Research Centre «Forms of Knowledge in the Ancient World»

in collaboration with

Scuola Superiore di Studi in Filosofia
Dottorato di Ricerca in Antichità classiche e loro Fortuna. Archeologia, Filologia, Storia
Dottorato di Ricerca in Filosofia

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1st seminar «Inter disciplinas»
Ancient and new Medicine

Genetics and Human Nature

Lecture by

Giuseppe Novelli

Geneticist – Dean of the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”

Wednesday 18 May 2015, h. 11
University of Rome “Tor Vergata”
Macroarea di Lettere e Filosofia (via Columbia 1, Rome)
Building B, 1st Floor, Conference Room «Sabatino Moscati»

Watch the YouTube video of the lecture
(I part) – (II part)

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In ancient Medicine, starting as early as with Hippocrates, it was considered essential to know the human body in its entirety, in order to give a reliable foundation to the physician’s interpretation of the facts and to his intervention. But to know the human body was not an easy task, and the art of medicine was still based on a conception of the living being, which in turn depended on more general philosophical theories.

In contemporary medicine, Genetics is one of the disciplines most closely related to the problem of the profound nature of the object to which it refers, namely the human body in all its aspects: think, for example, to the notion of phenotype or to the concepts of variability and probability; to the difference between the approach based on the molecule and the one based on the cell; to the role of chance in determining the state of health of the organs, etc.

To explore these issues, the Research Center «Forms of Knowledge in the Ancient World» invited one of the most illustrious Italian geneticists, Prof. Giuseppe Novelli, author of over 400 publications in the fields of Biochemistry Genetics, Human Genetics, Medical Genetics and Molecular Genetics, and member of the Board of the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) and the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT).