Eugenio Vittorio Rignano (31 May 1870 in Livorno – 9 February 1930 in Milan) was a Jewish Italian philosopher.[1]

Biography

He was born in Livorno to Giacomo Rignano and Fortunata Tedesco, into a Jewish family.[2] Rignano edited the journal Rivista di scienza, later known as Scientia (it). His book The Psychology of Reasoning (1923) influenced the social anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard.[3] His book Man Not a Machine (1926) was replied to by Joseph Needham's Man A Machine (1927).[4] In 1897 he married Costanza "Nina" Sullam, also from a Jewish family.

Rignano took interest in biology and wrote a book that argued for the inheritance of acquired characteristics.[5] He advanced a moderated Lamarckian hypothesis of inheritance known as "centro-epigenesis".[6][7] His views were controversial and not accepted by most in the scientific community.[8] His book The Nature of Life (1930) was described in a review as presenting a "militant, at times almost an evangelical exposition and defense of an energetic vitalism."[9] However, historian Peter J. Bowler has written that Rignano rejected both materialism and vitalism and adopted a similar position to what was known as emergent evolution.[10] Li Dazhao, one of the founders of the China Communist Party, was an avid reader of Rignano's works.[11]

Rignano's views on acquired characteristics and organic memory are discussed in detail by historian Laura Otis and psychologist Daniel Schacter.[12][13]

Works

Per una riforma socialista del diritto successorio, 1920

Translated in English

References

  1. ^ Stonequist, Everett V. (1930). "Eugenio Rignano, 1870-1930". American Journal of Sociology. 36 (2): 282–284. ISSN 0002-9602.
  2. ^ "RIGNANO, Eugenio Vittorio in "Dizionario Biografico"". www.treccani.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-05-16.
  3. ^ Mary Douglas, Edward Evans-Pritchard, 1980, pp.20–21
  4. ^ Colin Lyas, 'Rignano, Eugenio', in Stuart C. Brown et al, eds., Biographical dictionary of twentieth-century philosophy, 1996, p.668
  5. ^ M. Lightfoot Eastwood. Reviewed Work: Eugenio Rignano Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters by C.H. Harvey. International Journal of Ethics Vol. 23, No. 1 (Oct., 1912), pp. 117-118.
  6. ^ Horatio Hackett Newman. Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics. University of Chicago Press, 1922. p. 335
  7. ^ Biological Memory by Eugenio Rignano; E. W. MacBride. The British Medical Journal. Vol. 2, No. 3476 (Aug. 20, 1927), p. 310
  8. ^ (1) Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters (2) Biological Aspects of Human Problems. Nature 89, 576-578 (8 August 1912).
  9. ^ R. B. Macleod. The Nature of Life by Eugenio Rignano. American Journal of Psychology. Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1933), pp. 197-198.
  10. ^ Peter J. Bowler. The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolutionary Theories in the Decades Around 1900. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. p. 84
  11. ^ Schram, Stuart R. (1981). "To Utopia and Back: A Cycle in the History of the Chinese Communist Party". China Quarterly. 87: 411. doi:10.1017/S0305741000028940. ISSN 0305-7410. S2CID 153881650.
  12. ^ Laura Otis. Organic Memory: History and the Body in the Late Nineteenth & Early Twentieth Centuries. University of Nebraska Press, 1994. pp. 17-18
  13. ^ Daniel Schacter. Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory. Psychology Press, 2001. pp. 116-117

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