A traitorous translation, a capital work in the history of thought and two great scientists: these are the ingredients of Mazzarello’s new book.
The work in question is Darwin’s Origin of Species. The translation is the French one, published in 1862, by Clémence Royer, a liberal and progressive philosopher, which came into the hands of a young Lombroso, a military doctor about to join the expedition to repress banditry in Calabria.
In contact with a harsh and savage world, the scientist was among the first - if not the first - to concretely apply Darwin’s theory to the study of nature in Italy. Having become a professor in Pavia and then in Turin, Lombroso never stopped using evolution as a cognitive tool. From a distant source sprang racial hierarchies, populations, abnormal and criminal behaviour, and the mental inferiority of women.
It is on this basis that Paolo Mazzarello re-reads Lombroso’s anthropological vision, offering an evocative and original interpretation, which also allows him to shed new light on the early spread of Darwinian theories in Europe.