Eugenio Rignano

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

For other uses, see Rignano.

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
  • Di un socialismo in accordo colla dottrina economica liberale, Torino, Fratelli Bocca, 1901.
  • (in German) Über die Vererbung erworbener Eigenschaften, Leipzig, Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1905.
  • Sulla trasmissibilità dei caratteri acquisiti. Ipotesi d'una centro-epigenesi, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1907.
  • L'adattamento funzionale e la teleologia psico-fisica del Pauly, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1907.
  • (in French) La valeur synthétique du transformisme, Paris, Editions de la Revue du Mois, 1907.
  • Che cos'è la coscienza?, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1907.
  • (in French) Le matérialisme historique, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1908.
  • (in French) Le psychisme des organismes inférieurs: (à propos de la théorie de Jennings), Estratto da: «Scientia», anno II, volume 3, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1908.
  • (in French) La mémoire biologique en énergétique, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1909.
  • Il fenomeno religioso, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1910.
  • Il socialismo, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1910.
  • Dell'attenzione. Parte 1: contrasto affettivo e unità di coscienza , Bologna, Zanichelli, 1911.
  • Dell'origine e natura mnemonica delle tendenze affettive, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1911.
  • Per accrescere diffusione ed efficacia alle università popolari, Milano, La compositrice, 1911.
  • La vera funzione delle università popolari, Roma, Nuova Antologia, 1911.
  • Dell'attenzione. Parte 2: vividità e connessione, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1912.
  • (in French) Le rôle des théoriciens dans les sciences biologiques et sociologiques, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1912.
  • L'evoluzione del ragionamento, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1913.
  • Il nuovo programma dell'Un. pop. milanese: primo anno d'esperimento, Como, Premiata Tipografia Cooperativa comense Aristide Bari, 1913.
  • Le forme superiori del ragionamento, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1915.
  • Per una riforma socialista del diritto successorio (in Italian). Bologna: Zanichelli. 1920.
  • Democrazia e fascismo, Milano, Casa editrice "Alpes", 1924.

Translated in English
  • Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters: A Hypothesis of Heredity, Development, and Assimilation. Translated by Basil C. H. Harvey, 1906.
  • Essays in Scientific Synthesis. Translated by William John Greenstreet, Chicago: The Open Court Pub. Co., 1918.
  • The Psychology of Reasoning. Translated by Winifred A. Holl, 1923. The International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method
  • The Social Significance of the Inheritance Tax. Translated by William John Schultz, New York: A.A. Knopf, 1924. Introduction by Edwin R. A. Seligman. English ed. (1925) as The Social Significance of Death Duties, with an introduction by Sir Josiah Stamp.
  • Man Not a Machine: A Study of the Finalistic Aspects of Life, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1926. With a foreword by Professor Hans Driesch.
  • Biological Memory. Translated by Ernest MacBride, 1926. The International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.
  • The Aim of Human Existence: Being a System of Morality Based on the Harmony of Life. Translated from the French by Paul Crissman and Edward L. Schaub, Chicago: The Open Court Pub. Co., 1929. Reprinted from The Monist, January, 1929.
  • The Nature of Life. Translated by N. Mallinson, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930

References
  1. Everett V. Stonequist. Eugenio Rignano, 1870-1930. American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 36, No. 2 (Sep., 1930), pp. 282-284.
  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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