CV and publications

Roberto Lo Presti (1978) was born in Palermo, Italy, and received his secondary education at the Liceo Garibaldi, Palermo. He graduated in Classics from the University of Palermo in 2004, where he received his doctorate in Classical Philology in 2008. During his doctoral studies, he was visiting student at the Universities of Newcastle and Paris IV-Sorbonne, and at the Fondation Hardt, Geneva. He subsequently held a Post-doc Research Fellowship at the University of Palermo (2008-10) and various visiting scholarships from the Scaliger Institute of Leiden University Library (2008), the Universities of Paris IV-Sorbonne and Lausanne (2009), the department of Classics of Leiden University and the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences of Utrecht University (2010). As of 2009 he is Foreign Member of the ‘Unité de recherche Médecine grecque’ du CNRS, Paris, and member of the international research project ANR “Philomed: La refonte de l’homme. Découvertes médicales et philosophies de la nature humaine coordinated by S. Buchenau, C. Crignon, A.-L. Rey. As of September 2010 he is Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Humboldt University, in Berlin, within Prof. Philip van der Eijk’s research programme “Medicine of the Mind, Philosophy of the Body”. As of March 2012 he is Coordinator of the PhD Programm „History of Ancient Science“ (HistAS) of the „Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies“ (BerGSAS).

Research Interests

• Greek medical and biological thought, esp. the Hippocratic writings, Pre-Socratic physiologiai, Aristotle and Galen; the communication and dissemination of medical ideas in antiquity; the reception of the Hippocratic writings and the representations of Hippocrates in Modern and Contemporary Age
• Ancient Philosophy, especially Pre-Socratic thinkers, Aristotelian biological and psychological works; Medieval and Renaissance Aristotelianism; philosophy of mind; theories of cognition and sense perception
• Renaissance Anatomy
• History of Modern Philosophy and of medical and biological ideas, especially Cartesianism, Bacon, Iatromechanism, Vitalism and the Paris Medical School in the 18th century, Cabanis and the Idéologues, Bichat, Laënnec and the birth of anatomo-pathology, Bernard and the birth of the médecine éxpérimentale. - Contemporary Philosophy and Biology, especially philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine and bioethics, philosophy of biology, history of modern and contemporary biology, neurophysiology and biological theories of cognition and sense perception

Organization of Conferences

• International Workshop “From Beasts to Men: The medical and philosophical debate on human and animal intelligence and sensibility between Aristotelianism, Cartesianism and Post-Cartesianism (16th-18th centuries)”, Berlin, Humboldt-Universität, 27-28 September 2012
• ‘Between mechanism and teleology. Anatomy, physiology and philosophy of the functions in Renaissance medicine’ (Special Session of the Conference of the Canadian Society of Renaissance Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, 28-30 May 2010).
• ‘De Fabrica Artis Medicinae. The parts of Medicine at the Renaissance’ (Special Session of the Conference of the Canadian Society of Renaissance Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, 23-25 May 2009) (organized in collaboration with Hélène Cazes, University of Victoria).

Papers delivered at conferences and visiting lectures

Conferences

• XIVth Colloque Hippocratique, Paris (8-10 November 2012). Title of the paper: "La place d'Hippocrate dans les grands débats médicaux du XVIe et XVIIe siècle (Aristotelisme vs. Galenisme, Anciens vs. Modernes)"
  
