory* (Krause 1991, 1992, 1996a, 1996b), according
to which there are urelements for which identity makes no sense.
Krause's semi-extensional quasi-set theory was compared with the
intensional quaset theory developed by Maria Luisa dalla Chiara and
Giuliano Toraldo di Francia (dalla Chiara, Giuntini, and Krause 1998),
and was applied to particular problems in the foundations of quantum
mechanics (Sant'Anna and Krause 1997; Krause, Sant'Anna,
and Volkov 1999; Krause 2000; Domenech, Holik, and Krause 2008).



Krause also developed an intense collaboration with Steven French to
develop a concept of individuality for the quantum ontology (Krause
and French 1995, 2007; French and Krause 1995, 1999, 2003); they also
advanced some ideas about individuality in quantum field theory
(French and Krause 2010). This collaboration gave rise to a very
relevant book on the matter (French and Krause 2006), which discusses
the problem of individuality in philosophy and in classical and
quantum physics and articulates quasi-set theory as a theory for
non-individuals.


 More recently, Krause produced a relevant collaborative work with
Jonas Arenhart, his former PhD student, about quantum
non-individuality (Krause and Arenhart 2012, 2016a) and its
compatibility with Einstein's realism (Krause and Arenhart
2014). They also examined the view of quantum particles as individuals
in a primitive sense (Arenhart and Krause 2014a, 2014b). This
collaboration led to a recent book about the logical foundations of
scientific theories (Krause and Arenhart 2016b). In recent years,
Krause also worked with da Costa in the application of paraconsistent
logics to physics (da Costa and Krause 2014, 2016).


 Still in the field of the interpretation of quantum mechanics,
Elias Okon and Daniel Sudarsky (2014a, 2014b) criticized Robert
Griffiths's consistent histories approach by arguing that it is
interpretively vague and does not solve the measurement problem. These
works were rebutted by Griffiths (2015), and the rebuttal was
immediately answered by Okon and Sudarsky (2015a) by claiming that the
consistent histories interpretation introduces anthropomorphic terms
not contained in the formalism. In turn, based on Okon and
Sudarsky's criticism, Marcelo Losada and Lombardi (2018) defend
a "formalism of contextual histories" which is free from
the shortcomings of Griffiths's proposal.



Given the need for an observer-independent interpretation of quantum
mechanics for cosmology, Okon and Sudarsky (2014c) defended an
objective collapse theory for the application to cosmology and quantum
gravity, and on this basis, they proposed an adaptation of objective
collapse models to a general relativistic context (2018a). The authors
also examined the black hole information loss paradox as a situation
that can be accounted for by collapse interpretations (Okon and
Sudarsky 2015b, 2017, 2018b).


 Other aspects and interpretations of quantum mechanics have also
been explored. For instance, Sergio Martinez explored the
physical content of the Luders Rule (1990, 1991), Pessoa (2005)
proposed a modal logical treatment of quantum mechanics, and Pablo
Acuna (2016b) pointed out the difficulties in defining the
notion of inertial trajectory in Bohmian mechanics which is considered
a different theory and not a different interpretation of quantum
mechanics (Acuna forthcoming). In turn, Rodolfo Gambini, Luis
Pedro Garcia-Pintos, and Jorge Pullin (2010, 2011) devised an
interpretation that offers a solution to the quantum measurement
problem based on the loss of coherence due to the use of realistic
clocks.



Matters not directly related to quantum mechanics have also been
studied by Latin American philosophers of physics. For instance,
Acuna (2016a) critically assessed the debate concerning the
direction of explanation between Minkowski spacetime and the Lorentz
invariance of dynamical laws. Diego Romero-Maltrana (2015) analyzes
the relationship between symmetries and conserved quantities supported
by Noether's theorems in order to argue for the priority of
conserved quantities over symmetries.


 The problem of time's arrow was addressed by Castagnino,
Lombardi and collaborators by elaborating on John Earman's
heresy (1974) according to which the arrow of time is a geometrical
property of the universe (Castagnino, Lombardi, and Lara 2003). This
global arrow is transferred to the local domain as an energy flow that
points to the same time direction on the entire spacetime (Castagnino
and Lombardi 2009), which in turn supplies the foundations for local
irreversible theories (Aiello, Castagnino, and Lombardi 2008).
Castagnino and Lombardi also collaborated with Manuel Gadella, one of
the authors of the time-asymmetric quantum mechanics, in order to
analyze irreversibility and time's arrow in the quantum realm
(Castagnino, Gadella, and Lombardi 2006), a work recently followed by
Cristian Lopez (2019).


### 4.2. Philosophy of Chemistry



Although the philosophy of chemistry is a relatively young
subdiscipline in philosophy of science,it has attracted the interest
of several researchers in Latin America.



