From neo-idealistic historicism to GeymonatÓ?s materialistic and AgazziÓ?s objectivistic realism: the roots of the Italian philosophy of science

In the inter-war period Italian philosophical culture was dominated by idealistic, spiritualistic and religious brands of philosophies, among which Benedetto Croce’s and Giovanni Gentile’s kinds of idealism were the prevailing ones. These idealistic philosophies were characterized by a strong aversion for positivistic, pragmatist and scientific philosophies which, in the first decades of our century, were represented in Italy above all by Giovanni Vailati, Mario Calderoni (both of them were to deeply affect Bruno de Finetti’s philosophical ideas on probability1), Giuseppe Peano and Federigo Enriques. Italian ‘scientific philosophy’ lost in the battle with Croce’s and Gentile’s idealistic philosophies. On the political level, the hegemony of Croce and Gentile coincided with the years of Fascist dictatorship (from an ideological point of view, Croce was an opponent of Fascism, while Gentile was the greatest philosophical representative of it). On the cultural level, this hegemony caused the suppression of scientific culture and philosophy (for a long time represented chiefly by Enriques) in comparison with humanistic culture, and the subsequent philosophical isolation of Italy from the majority of the movements of scientific philosophy working in those years in the other European countries and in the United States of America.

We discuss Enriques’ production and activity in the field of the philosophy of science. Enriques’ involvement in philosophy was stronger in the first years after graduation; the same years in which he became famous as a mathematician for his work in algebraic geometry are the years he formed the views he would maintain for his whole life. Enriques stressed the necessity of a psychological foundation of the scientific concepts, and gave an example of such an analysis with regard to the geometrical postulates in 1901. His general proposal is contained in the book Problems of science of 1906, which was translated in the USA in 1914; in the book he defended the cognitive value of science against the irrationalistic movements of the time. His position became known as a sort of critical anti-positivism, with an insistence on the attention to the historical growth of theories; he was later recognized by the leaders of neo-positivism as one of their founding fathers, not to his complete agreement. After 1906, Enriques became a prominent figure in Italian and european philosophy, and was engaged in fierce battles with the Italian idealistic philosophers. He did not appreciate the logical work of Giuseppe Peano, claiming that his formalism didn’t have the right psychological basis. Later, he dedicated himself and promoted the study of the history of science. The 1922 book Per la storia della logica is the second, and last, important philosophical work of Enriques, where he gave the best description and justification of the modern axiomatic method as rooted in the development of nineteenth century mathematics.

Background: Personalism is a philosophical tradition affirming the intrinsic dignity of the human person, standing against materialist reductionism and collectivist depersonalization. Italian philosopher Evandro Agazzi significantly contributes to this tradition by integrating insights from the philosophy of science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence (AI) into a cohesive anthropological vision. Objective: This article presents and analyzes Agazzi's systemic and integral personalism, addressing contemporary challenges in neuroscience and AI. It highlights his resistance to reductionist views and his vision of the person as an embodied culturally embedded unity. Method:The study employs a philosophical and hermeneutical approach, drawing from Agazzi's works in epistemology, neuroscience, and technology ethics.Key texts are critically examined to reconstruct his anthropological model and its implications for bioethics and the philosophy of mind.Results: Agazzi consistently rejects dualism and reductionism, proposing a systemic view of the human being as a hierarchical integration of body, brain, mind, and culture.His epistemology supports scientific objectivity while acknowledging naturalism's limits.Agazzi also critiques functionalist AI models, emphasizing the irreducibility of human intentionality and rationality.Conclusion: Agazzi's scientific personalism provides a philosophical foundation for addressing ethical challenges in neurotechnology and AI, safeguarding human dignity amid technological advancement.

In the period following the Second World War Giulio Preti was one of the leading exponents of Italian philosophy. A master of open critical thought, cultivated in the light of a rationalism that dialogued with, and integrated into his own philosophical model, many of the currents and stances of the global research scenario. Phenomenology, Marxism, pragmatism, neopositivism, transcendentalism and structuralism: in Preti all of these found an organic and original synthesis. Further, his particular brand of rationalist-critical thought touched on many aspects of philosophical knowledge: theoretical philosophy, the philosophy of science, that of language and that of art, from ethics to politics and even taking in the history of philosophy, offering authoritative contributions in every sphere. One hundred years after his birth, the University of Florence and the heir to the Faculty in which he lectured at length, the Faculty of Education, has decided to honour his memory with this anthology of studies, penned by former pupils and others and also by younger scholars, to once again focus the wealth of this thought and its, in many respects, current relevance. Even now, this particular brand of open, critical rationalism can offer a benchmark for addressing the new issues for philosophical reflection thrown up by modern society and culture.

The paper analyses the development of some themes in the contemporary philosophy of science in Italy. Section 1 reviews the dabate on the legacy of neopositivism. The spread of the philosophy of Popper is outlined in Section 2, with particular regard to the problem of the vindication of induction. Section 3 deals with the debate on the incommensurability thesis, while Section 4 examines its consequences on the possible relationships between historical and epistemological studies of science. The last section is devoted to one of the most recent trends in the Italian philosophy of science: the resumption of Aristotelian dialectics.

This paper offers a brief survey of the influence of Kantian and neo-Kantian philosophy on Italian philosophy of science. At the core of the story stands Giulio Preti, a former disciple of Antonio Banfi who offered a sophisticated version of the relativized a priori embracing the historical knowledge too.