Andrea Libero Carbone
My research work focuses on ancient philosophy and science, primarily Aristotle’s biology. I am interested in an interdisciplinary approach combining history of philosophy, visual studies, science studies, anthropology of knowledge, and human-animal studies.
In my PhD thesis at Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne I implemented an innovation-driven methodology to explore Aristotle’s use of animal body plan representation through diagrams. During my postdoctoral fellowship I developed a research project on ancient sources of ekphrasis and image/text relation aimed at studying the role of visual culture in science.
I was the frst to point out and to explore the importance of visual thinking in Aristotle’s biology. I contributed to the debate on Aristotle’s lost anatomical atlas (the Anatomai) by showing that it was aimed at rendering anatomical structures in a scientifcally meaningful way through pictures. I provided evidences that this work may have consisted of diagrams representing animal body plans as oriented along the axes of symmetry. Further research allowed me to investigate on how Aristotle’s biological morphology is related to his teleology. I was able to prove that Aristotle’s anatomical representation plays not only a subsidiary or an heuristic role, but also an explanatory one. Morphological explanations are based on relating the position and orientation of parts to the teleological hierarchy of functions. Morphology also provides the most important criterion for the defnition of animal kinds. These studies were presented on international conferences followed by publications.
My current research on Aristotle’s biology focuses on the following topics:
1. An attempt at reconstructing the lost anatomical atlas based on the use of cutting-edge digital
humanities tools, as graphs of words frequencies and words networks, in order to highlight the references to the body plan throughout the biological corpus and to detect explicit and implicit appeals to the atlas;
2. A survey of argumentation practice in biology aimed at exploring the relationship between visual thinking and topical arguments;
3. A critical reevaluation of the reception of Aristotle’s morphology in the late history of comparative anatomy as well as in modern and contemporary biology.
My broader aim is an extensive study of the role of visual culture in ancient science, aimed at defning its “scopic regimes” through comparing the coexisting traditions of ekphr is and hitoria. Within this theoretical framework, I am interested in examining the use of visual representations and visual media in a wide range of disciplines such as biology, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, optics, mechanics etc.
A second area of interest is in exploring human-animal relations in antiquity through an anthropological lens, which means bringing a post-humanistic and human-animal studies-oriented approach to bear on ancient cultural systems, and more specifcally on ancient science.
In my PhD thesis at Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne I implemented an innovation-driven methodology to explore Aristotle’s use of animal body plan representation through diagrams. During my postdoctoral fellowship I developed a research project on ancient sources of ekphrasis and image/text relation aimed at studying the role of visual culture in science.
I was the frst to point out and to explore the importance of visual thinking in Aristotle’s biology. I contributed to the debate on Aristotle’s lost anatomical atlas (the Anatomai) by showing that it was aimed at rendering anatomical structures in a scientifcally meaningful way through pictures. I provided evidences that this work may have consisted of diagrams representing animal body plans as oriented along the axes of symmetry. Further research allowed me to investigate on how Aristotle’s biological morphology is related to his teleology. I was able to prove that Aristotle’s anatomical representation plays not only a subsidiary or an heuristic role, but also an explanatory one. Morphological explanations are based on relating the position and orientation of parts to the teleological hierarchy of functions. Morphology also provides the most important criterion for the defnition of animal kinds. These studies were presented on international conferences followed by publications.
My current research on Aristotle’s biology focuses on the following topics:
1. An attempt at reconstructing the lost anatomical atlas based on the use of cutting-edge digital
humanities tools, as graphs of words frequencies and words networks, in order to highlight the references to the body plan throughout the biological corpus and to detect explicit and implicit appeals to the atlas;
2. A survey of argumentation practice in biology aimed at exploring the relationship between visual thinking and topical arguments;
3. A critical reevaluation of the reception of Aristotle’s morphology in the late history of comparative anatomy as well as in modern and contemporary biology.
My broader aim is an extensive study of the role of visual culture in ancient science, aimed at defning its “scopic regimes” through comparing the coexisting traditions of ekphr is and hitoria. Within this theoretical framework, I am interested in examining the use of visual representations and visual media in a wide range of disciplines such as biology, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, optics, mechanics etc.
A second area of interest is in exploring human-animal relations in antiquity through an anthropological lens, which means bringing a post-humanistic and human-animal studies-oriented approach to bear on ancient cultural systems, and more specifcally on ancient science.
