José Martí, the most universal of Cubans, the revolutionary, poet, educator, journalist, a man of great ideas who even in these times point out paths, was also a man of science.
Immersed in the day of homage to Cuban sciences, it is appropriate to review the Apostle’s thought on the subject, for whom science is part of the culture of the peoples and contains the trend of development of the human race.
In a publication of the Universal Magazine of Mexico, Martí defined it as the set of human knowledge applicable to an order of intimate objects that are particularly related to each other.
And it is because his vision on the paths of technological development of his time and environment, together with his great capacity to reach the truth, in addition to his extensive knowledge of history and the political missions assumed, allowed him to understand from an early age that « a detail in the organ is sometimes a revolution in the system ».
It offered more light, when in 1881 he defined his concept of the word universe: “the Universe: Versus uniting the various in the one”, and the following year he would say: “The Universe with multiple being, is one”, a statement that allows us to appreciate its systemic and dialectical conception of the world.
He knew how to recognize the importance of the human being in the process of knowledge, in the application of science and the transformation of the world: «The human goes there, always decided and always; he rolls his eyes before him, but he would walk even if he were blind. Humanity ascends when it advances; man is the discoverer of human forces on earth. (…) Man is the logic and providence of humanity ».
He commented on the National Hero in 1883, in a magazine published in New York, about a book by the writer and scientist Felipe Poey: «The desire to become men of science is already very remarkable in the poets and speakers of our race. And they do well! “
He was concerned about the scant dissemination of science content in magazines and newspapers and in allusion to this he reasoned in the Universal Magazine: “… hardly ever find a place in the newspaper columns, the solemn words of science, loving mother that decomposes, elaborates, studies, creates in favor of so many children who ignore it, disdain it or forget it¨.
In writing in 1883 for La América about the book “Le Vieu Neuf”, by the Frenchman Edouard Fournier, he highlighted the importance of studying the antecedents and the historical evolution of an event, essential to establish its development trends. “To study the possibilities of the future life of men, it is necessary to master the knowledge of the realities of their past life.”
Related to instruction, he advocated: “that scientific teaching go, like the sap in trees, from the root to the top of public education. That the elementary education is already elementally scientific: that instead of the story of Joshua, the formation of the Earth be taught.
His warning about the “uselessness of science without the spirit” rejects any maneuver aimed at diminishing the ideological perspective and the moral attitude with which scientific fact is assumed. “And thus one goes, through true science, to human equity: while the other is to go, through superficial science, to the justification of inequality, which in the government of men, is that of tyranny.”
The man who lived in the monster and knew its entrails, the anti-imperialist, the thoroughgoing revolutionary, owner of a unique sensibility, shortly before dying wrote to María Mantilla: «Where I find the greatest poetry is in science books, in life of the world, in the order of the world, at the bottom of the sea, in the truth and music of the tree, and its strength and loves, high in the sky, with its families of stars— and in the unity of the universe-, that contains so many different things, and is all one… ». (ACN)
Source: ACN /
Author: Maritza Padilla Valdés
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