The group led by Olimpia Lombardi worked on the topic since 2005 when
a paper advocating for the ontological autonomy of chemistry (Lombardi
and Labarca 2005) was published. The paper sparked a hot debate which
began with a criticism by Paul Needham (2006) that was immediately
responded by Lombardi and Labarca (2006), and was followed by many
other authors. In the meantime, Labarca and Lombardi (2010) also argued for
the existence of orbitals in the ontology of chemistry relying on
ontological pluralism. On the basis of the impact of her view,
Lombardi (2014a) reviewed and organized the different criticisms and
offered a systematic response to them; in turn, with Mariana
Cordoba, she stressed the Kantian roots of her ontological
pluralism (Cordoba and Lombardi 2013).



Given her antireductionist perspective, Lombardi (2013, 2014b) also
criticized the book of Hinne Hettema (2012), *Reducing Chemistry to
Physics*, stressing the many difficulties that must be faced by
those who insist on the reduction of chemistry to physics; the papers
received immediate replies from Hetterma (2014).


 The problems regarding the relations between chemistry and physics
were addressed by Lombardi's group from various perspectives. In
particular, they brought to light several interpretive issues of
quantum mechanics that are not accommodated when the theory is used in
chemistry (Lombardi and Castagnino 2010; Martinez
Gonzalez, Fortin, and Lombardi 2019) and argued that quantum
decoherence does not solve the problem of isomerism (Fortin, Lombardi,
and Martinez Gonzalez 2016). They also began to examine
the issue of the relationship between chemistry and quantum mechanics
from a theoretical perspective, such as the Quantum Theory of Atoms in
Molecules (Jaimes Arriaga, Fortin, and Lombardi 2019) and Bohmian
mechanics (Fortin, Lombardi, and Martinez Gonzalez
2017); this last paper was critically assessed by Giovanni Villani,
Elena Ghibaudi, and Luigi Cerruti (2018).


 As a continuation of her previous work in Spanish, Lombardi (2012)
offered a critical analysis of Ilya Prigogine's proposals. In
turn, with Lucia Lewowicz, she analyzed the ontological
category of stuff as required by macro-chemistry (Lewowicz and
Lombardi 2013). The problem of the categories underlying the chemical
discourse was also addressed in the context of the group by
Cordoba and Alfio Zambon (2017) for the particular case of
nano-materials. A particular mention is needed to Zambon's
(2018) completely new representation of the periodic system based on
atomic-number triads.



Guillermo Restrepo focused his interest on how formal tools can be
applied to chemistry. With Jose Luis Villaveces, he noted the
resemblance between Leibniz's and Lavoisier's programs
regarding a *lingua philosophica* for understanding nature
(Restrepo and Villaveces 2011) and reviewed the origins of
mathematical thinking in chemistry (Restrepo and Villaveces 2012).
Restrepo also analyzed the mathematical aspects of the periodic law
(Restrepo and Pachon 2007) and considered the different
foundational aspects of the field called "mathematical
chemistry" (2013; Restrepo and Villaveces 2013). Restrepo has
been working in Germany since 2014 where he still produces interesting
contributions to the philosophy of chemistry.


 The development of the technological aspects of chemistry has been
the interest of Jose Antonio Chamizo (2013, 2017, 2019) with
applications to chemistry education.


### 4.3. Philosophy of Biology



The philosophy of biology in the region has been developed in various
directions from the most traditional topics in the area to more
innovative questions.



The traditional topic of natural selection is treated in relation to
its explanatory power by Pablo Lorenzano in collaboration with the
Spanish philosopher Jose Diez (Diez and Lorenzano
2013, 2015). Santiago Ginnobili (2016) offers a metatheoretical
structuralist reconstruction of Darwin's theory with the purpose
of elucidating the concept of ecological fitness, and Mario Casanueva
(2011) proposes a structuralist reconstruction of the mechanism of
natural selection by means of graph resources. In turn, Gustavo Caponi
(2013) studies the concepts of function, fitness, and adaptation in
natural selection theory.


 Closely related with natural selection, the issue of evolution is
approached from very different perspectives. For instance, Guillemo
Folguera stresses the dependence of macroevolution on microevolution
even in the criticisms of the synthesis since the seventies (Folguera
and Lombardi 2012), and Maurizio Esposito (2011) supplies examples of
how Darwinism was used and adapted in different contexts. But the most
extensive work on this issue has been developed by Edna
Suarez-Diaz who focused specifically on molecular
evolution. In this field, she studied the role played by the concept
of informational molecule and by the idea of molecular evolution of
informational molecules in differentiating molecular from classical
evolutionists and in the constitution of genomics
(Suarez-Diaz 2009, 2010). Despite stressing the
importance of the molecular experimental approach in evolutionary
biology (Suarez-Diaz and Barahona 1996),
Suarez-Diaz acknowledges the methodological and
conceptual difficulties embedded in the use of molecular evidence to
elaborate molecular phylogenies (Suarez-Diaz and
Anaya-Munoz 2008; Suarez-Diaz 2014a), and
emphasizes the generative nature of experimentation
(Suarez-Diaz 2013).


