History of the “Human Sciences” and Wallace’s Scientific Voyage in the Amazon: Notes on Historiographical Absences

Abstract

This essay analyses a particular historiographical bibliography with the aim of addressing the divergence between history and history of science. I argue that the absence of the history of the human sciences in the historiography of science expands the distance between the history of science and other disciplines of historical studies. To ponder this hypothesis, I will analyse the historiography of Alfred Russel Wallace’s scientific voyage in the Amazon (1848-1852), arguing that the omission of the ethnographic dimension of this expedition exposes important aspects to understand the nature of such dissension and its effects on the construction of the history of the human sciences.