Urbano González Serrano

Urbano González Serrano (Navalmoral de la Mata, 25 May 1848 — Madrid, 13 January 1904) was a Spanish philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, pedagogue, literary critic, and politician.

[3] He finished primary education in his hometown and in 1861, moved to Madrid and registered for boarding in a collegiate church, where he met Nicolás Salmerón, whom he established a lifelong friendship.

He then worked at the Complutense University of Madrid as professor of metaphysics; in 1873, he gained the chairmanship of psychology, logic, and ethics at IES San Isidro, never exchanging for another.

[9] La sociología cientifica (1884) was a pioneering work for the introduction of sociology into Spain;[1] in it, he however denied sociologists' equation of social and natural entities.

[3] González argued for positivist elements in Krausism as he saw the adherents of the base ideology as idealistic, inactive isolationists, among them Francisco Giner de los Ríos.

González believed the soul was more than cognition, but rather encompassed all physiological experience, in line with modernists William James and Franz Brentano.

[13] By 1883, Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano, among others, believed González was more positivist than Krausist; from his 1888 positive turn towards positivism, he was criticized in Revista Contemporánea.