 Heredity, always linked with biological knowledge, has been the
topic of interest of Carlos Lopez-Beltran who shows the
transformation of the concept from playing a metaphorical role to
acquire a narrative role (1994) and subsequently being conceived in
statistical terms (2006). By relating heredity with genetics, Esposito
(2017) emphasizes the longstanding relationships between the
reductionist view of gene as hereditary unit, the idea of information
encoded in DNA, and the prophecies about the power of controlling
genetic information. From a structuralist perspective, Lorenzano
offers a metatheoretical reconstruction of classical genetics (Balzer
and Lorenzano 2000), paying special attention to the Hardy-Weinberg
law within population genetics (2014). Mario Casanueva (1997)
explores the relationship among the sexual theory of reproduction,
Mendelian genetics, and Mendel's hybridisation theory. In turn,
Juan Manuel Torres (1997, 2002, 2006) focuses on the use of genetic
tests in medical practice, and Anna Barahona (2007) considers how
different inheritance issues can be represented by genetic maps.


 Fabrizzio (now Siobhan) Guerrero Mc Manus examines methodological
problems: the rational selection of an algorithm for phylogenetic
inference (2009), and the limitations of mechanistic explanations when
dealing with developmental mechanisms (2012). In turn, the issue of
causation is treated by Maximiliano Martinez in terms of the
concept of multi-level causation (Martinez and Moya 2011;
Martinez and Esposito 2014). The ideas of a multiplicity of
levels and of downward causation appears repeatedly in the works of
Charbel El-Hani (El-Hani and Pereira 1999; El-Hani and Emmeche 2000;
Queiroz and El-Hani 2006), with the purpose of advocating for property
and process emergence in biology.


 In collaboration with El-Hani, Joao Queiroz has developed
extensive work on the biosemiotic approach to biology (El-Hani,
Queiroz, and Stjernfelt 2010; Queiroz, Emmeche, Kull, and El-Hani
2011; Queiroz 2012; Queiroz, Stjernfelt, and El-Hani 2014), and its
relationship with genetic information (El-Hani, Queiroz, and Emmeche
2006). From a completely different viewpoint,
Suarez-Diaz (2007) discusses what she considers the
metaphor of information in molecular biology.



Other non-classical but currently very relevant topics in life
sciences are also treated in the region, such as environmental matters
(Klier et al. 2017), ecology (Nunes-Neto, Moreno, and El-Hani 2014),
and evo-devo (Baedke and Mc Manus 2018).


 Finally, it is worth mentioning a recent trend that, in the
confluence among philosophy, anthropology, and biology, considers
political issues in biological research (Wade et al. 2015;
Garcia-Deister and Lopez-Beltran 2015; Delgado
2018), studies genomic variations in Latin America
(Suarez-Diaz 2014b; Anaya-Munoz,
Garcia-Deister, and Suarez-Diaz 2017), examines
the relationship among genetic research, nationalism, and the
construction of collective social identities (Kent et al. 2015), and
explores the relationships among homosexuality, homophobia, and
biomedical sciences in the region (Mc Manus 2014).


### 4.4. Philosophy of Formal Sciences



Sometimes very close to logic itself, the philosophy of logic has an
important presence in Latin American philosophy of science from
multiple perspectives.



The logical treatment of contradiction attracted great interest,
mainly in the groups of Campinas and Buenos Aires, although with
different motivations. In Campinas, where one underlying interest was
the possibility of modeling contradictory information in scientific
practice, Newton da Costa focused on the mathematical concept of
"pragmatic truth" (Mikenberg, da Costa, and Chuaqui 1986)
with the purpose of showing that the logic of pragmatic truth is
paraconsistent (da Costa, Bueno, and French 1998). In turn, Walter
Carnielli and Marcelo Coniglio developed an approach in which the
distinction between logic and philosophy is not straightforward. On
the philosophical side, and following the path opened by da Costa,
they focused on the so-called "logics of formal
inconsistency", a family of paraconsistent logics that can
express the notion of consistency within the object language
(Carnielli, Coniglio, and Marcos 2007). Carnielli also developed
dialogical and epistemic approaches to paraconsistency (Rahman and
Carnielli 2000; Carnielli and Rodrigues 2019).


