Ernst Cassirer e la biologia: dall’evoluzionismo alla paleoantropologia come scienza trascendentale dell’uomo

Abstract

Ernst Cassirer and Biology: from Evolutionism to Paleoanthropology as human Transcendental Science In the present paper I will deal with the special epistemological problem of setting the basic conditions of a transcendental science of man in the spirit of Cassirer’s critical philosophy. Bearing in mind this aim, I will particularly analyze the section Cassirer dedicated to the history and epistemology of biology in his Erkenntnisproblem IV, and I will focus, on the one hand, on the emergence of the theory of types, and on the other hand, on the rise of the theory of evolution. In considering that the empirical data we now possess are pushing us towards the refutation of a too continuous concept of evolution, I will try to shed some light on how the modern palaeontology, and not properly the evolutionary theory, could represent the very basis of such a transcendental theory of man.

Keywords

• palaeontology
• Cassirer
• Evolutionism