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. His book Man Not a Machine (1926) was replied to by Joseph Needham's Man A Machine (1927). 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. He advanced a moderated Lamarckian hypothesis of inheritance known as "centro-epigenesis". His views were controversial and not accepted by most in the scientific community. 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." 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. 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.

Works

Translated in English