 In the group led by Eduardo Barrio at Buenos Aires, works on
inconsistency were motivated by semantic reasons, in particular, the
treatment of paradoxes (Barrio 2010; Picollo 2012; Barrio and Picollo
2013). They studied non-transitivity as a solution of paradoxes
(Barrio, Rosenblatt, and Tajer 2015; Barrio, Pailos, and Szmuc 2018),
and considered non-traditional approaches to paradoxes (Da Re
and Rosenblatt 2018). Some members of the group were also interested
in classical recapture in the contexts of paraconsistent logic
(Teijeiro forthcoming) and of logics of formal inconsistency (Tajer
forthcoming). Recently, Barrio and collaborators have begun to focus
specifically on paraconsistency in its different aspects (Barrio,
Pailos, and Szmuc 2017, forthcoming a; Barrio and Da Re 2018b;
Barrio, Clerbout, and Rahman forthcoming).



The strong contact between the groups of Campinas and Buenos Aires
resulted in the publication of two special issues of the *Logic
Journal of the IGPL* (Barrio and Carnielli forthcoming a,b)
devoted to logics of formal inconsistency. The interest in paradoxes
and inconsistency also appeared in other authors of the region, such
as Andres Bobenrieth (1998).


 Topics related to non-extensionality, in particular modal logics
and Kripkean semantics, were also treated by some philosophers of
logic in Latin America (e.g., Mortari 2007; Marcos 2009; Estrada
Gonzalez 2012; Rosenblatt and Szmuc 2014). In particular, Max
Freund (2001, 2004, 2007, 2015) focused on modal logics with sortal
quantifiers and wrote a collaborative book on modal logic
(Cocchiarella and Freund 2008).


 The question of the coexistence of different logics was
additionally addressed by the groups in Buenos Aires and
Campinas. Whereas Barrio and collaborators discussed logical pluralism
(Barrio, Pailos, and Szmuc forthcoming b), Carnielli and Coniglio
focused on the problems of translations between logics (Carnielli,
Coniglio, and D'Ottaviano 2009) and combinations of logics
(Carnielli and Coniglio 2007 [2016]).


 More traditional problems related with truth have also been
treated by the philosophers of logic of the region (e.g., Barrio and
Rodriguez-Pereyra 2015; Barrio and Da Re 2018a). In
particular, Mario Gomez-Torrente (1998, 2000, 2002, 2008, 2006
[2019]) developed a longstanding work on the notion of logical truth,
truth-preservation, and the relationships among logical truth,
derivability, and model-theoretic validity.



Although in the boundaries between logic and epistemology, the logic
of belief revision and the works of Carlos Alchourron
(Alchourron and Makinson 1981, 1982; Alchourron 1996)
cannot be forgotten: the AGM model (Alchourron,
Gardenfors, and Makinson 1985) is still the dominant theory of
belief revision (see entry logic
of belief revision in this Encyclopedia). Andres
Paez (2006) uses the theory of belief revision to supply a
concept of explanation embodied with pragmatic conditions. Closely
related with this topic, "defeasible reasoning" was
extensively studied by Gustavo Bodanza and Fernando Tohme
(2005, 2009; Bodanza, Tohme, and Simari 2016; Bodanza,
Tohme, and Auday 2017; see also Bodanza 2002; Bodanza and
Alessio 2017). Tohme also supplied a category-theoretic
representation of abduction (Tohme, Caterina, and Gangle 2015),
and analyzed abduction in its application to economy (Crespo,
Tohme, and Heymann 2010; Tohme and Crespo
2013). Abductive reasoning was also the main interest of Atocha
Aliseda (2003; Soler-Toscano, Nepomuceno-Fernandez, and
Aliseda-Llera 2009), who applied abduction to medical diagnosis
(Aliseda and Leonides 2013) and proposed a conditional logic to
formalize abduction (Beirlaen and Aliseda 2014). She also published a
book completely devoted to abduction (Aliseda 2006), which not only
discusses conceptual and formal matters, but also pays special
attention to the epistemic applications of abductive reasoning.


### 4.5. Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences



The philosophy of cognitive sciences is a very complex field, mainly
due to the difficulty to distinguish it from other areas such as
philosophy of mind, epistemology, linguistics, philosophy of action,
and logic.


