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

Biography

He was born in Livorno to Giacomo Rignano and Fortunata Tedesco, into a Jewish family. 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.Mary Douglas, Edward Evans-Pritchard, 1980, pp.20–21 His book Man Not a Machine (1926) was replied to by Joseph Needham's Man A Machine (1927).Colin Lyas, 'Rignano, Eugenio', in Stuart C. Brown et al, eds., Biographical dictionary of twentieth-century philosophy, 1996, p.668 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.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. He advanced a moderated Lamarckian hypothesis of inheritance known as "centro-epigenesis".Horatio Hackett Newman. Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics. University of Chicago Press, 1922. p. 335Biological Memory by Eugenio Rignano; E. W. MacBride. The British Medical Journal. Vol. 2, No. 3476 (Aug. 20, 1927), p. 310 His views were controversial and not accepted by most in the scientific community.(1) Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters (2) Biological Aspects of Human Problems. Nature 89, 576-578 (8 August 1912). 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."R. B. Macleod. The Nature of Life by Eugenio Rignano. American Journal of Psychology. Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1933), pp. 197-198. 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.Peter J. Bowler. The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolutionary Theories in the Decades Around 1900. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. p. 84 Li Dazhao, one of the founders of the China Communist Party, was an avid reader of Rignano's works.

Rignano's views on acquired characteristics and organic memory are discussed in detail by historian Laura Otis and psychologist Daniel Schacter.Laura Otis. Organic Memory: History and the Body in the Late Nineteenth & Early Twentieth Centuries. University of Nebraska Press, 1994. pp. 17-18Daniel Schacter. Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory. Psychology Press, 2001. pp. 116-117

Works

Di un socialismo in accordo colla dottrina economica liberale, Torino, Fratelli Bocca, 1901. 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. La valeur synthétique du transformisme, Paris, Editions de la Revue du Mois, 1907. Che cos'è la coscienza?, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1907. Le matérialisme historique, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1908. Le psychisme des organismes inférieurs: (à propos de la théorie de Jennings), Estratto da: «Scientia», anno II, volume 3, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1908. 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. 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.

Democrazia e fascismo, Milano, Casa editrice "Alpes", 1924.

Translated in English

Introduction by Edwin R. A. Seligman. English ed. (1925) as The Social Significance of Death Duties, with an introduction by Sir Josiah Stamp. With a foreword by Professor Hans Driesch.

Reprinted from The Monist, January, 1929.

References

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