History Of Ancient Scientific Thought A 2023/2024

Teleologism vs. anti-teleologism, the ancient debate on the origin of the species.  

The controversy between teleologists and anti-teleologists about the generation of the species, namely between those philosophers who attribute the origin of animals and human beings to an intelligent cause and those who consider all creatures as the product of accident, is a long story of disagreement and harsh criticism that starts with the Presocratics and leads to Darwin and contemporary theories of evolution.  The course will reconstruct the history of the ancient debate on the origin of species from Thales to Galen, investigating its main philosophical aspects. The case studies will be Aristotle’ s and Galen’ s views, on the teleologistic side, and the atomists, on the other.  Such an analysis will enable the comparison between two opposite causal perspectives and their consequent interpretations of the anatomical structures of both animals and human beings. To this end, the course will especially focus on selected parts of Aristotle’s De partibus animalium and Galen’s De usu partium. A particular attention will also be devoted to Epicurean zoogony and evolutionary theory preserved in Lucretius’ book IV and V of De rerum natura. 

- D. Sedley, Creazionismo. Il dibattito antico da Anassagora a Galeno, Carocci, Roma, 2007.

- Aristotele, Opere scelte, a cura di D. Lanza, M. Vegetti, Utet, Torino, 1996 (selected pages will be distributed during the course).

- Galeno, Opere scelte, a cura di I. Garofalo, M. Vegetti, Utet, Torino, 1978 (selected pages will be distributed during the course).

- Lucrezio, La natura delle cose, traduzione di L. Canali, Bur, Milano, 1994 (books IV and V. Other selected pages will be indicated during the course).

One paper from the following list: - M. Schiefsky, Galen’ s teleology and functional explanation, in «Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosohy», 33, 2015, p. 369-400. - G. Campbell, Zoogony and Evolution in Plato’ s Timaeus: The Presocratics, Lucretius and Darwin, in M. R. Wright (ed.), Reason and Necessity: Essays on Plato’ s Timaeus, London and Swansea, 2000, p. 145-180.

Additional material will be distributed during the course.