 The traditional topic of consciousness has been treated in its
relation to brain functions from a naturalized perspective by
Jose Luis Diaz (1995, 2000) and more recently by Miguel
Angel Sebastian (2014) on the basis of the neurophysiology of
dreams; in turn, Beatriz Sorrentino Marques and Osvaldo Pessoa (2017)
analyze the role of consciousness in agent causation theories.
Another traditional topic, perception, is addressed by Juan Carlos
Gonzalez who analyzes the process of perceptual recalibration
(Gonzalez, Bach-y-Rita, and Haase 2005) and the case of
hallucinations (Gonzalez 2010, 2016), and by Laura Danon
and Daniel Kalpokas (2017) who offer an explanation of the direct
perception of mental states of others. Juan Pablo Bermudez, in
turn, focuses on mental actions, supplying an account of skillful
action that rejects both intellectualism and anti-intellectualism
(2017) and claiming that remembering is not merely passive but must be
viewed as a mental action (Arango-Munoz and Bermudez
2018). In collaboration with Bermudez, Alejandro Rosas stresses
the cognitive and non-cognitive roots of shared intentionality (Rosas
and Bermudez 2018) and the influence of cognitive dispositions
on weakness of will attribution (Rosas, Bermudez, and
Gutierrez 2018).



In addition to his collaborative work with Bermudez, Rosas
developed an extensive work on the evolution of moral cognition and
the cognitive roots of cooperation (2002, 2008a). In particular, he
claims that altruism is selected both at the individual and at the
group levels (2008b) and proposes a unified theory of human
cooperation based on reciprocity (2010, 2012). Recently, with
colleagues coming from philosophy and from science, he has contributed
to the research on moral judgment with moral dilemmas (Rosas and
Koenigs 2014; Rosas, Viciana, Caviedes, and Arciniegas 2019).


 An approach that received much attention in the region is that of
embodied cognition and, in particular, enactivism (see Gonzalez
2013; Hutto and Satne 2017; Martinez, Espanol, and
Perez 2018). For instance, Ignacio Avila analyzes bodily
awareness and its role in perceptual self-location (2014, 2017) and
considers certain enactive accounts of perception (2015). Adrian
Cussins (2012) discusses the role that representation of the body
plays in cognition. In turn, Maria Eunice Quilici Gonzalez asks
whether embodied cognition can be applied to artificial systems as
robots (Haselager and Gonzalez 2007a).



Axel Barcelo Aspeitia and Angeles Erana focused their
work mainly on the modularity of mind in order to adapt the idea of
domain specificity (Barcelo, Erana, and Stainton 2010)
and to compare the hypothesis of massive modularity to other views
about the structure of mind (Erana 2012). In this context,
Claudia Lorena Garcia (2007) argues that the hypothesis of the
modularity of mind needs to be understood in terms of the evolutionary
biological concepts of variational independence (2007) and of
functional homology and functional variation (2010).


 Metacognition is the topic that attracted the interest of Santiago
Arango-Munoz who distinguishes between the rationalizing level
and the controlling level in metacognition (2011) and appeals to the
concepts of metamemory and metacognitive feelings to address the
interactions between the mind and the world (2013). Furthermore, he
explores the nature of the so-called "epistemic feelings"
from a metacognitive perspective (2014, 2019).


 Cognitive functions are approached from an informational
perspective by M.E.Q. Gonzalez, who analyzes mechanical models
of intelligence (2005) and of reasoning (Gonzalez, Broens, and
D'Ottaviano 2007; Haselager and Gonzalez 2007b). From the
same informational approach, Sebastian and Artiga (forthcoming)
explore metarepresentation. Other formal perspectives are adopted to
verify the so-called cognitive task analysis (Laureano-Cruces and
Barcelo-Aspeitia 2002) and to analyze the agent's
resolution of conditional probability problems (Moro, Bodanza, and
Freidin 2011).



From a completely different viewpoint, several authors in the region
prefer to understand cognitive phenomena in an analytical framework,
specifically in relation to language (e.g., Skidelsky 2013;
Garcia-Ramirez 2011; Garcia-Ramirez and
Shatz 2011) with affinity with research in philosophy of mind.


### 4.6. Philosophy of Social Sciences


 Certain methodological problems of social sciences have been
addressed by Diego Rios, who analyzed explanation with
mechanistic and evolutionary models (2004; Kuchle and Rios
2015), and studied the relationship between methodological
individualism and methodological holism (Rios 2005, 2009;
Rios Pozzi 2007). In particular, the autonomy and
irreducibility of economics has been discussed (Scarano 2012;
Gomez 2012). Nevertheless, almost all of the philosophy of
social sciences in Latin America has been directed to theoretical
issues in specific sciences or particular problems of the region.


 A field that attracts great interest is the philosophy of history.
Elias Palti recalls the evolution and crisis of the area
(2018), and distinguishes the so-called "politico-intellectual
history" from the old "history of political ideas"
(2010, 2014). Veronica Tozzi (2012a, 2016, 2018), in turn, proposes an
original pragmatist approach to the philosophy of history, which
appeals to Dewey's notion of "practical meaning" in
relation to the knowledge of the past. Tozzi also focuses on the
problem of the roles memory and testimony play in representing the
recent past (2009, 2012b). In connection to these concepts, Esteban
Lythgoe (2011, 2014) analyzes how Paul Ricoeur articulates history,
memory, and testimony.


