Eugenio Rignano

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

Biography

Rignano edited the journal Scientia. His book The Psychology of Reasoning (1923) influenced the social anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard.^[2] His book Man Not a Machine (1926) was replied to by Joseph Needham's Man A Machine (1927).^[3]

Rignano took interest in biology and wrote a book that argued for the inheritance of acquired characteristics.^[4] He advanced a moderated Lamarckian hypothesis of inheritance known as "centro-epigenesis".^[5][6] His views were controversial and not accepted by most in the scientific community.^[7] 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."^[8] 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.^[9]

Rignano's views on acquired characteristics and organic memory are discussed in detail by historian Laura Otis and psychologist Daniel Schacter.^[10][11]

Works

• 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 W. J. 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. Mary Douglas, Edward Evans-Pritchard, 1980, pp.20–21
3. Colin Lyas, 'Rignano, Eugenio', in Stuart C. Brown et al, eds., Biographical dictionary of twentieth-century philosophy, 1996, p.668
4. 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.
5. Horatio Hackett Newman. Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics. University of Chicago Press, 1922. p. 335
6. Biological Memory by Eugenio Rignano; E. W. MacBride. The British Medical Journal. Vol. 2, No. 3476 (Aug. 20, 1927), p. 310
7. (1) Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters (2) Biological Aspects of Human Problems. Nature 89, 576-578 (8 August 1912).
8. R. B. Macleod. The Nature of Life by Eugenio Rignano. American Journal of Psychology. Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1933), pp. 197-198.
9. Peter J. Bowler. The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolutionary Theories in the Decades Around 1900. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. p. 84
10. Laura Otis. Organic Memory: History and the Body in the Late Nineteenth & Early Twentieth Centuries. University of Nebraska Press, 1994. pp. 17-18
11. Daniel Schacter. Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory. Psychology Press, 2001. pp. 116-117

External links

• Works by or about Eugenio Rignano at Internet Archive
• Works by or about Eugenio Rignano in libraries (WorldCat catalog)