Papers by Alessandro Volpone
Pratiche filosofiche, forme di razionalità, modi del filosofare contemporaneo, 2002
Physis: Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza, 2008
The spreading of Mendelism in Italy produced a sort of "Mendelization" of already exist... more The spreading of Mendelism in Italy produced a sort of "Mendelization" of already existing studies and research on the subject of heredity, which received a new impetus. This was the origin of genetics. There followed a "Morganization" process of the field, when the mere formal-genealogical analysis became substituted by laboratory research. The first phase began with the rediscovery of Mendel's laws, and its strong point ever since the beginning was in agrarian research. The second phase began after 1925, following upon the conclusion of a heated pre-war debate on the subject of nuclear cytology. Various Italian scholars raised strong objections against the so-called Sutton-Boveri hypothesis, of which the successive Morgan et al. chromosomal theory of inheritance was initially understood, or misunderstood, to be a specious extension. The resulting controversy is that which most characterized the history of genetics in Italy during the first part of the twent...
This paper presents an original way to look at the prob- lem of induction. It is based on the evi... more This paper presents an original way to look at the prob- lem of induction. It is based on the evidence that there is no logic justification in separating the universal affirmative proposition of an inductive inference on a certain topic from the opposite particular negative on the same topic, as far as both derive from the same ob- servational premises. At the operational level, such a practice of separation could be explained, although probably not justified, through basic issues related to the so-called 'focal attention.' This offers a plausible alternative to the solution presented by Hume in terms of 'custom' or 'habit.'
The spreading of Mendelism in Italy produced a sort of "Mendelization" of already exist... more The spreading of Mendelism in Italy produced a sort of "Mendelization" of already existing studies and research on the subject of heredity, which received a new impetus. This was the origin of genetics. There followed a "Morganization" process of the field, when the mere formal-genealogical analysis became substituted by laboratory research. The first phase began with the rediscovery of Mendel's laws, and its strong point ever since the beginning was in agrarian research. The second phase began after 1925, following upon the conclusion of a heated pre-war debate on the subject of nuclear cytology. Various Italian scholars raised strong objections against the so-called Sutton-Boveri hypothesis, of which the successive Morgan et al. chromosomal theory of inheritance was initially understood, or misunderstood, to be a specious extension. The resulting controversy is that which most characterized the history of genetics in Italy during the first part of the twent...
History Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2010
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2015
Physis; rivista internazionale di storia della scienza, 2008
The spreading of Mendelism in Italy produced a sort of "Mendelization" of already exist... more The spreading of Mendelism in Italy produced a sort of "Mendelization" of already existing studies and research on the subject of heredity, which received a new impetus. This was the origin of genetics. There followed a "Morganization" process of the field, when the mere formal-genealogical analysis became substituted by laboratory research. The first phase began with the rediscovery of Mendel's laws, and its strong point ever since the beginning was in agrarian research. The second phase began after 1925, following upon the conclusion of a heated pre-war debate on the subject of nuclear cytology. Various Italian scholars raised strong objections against the so-called Sutton-Boveri hypothesis, of which the successive Morgan et al. chromosomal theory of inheritance was initially understood, or misunderstood, to be a specious extension. The resulting controversy is that which most characterized the history of genetics in Italy during the first part of the twent...
Journal of anthropological sciences = Rivista di antropologia : JASS / Istituto italiano di antropologia, 2011
The Italian anthropologist, psychologist and evolutionist Giuseppe Sergi (1841-1936) may be regar... more The Italian anthropologist, psychologist and evolutionist Giuseppe Sergi (1841-1936) may be regarded in some respects today as an "atypical" Darwinist, but, almost paradoxically, he was considered a "champion" of Darwinism by colleagues and commentators of his own time. Probably, two aspects of his work are responsible for this apparent anomaly: his faith in the so-called soft inheritance and his claims regarding a theory concerning the polyphyletic origin of human races. The soft inheritance theory, however, was needed by Sergi to support ideas regarding the complexity of inheritance in man, a fact that, in his opinion, could not completely be put down to mechanical laws, and polygeny was useful when trying to rectify the problem concerning the incompleteness of the fossil record. In both cases, it is possible to show that he was involved in supporting Darwinian theory during the most severe crisis of its consensus in Italy and at International level, between th...
Journal of anthropological sciences = Rivista di antropologia : JASS / Istituto italiano di antropologia, 2011
The Italian anthropologist, psychologist and evolutionist Giuseppe Sergi (1841-1936) may be regar... more The Italian anthropologist, psychologist and evolutionist Giuseppe Sergi (1841-1936) may be regarded in some respects today as an "atypical" Darwinist, but, almost paradoxically, he was considered a "champion" of Darwinism by colleagues and commentators of his own time. Probably, two aspects of his work are responsible for this apparent anomaly: his faith in the so-called soft inheritance and his claims regarding a theory concerning the polyphyletic origin of human races. The soft inheritance theory, however, was needed by Sergi to support ideas regarding the complexity of inheritance in man, a fact that, in his opinion, could not completely be put down to mechanical laws, and polygeny was useful when trying to rectify the problem concerning the incompleteness of the fossil record. In both cases, it is possible to show that he was involved in supporting Darwinian theory during the most severe crisis of its consensus in Italy and at International level, between th...
P4C’s Rediscovery of the ‘Other Side’ of Aristotle’s Logic. An Interpretive Hypothesis, 2018
This book chapter pursues a double and interwoven goal: on the one hand, it reconstructs how anci... more This book chapter pursues a double and interwoven goal: on the one hand, it reconstructs how ancient philosophy had a prominent role in the way in which the founders of P4C understood their undertaking. In this perspective, it is argued that P4C can (and even should) be construed in terms of a ‘repetition’ of ancient philosophy (in the quasi-Heideggerian meaning of Wiederholung). On the other, it is shown how Lipman and Sharp revived an oft forgotten strand of ancient philosophy, that is, the dialectic as distinct from the epistemic reasoning. After presenting the specificities of the ancient dialectic (as Aristotle has delivered them to us), we explore the ‘family resemblance’ between this mode of ‘communal’ reasoning and what happens within the community of philosophical inquiry, and we suggest capturing their affinities as a form of ‘exaptation’.
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Papers by Alessandro Volpone