 Other topics involved in the philosophy of history have also been
considered: the historicity of the concept of subject (Palti 2004),
the ideas of progress (Ratto 2018), and of future (Belvedresi
2018). In particular, Maria Ines Mudrovcic highlights
the different types of consciousness of temporality (2014) and
analyzes the political self-understanding of the present in terms of
the past in contemporary Western societies (2013). The impact of the
phenomenon of globalization on historiographical paradigms (Brauer
2018) and on the deformation of ethical and political concepts
(Roldan 2018) are also examined. In turn, the idea of Global
History is considered by Rosa Belvedresi (2012) who compares it with
the concept of universal history, and by Francisco Naishtat (2012) as
a framework for the Marxist debate on colonialism and
modernization.



At the crossroads between philosophy of politics and political
philosophy--if there is any difference between them--the
categories of equality and liberty (Hilb 1994), authority
(Oyarzun 2012), and power (Oyarzun 2017) have been
analyzed. In this field, Naishtat has developed extensive research
mainly directed to the critical evaluation of phenomena at the global
scale. For instance, he analyzes the relationship between fragile
sovereignties, global-intensive governance apparatuses, and a
horizon-less catastrophe-world (2010a), and argues that the political
dimension of the global is global justice (2011). In turn, Naishtat
stands in the context of recent political events, when he considers
the possibility of peace and rights transcending state frontiers in
the light of the 1990s *Balkan* wars (2000) and the
displacement of the content of the terms "terror" and
"terrorism" after 9/11 towards a meaning functional to
globalization (2010b).


 Latin American themes are recurrent in the philosophy of social
sciences of the region. Palti has been very active in this field: he
studied the nineteenth century Latin American intellectual history in
the context of the thesis of the essential contestability of concepts
(2005), considered the limitations of the notion of "misplaced
ideas" by means of which Roberto Schwarz analyzed the dynamics
of ideas in Latin America (2006), and critically examined the radical
transformation in the ways of conceiving the process leading to the
break of colonial ties that linked Latin America with Spain
(2009). Other authors share this interest in regional problems, such
as Pablo Oyarzun (2007) who focused on Latin American
singularities, Gustavo Leyva (2014) who considered how the democratic
project was reformulated and radicalized in Latin America over the
last decades, and Ambrosio Velasco Gomez (2015) who proposes an
original thesis about the intellectual roots of Mexican
independence.



When Latin American themes are considered, the so-called Philosophy of
Liberation cannot be forgotten: a philosophical movement that emerged
in the late sixties in Argentina and spread through Latin America in
the following decades with authors such as Enrique Dussel, Leopoldo
Zea, Arturo Roig, Francisco Miro Quesada, Arturo Roig, and
Carlos Cullen among many others. Nevertheless, here the topic will not
be treated because a complete entry of the Encyclopedia is devoted to
it (Eduardo Mendieta,
 philosophy of liberation).


### 4.7. Philosophy of Technology



The philosophy of technology has attracted significant interest from
Latin American researchers working from very different perspectives
whether ontological-epistemological or ethical-political. From a
general viewpoint, Ricardo Gomez (2010) offers a detailed
overview of the philosophical ideas about technology.


 Regarding the ontological status of technical artifacts and
actions, Diego Lawler critically analyzes the functional and
intentional theories about the nature of artifact kinks (Vega and
Lawler 2014) and proposes a praxeological approach to technological
practices (Lawler 2018). In turn, Andres Vaccari directs
criticisms to the functionalist assumptions underlying the dual nature
of technical artifacts program (2013) and the extended cognition
theory applied to artifacts (2017), claiming that transhumanism has
failed in its aim to ground the transformation of the human condition
on technology (2015). The ontological status of artificial agents and
artificial life was addressed by Mari Gonzalez and Osvaldo
Pessoa (2008), who face the problem of whether life and autonomy could
in principle be sustained with components other than carbon, and by
Diego Parente (2018) who considers the challenges that these cases
pose to the traditional dichotomy between natural/artificial. Pablo
Rodriguez and Javier Blanco (2017), in turn, confront Gilbert
Simondon's theory of individuation with ideas coming from
cybernetics. From an epistemological perspective Myriam Altamirano
Bustamante, Adalberto de Hoyos, and Leon Olive (2011)
argue that much of the tacit knowledge involved in technology can be
transmitted as explicit knowledge through patents.



