Learning outcomes
The course aims to introduce students to the development of biological thought and scientific debates that occurred between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Students will learn in this way the names and biographies of the leading scientists of the time and their experiments that substantiate the concepts of modern biological sciences.
Course contents
The course aims to analyze, from the historical, philosophical and biographical point of views, the birth and development of some key ideas in biology: the concept of phylogenetic evolution and ontogenetic development, the concept of species, the concept of the gene, etc. The Course will focus on the following issues: 1) the spontaneous generation (Redi, Spallanzani, Needham, Pasteur, etc..), 2) the dispute between preformists and epigenists in the Age of Enlightenment (Bonnet, Diderot, Maupertuis, Spallanzani), 3 ) travel outside Europe in the understanding of the living world and other cultures (La Condamine, A. von Humboldt, Beccari, etc..), and, in particular, 4) the birth of the concept of biological evolution and the discovery of evolutionary mechanisms (Linnaeus, Buffon , Lamarck, Darwin, Wallace).
Reccomended or required readings
A. La Vergata: L'evoluzione biologica. Da Linneo a Darwin, 1735-1871, Loescher.
E. Capanna: Il Tempo e la Verità. Una breve storia della Biologia. Casa Editrice Università La Sapienza.
P. Duris e G. Gohau: Storia della biologia. Einaudi.
G. Barsanti: Una lunga pazienza cieca. Storia dell’evoluzionismo. Einaudi.
F. Focher (a cura di): P.-L. Moreau de Maupertuis, La Venere fisica. Ibis.
F. Focher (a cura di): P.-L. Moreau de Maupertuis, Lettere filosofiche e scientifiche. Lettera sul Progresso delle Scienze. Pavia University Press.
F. Focher: Alexander von Humboldt. Schizzo biografico “dal vivo”. Il Prato.
F. Focher: L’uomo che gettò nel panico Darwin. La vita e le scoperte di Alfred Russel Wallace. Bollati Boringhieri.
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