Eugenio Rignano

Eugenio Rignano (31 May 1870 in Livorno – 9 February 1930 in Milan) was a Jewish Italian philosopher.

Rignano edited the journal Scientia . 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).

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.

Rignano's views on acquired characteristics and organic memory are discussed in detail by historian Laura Otis and psychologist Daniel Schacter.

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