The ethical and socio-political dimensions of technology are topics
that have received great attention in the region. For instance, Jorge
Linares Salgado (2018) analyzes the ethical and societal consequences
of the production of bio-artifacts derived from synthetic biology. A
more specific study is offered by Carlos Osorio Marulanda (2018), who
addresses the problems related with drinking water production,
especially in rural areas of Latin America, from the perspective of
science, technology, and society (STS) studies.



In the area of STS studies, the extensive work of Hebe Vessuri
occupies a relevant place. In the boundaries between sociology and
philosophy, Vessuri has addressed general problems from a regional
point of view. For example, she considers how the current admission of
the underlying ontological complexity of the world influences both the
socio-cognitive and the institutional organization of disciplinary
knowledge, particularly in developing countries (2000) and how
science and technology can respond to the particular needs of Latin
American societies (2003). Vessuri also discusses the world
distribution of scientists, engineers, and technologists and the
movement of these personnel from peripheral countries to central
countries (de la Vega and Vessuri 2008). The readers interested in STS
studies in Latin America can turn to the article "Latin American
science, technology, and society. A historical and reflexive
approach" (Kreimer and Vessuri 2018), which describes the
development of STS in the region, its institutionalization and its
spaces of interaction.



Finally, two books in Spanish by Leon Olive must be
recalled due to their impact in the Latin American community of
philosophers of science: whereas in the first (Olive 2000)
science and technology are considered on a par, the second book
(Olive 2007) deals specifically with the different facets of
technology.


### 4.8. Other Topics



Other topics, not easily included in the traditional philosophies of
particular sciences, have also been addressed in Latin America.


 What is now known as philosophy of information has been an
interest of Olimpia Lombardi and her research group from different
perspectives. The meaning of the term "information" is
elucidated from a general viewpoint (Lombardi 2004), paying particular
attention to Shannon information (Lombardi 2005; Lombardi, Holik, and
Vanni 2016a), and arguing for a pluralistic interpretation of the
concept (Lombardi, Fortin, and Vanni 2015). By adopting a critical
perspective regarding Christopher Timpson's deflationary view of
information (Lombardi, Fortin, and Lopez 2016), it is argued
that there is no qualitative difference between Shannon and quantum
information besides the difference in the way in which they are
encoded (Lombardi, Holik, and Vanni 2016b). In turn, an
interpretational account of quantum measurement is offered (Lombardi,
Fortin, and Lopez 2015). On the basis of this critical work,
Lombardi and Cristian Lopez (2018) have elucidated the concept
of information as used in Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information
Theory of consciousness, and have proposed a manipulation-based
interpretation of communicational information (Lopez and
Lombardi 2019).


 The philosophy of science as a resource for science education is a
topic that has acquired an increasing interest in Latin America during
the last decades. In this field, two authors have developed intensive
work. Agustin Aduriz-Bravo addressed the use of
well-known episodes from the history of science, such as the
formulation of the pendulum law by Galileo (2004) and the discovery of
radium by the Curies (Aduriz-Bravo and Izquierdo-Aymerich 2009)
for science education. Moreover, he applied the cognitive model of
science (Izquierdo-Aymerich and Aduriz-Bravo 2003;
Aduriz-Bravo and Izquierdo-Aymerich 2005) and the semantic view
of scientific theories (Aduriz-Bravo 2011, 2013) both to the
practice of science teaching and to research on science education. He
also appealed to the so called "Nature of Science" view of
science for the education of science teachers (Aduriz-Bravo
2007, 2014). On the basis of those theoretical bases,
Aduriz-Bravo focuses on the philosophy of chemistry as a
resource for the didactics of chemistry (Erduran, Aduriz-Bravo,
and Mamlok Naaman 2007; Izquierdo-Aymerich and Aduriz-Bravo
2009; Aduriz-Bravo, Merino, and Izquierdo-Aymerich 2012).


 The interest of Charbel El-Hani is mainly centered on the
philosophy of biology for didactics of biology. He advocates for a
theory-centered approach to the concept of life (2008) and considers
the advantages of the dialogue between the students'
ethnobiological knowledge and biology school knowledge (Baptista and
El-Hani 2009). He also appeals to the works of Mendel and Darwin for
teaching genetics and evolution (Bizzo and El-Hani 2009; El-Hani
2015) and analyzes the different concepts of gene that often overlap
in biology education (Dos Santos, Joaquim, and El-Hani 2012; Meyer,
Bomfim, and El-Hani 2013, Gericke, Hagberg, dos Santos, Joaquim, and
El-Hani 2014). Beyond the specific field of biology, El-Hani accounts
for the different ways in which individuals and societies represent
concepts (Aguiar Jr, Sevian, and El-Hani 2018), discusses how to deal
with the relations between different cultural perspectives in
classrooms (Moreira-dos-Santos and El-Hani 2017), and advocates for
understanding as one of the major goals of science education
(Ferreira, El-Hani, and da Silva Filho 2016).