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Books by Andrea Libero Carbone
Questa edizione rivela i presupposti e le implicazioni di un’opera fondamentale rendendola accessibile all’ampio pubblico dei lettori non specialisti."
Per la prima volta in assoluto, questa raccolta delle principali testimonianze antiche su Diogene, ordinate secondo la cronologia degli autori, presenta una traduzione che non ha rinunciato a rendere comprensibili al lettore moderno i giochi di parole e le battute sferzanti tipiche dello stile del Cane.
L’opera è corredata da apparati esegetici e critici di Andrea L. Carbone, arricchita da un percorso iconografico e completata da un saggio di Michele Cometa che mette in luce la fondamentale rilevanza del testo per le moderne indagini della cultura visuale.
È principalmente grazie a quest’opera che si è andata formando la figura di Aristotele come padre fondatore della biologia, della zoologia sistematica, dell’anatomia comparata e – con riferimento a questi scritti – dell’etologia. Continui saranno nel corso dei secoli i rinvii da parte di eminenti studiosi, tra i quali lo stesso Darwin e il premio Nobel Max Delbrück.
Quest’edizione costituisce la prima traduzione italiana integrale degli scritti aristotelici sulla vita, le attività e il carattere degli animali, corredata da ampi apparati. La prefazione di Enrico Alleva (Direttore del Reparto di Neuroscienze comportamentali del Dipartimento di Biologia Cellulare e Neuroscienze dell’Istituto Superiore di Sanità) propone una lettura dell’opera dal punto di vista dell’etologia contemporanea.
(dalla postfazione di Andrea Libero Carbone, "Per una filosofia epistolare")
Papers by Andrea Libero Carbone
Organizations of meetings and conference panels by Andrea Libero Carbone
In light of this framework, the issues which contributors will reflect on will be the following: 1) The ways in which symbolic and theoretical boundaries and thresholds are constructed in Greco-roman and medieval texts and cultures; 2) The theories of nutrition in the framework of the ancient animal (and human) 'psychology' (e. g., in Aristotle, in ancient medicine, in the Presocratics, in Roman and medieval encyclopedists); 3) The cultural polarity between vegetarianism and sarcophagy in ancient and medieval cultures; 4) The ancient and medieval ethologies of nutrition.
Questa edizione rivela i presupposti e le implicazioni di un’opera fondamentale rendendola accessibile all’ampio pubblico dei lettori non specialisti."
Per la prima volta in assoluto, questa raccolta delle principali testimonianze antiche su Diogene, ordinate secondo la cronologia degli autori, presenta una traduzione che non ha rinunciato a rendere comprensibili al lettore moderno i giochi di parole e le battute sferzanti tipiche dello stile del Cane.
L’opera è corredata da apparati esegetici e critici di Andrea L. Carbone, arricchita da un percorso iconografico e completata da un saggio di Michele Cometa che mette in luce la fondamentale rilevanza del testo per le moderne indagini della cultura visuale.
È principalmente grazie a quest’opera che si è andata formando la figura di Aristotele come padre fondatore della biologia, della zoologia sistematica, dell’anatomia comparata e – con riferimento a questi scritti – dell’etologia. Continui saranno nel corso dei secoli i rinvii da parte di eminenti studiosi, tra i quali lo stesso Darwin e il premio Nobel Max Delbrück.
Quest’edizione costituisce la prima traduzione italiana integrale degli scritti aristotelici sulla vita, le attività e il carattere degli animali, corredata da ampi apparati. La prefazione di Enrico Alleva (Direttore del Reparto di Neuroscienze comportamentali del Dipartimento di Biologia Cellulare e Neuroscienze dell’Istituto Superiore di Sanità) propone una lettura dell’opera dal punto di vista dell’etologia contemporanea.
(dalla postfazione di Andrea Libero Carbone, "Per una filosofia epistolare")
In light of this framework, the issues which contributors will reflect on will be the following: 1) The ways in which symbolic and theoretical boundaries and thresholds are constructed in Greco-roman and medieval texts and cultures; 2) The theories of nutrition in the framework of the ancient animal (and human) 'psychology' (e. g., in Aristotle, in ancient medicine, in the Presocratics, in Roman and medieval encyclopedists); 3) The cultural polarity between vegetarianism and sarcophagy in ancient and medieval cultures; 4) The ancient and medieval ethologies of nutrition.