From Aristotle's Teleology to Darwin's Genealogy The Stamp of Inutility [Hardcover]

From Aristotle to Darwin, from ancient teleology to contemporary genealogies, this book offers an overview of the birth and then persistence of Aristotle's framework into modernity, until its radical overthrow by the evolutionary revolution.PART I: THE ARISTOTELIAN TELEOLOGICAL TRADITION The Original Framework 1. Consistency 2. To the Margins 3. Fixed in Time 4. Tools 5. Adaptations 6. Means of Defence 7. Unseeing Eyes For and Against Aristotle 1. Regrafting and Divergences 2. Reception and Institutionalization 3. Rebirth 4. Mathematization 5. Teleological Experimentalism 6. Chicks 7. Procreations Preordained 8. The Last Stronghold Indirect Supremacy 1. Persistence 2. Long Shadows 3. Subtext 4. Rconomia natur? 5. Short Shadows PART II: THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION Crisis and Hegemony 1. Under Pressure 2. Elephant Bones 3. The Challenger 4. The Last Great Heir Darwin's Breakthrough 1. Haunted 2. A Hundred Thousand Wedges 3. Barren Virgins 4. The Stamp of Inutility 5. Metamorphoses 6. Variations 7. Revolutions 8. Genealogies Dry Branches 1. Obsolescence 2. A Double-edged Sword 3. Techne 4. On the Cusp 5. Archaisms 6. Corals 7. Circularity 8. Revenge

Solinas has written a concise, penetrating study of the philosophical underpinnings of natural history in Europe from Aristotle through Darwin. And he offers a perceptive analysis of how it was that history came to be fundamental to our understanding of the living world. (Greg Priest, ISIS, Vol. 108 (04), December, 2017)

It offers a bird's eye view of this long period, focusing on three philosophical pillars sustaining Aristotle's conception of natural world: fixism, essentialism, and teleology. & this book presents a didactic union between historic and philosophic approaches that will be of interest to biologists, historians, philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, and general public. & the book makes a substantial contribution to connectinglB