## 5. Concluding Remarks



After reviewing the development of philosophy of science in Latin
America since its emergence in the mid-twentieth century, it can be
said that there are some distinctive features in different countries.
But in the last decades, especially given the widespread use of the
Internet and digital libraries by the mid-1990s, a growing
intercommunication and collaboration can be verified as well as the
tendency to form an academic community with an important international
presence, which, at the same time, has certain characteristics of its
own. Among the common features, the following deserve to be
mentioned.


1. In general, in Latin American countries, the philosophy of
science began to be cultivated in the mid-twentieth century in those
academic circles that were favorable to analytic philosophy,
understood in a broad sense. The so-called "philosophical
analysis", more than a school or doctrinal body, represented in
Latin America an alternative way of doing philosophy: in this trend,
the methodological demands of conceptual elucidation and argumentative
rigor supported a reaction against the metaphysical, speculative, or
dogmatic traditions that predominated in the 1940s. Thus, analytic
philosophy favored the focus on problems posed in the fields of logic,
science, and language (without restricting the analysis of the latter
to ordinary language). Based on this common root, since the 1960s
philosophy of science has acquired a place of its own in most
countries of the region.
2. Although the "Americanist" concern (understood as the
search for a philosophy of the region, with its own identity) did not
prevail in philosophy of science of Latin America, the constant and
growing exchange between Latin American philosophers of science has
had the result of generating lines of research that integrate the
concerns for the social problems afflicting the countries of the
region and the role that science and technology can play in its
solution. Thus, from the 1990s, a triple movement was generated:
orientation towards practical issues, openness to other philosophical
traditions--different from the analytic tradition--and a
direct connection between the main Latin American nuclei where
philosophy of science is developed.
3. At the turn of the century, a vigorous growth of the 
philosophy of particular sciences can be observed, especially the
philosophy of physics and biology, and more recently the philosophy of
cognitive sciences. The philosophy of chemistry--a field that had
been ignored all over the world until 1980--has only recently
begun to be cultivated in countries such as Argentina and Mexico. In
contrast, in philosophy of the social sciences, Latin America shows an
unequal growth compared to the philosophy of the natural sciences.
Despite this, it can be said that a sustained effort is being made to
promote areas such as the philosophy of psychology, sociology, and
economics. Furthermore, the philosophy of formal sciences has advanced
significantly.
4. Regarding philosophy of technology, it received very little
attention until the end of the last century. However, the frequent
interaction with the Spanish philosophers of technology, through their
participation in specialized meetings and their collaboration in
graduate programs, has favored the cultivation of this research axis
in close connection with the critical reflection on the relationships
between technology and the economic, social, and environmental
problems afflicting the region.
5. Regarding general philosophy of science, its development shows a
remarkable diversification in Latin America. In a relatively short
period of time--which started in the late 1980s--there has
been a growing expansion of problems, approaches, and lines of
research. Even the discussion of great classical problems, such as
rationality and realism, is carried out from alternative perspectives,
many of which have recovered the naturalist approach of classical
pragmatists, which in the 1960s gained a new impetus under the
so-called "Historicist turn". On the other hand, this
strong tendency to develop a naturalized philosophy of science has
been accompanied by the defense of markedly pluralist positions, both
in the methodological as well as the epistemological and ontological
fields. All of this points to a conception of philosophical work that,
without neglecting argumentative rigor and conceptual elucidation,
deals with and worries about the problems of its context and
historical moment. In the philosophy of science, this has been
reflected in a growing awareness of the need to rethink the
relationships among science, technology, and society, along with its
ethical, political, economic, environmental, and gender
dimensions.
6. By way of conclusion, it should be noted that, in contrast to the
way in which philosophy of science has developed in the Anglo-Saxon
sphere, works in Latin America have moved much more rapidly from the
merely "academic" stage, where discussions revolve around
what other colleagues (classical or contemporary) have proposed, to
the stage of critical reflection on the problems of broader social
environment in which scientific activity takes place. However, it
should also be noted that this expansion of horizons has not affected
negatively the research on the central problems of the discipline
(logical, semantic, methodological, pragmatic, epistemological, and
ontological) which continue to be the core of the curriculum of the
specialized degree programs, as well as of the research centers where
philosophy of science is developed.



Finally, it is worth stressing that the area strongly progressed in
spite of the many obstacles that philosophical research faces in the
region; the erratic political situation and the cyclic economic crisis
in Latin American countries influence research policies, and this
places scholars in unstable and uncertain positions. Nevertheless,
regardless of the difficulties, at present a new generation of young
philosophers of science allows us to foresee that the philosophy of
science produced in Latin America will continue to grow in quantity
and quality, increasing its already considerable international
presence.