• Approaches to Ancient Medicine Conference (Exeter, 21-22 August 2011). Title of the paper: “For sleep is a kind of epilepsy” (Somn.Vig. 3, 457a1-14): Aristotle, the Aristotelians, and the medical background of a controversial definition”.
• Médecine et empirisme philosophique (Journées d’étude organisées dans le cadre du projet ANR Philomed “La refonte de l’homme : découvertes médicales et anthropologie philosophique, XVI-XVIII siècles”, Villa Vigoni, Como, 11-14 Mai 2011). Title of the paper: Formes de l’observation empirique et structures de l’argumentation dans les traités médicaux de Julien Offray de la Mettrie, médecin et philosophe (Traité du vertige, Traité de la petite vérole, Observations de médecine pratique).
• Pacific Northwest Pacific Renaissance Conference (Victoria, 21-23 October 2010). Title of the paper: Embodying the Authority: Antagonism and Emulation in Vesalius’ Anatomical Discourse.
• Mental Disorders in Classical Antiquity, Part II (New York, Columbia University, 15-16 October 2010). Title of the paper: The problem of defining mental disease: epilepsy between the ancients and the moderns”.
• Mainz Conference on Ancient Medical Texts (Mainz, 3-4 July 2010). Title of the paper: Between spontaneity, chance and mechanism: The notion of ‘automaton’ in the Hippocratics and Galen.
• Canadian Society of Renaissance Studies Conference (Concordia University, Montreal; session of History of Medicine, May 28th-30th, 2010). Title of the paper: Fabrica corporis : remarques sur l’histoire et la préhistoire d’une forme de représentation du corps humain de Vésale à Spinoza.
• Approaches to Ancient Medicine Conference 2009, held in Newcastle upon Tyne (24-25 August 2009). Title of the paper: Origins of knowledge: ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ as categories of thought in the Hippocratic treatise ‘On Ancient Medicine’.
• Canadian Society of Renaissance Studies Conference (Carleton University, Ottawa; session of History of Medicine, May 23rd-25th, 2009). Title of the paper: Anatomy as Epistemology. Building up the body of man and the ‘body’ of medicine at the Renaissance (Massa, Vesalius, and Galen’s shadow).
• ‘Blood sweat and tears’: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe (The Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, Wassenaar, 14-18 April 2009). Title of the paper: “As if bodies were machines. Remarks on the birth of ‘Modern’ Physiology and the (re)invention of the Greek notion of ‘automaton’”.
• Littérature et médecine à l’Âge classique: deux journées d’étude (McGill University, Montreal, 29-30 January 2009). Title of the paper: “La machine plus que machine, ou l’automate transfiguré. L’anthropologie de Julien Offray de La Mettrie, ses enjeux philosophiques et littéraires et la réinvention du mécanisme médical”.
• L’inganno dei sensi. Giornate internazionali di studio dedicate ai limiti naturali della percezione (Siena, 2-3 December 2008). Title of the paper: “Perdere i sensi nei testi medici ippocratici: una via ‘negativa’ verso la costituzione del sé cognitivo”.
• Approaches to Ancient Medicine Conference 2008 (Reading, 20-21 August 2008). Title of the paper: “Between distinction and separation. Rethinking the centrality of the brain in Alcmaeon’s theory of sense-perception and cognition”.
• XIIIth Colloque international hippocratique (Austin, Texas, 11-13 August 2008). Title of the paper: “Perceiving the coherence of the perceiving body. Is there such a thing as a Hippocratic approach to perception?”
• Mainz Conference on Ancient Medical Texts (Mainz, 12 June 2008). Title of the paper: “Encephalocentrism and the “specificity” of cognition in Alcmaeon’s doctrine”
• The Anglo-Dutch Wellcome Symposium, held in Nijmegen (29-30 November 2007). Title of the paper: “Making the difference. The medical inquiry into the nature of places and the early birth of Anthropology in the Hippocratic treatise On Airs Waters Places”.
• European Association for the History of Medicine and Health Conference, held in London, Brunei Gallery (12-15 September 2007). Title of the paper: “Making the difference. Environmental determinism and the early birth of Anthropology in the Hippocratic treatise On Airs Waters Places”.
• Approaches to Ancient Medicine Conference 2007, held in Newcastle upon Tyne (3-4 September 2007). Title of the paper: “The physiological roots of sense. What does the brain-hermeneus perform in On The Sacred Disease’s encephalocentric theory?”.
• XXVIth Classical Association of South Africa Conference, held in CapeTown (2-5 July 2007). Title of the paper: “The ambiguous role of perception. Traditional views on sense perception as a cognitive tool within the Hippocratics and new biological perspectives”.
• XLth International Society of History of Medicine Conference, held in Budapest, Academy of Sciences (25-30 August 2006). Title of the paper: “Le savoir du malade dans le traité hippocratique Perì technes”.
• XIIth Colloque international hippocratique, held in Leiden (23-26 August 2005). Title of the paper: “Il medico come maestro. Funzione epistemica, funzione cognitiva e incommensurabilità degli errori”.
• Convegno internazionale ‘Processo alla prova’, held in Palermo in June 2004. Title of the paper: “La medicina alla prova: verso una pragmatica della ricerca biomedica”.

Visiting Lectures and Seminars

• Enzyklopädie der Philologie - Ringvorlesung des Instituts für Klassische Philologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (February 1st, 2012): Title of the paper: Werner Jaegers Paideia und die Stellung der antiken Medizin in seiner Auffassung der Geisteswissenschaften
  
• Seminar at the Ecole normale supérieure of Paris (chair of Paleography, 21 May 2010). Title of the paper: La notion d’automaton entre spontanéité de la nature et téléologie hypothétique dans les textes médicaux (Hippocrate et Galien) et la Physique d’Aristote.
• Seminar at the University of Naples (Federico II) (Department of Philosophy, April 2010). Title of the paper: Dialeghesthai, homologhein e synghenesthai nei testi del Corpus Hippocraticum e nel Protagora di Platone: esempi di interazione fra lessico medico e lessico filosofico nella Grecia di V e IV secolo.
• Lecture at Leiden University (Department of Classics, 4 March 2010). Title of the paper : The matter of sense, the sense of matter : The encephalocentric theory of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease.
• Research Seminar at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (Institut für Klassische Philologie, 2 March 2010). Title of the paper : The matter of sense, the sense of matter : The encephalocentric theory of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease.
• Seminar at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne (March 4th, 2009). Title of the paper: Le sens de la matière, la matière du sens. L’air, le cerveau et la physiologie de la pensée dans le traité hippocratique ‘La maladie sacrée’.
• Lecture at the University of Lausanne (Institute Universitaire d’Histoire de la Médecine, November 12th. 2008). Title of the paper: Tradizione come genealogia della verità. Ippocrate e Boerhaave tra assimilazione, variazione e deviazione.
• Scaliger Lecture (Leiden University Library, May, 23th, 2008). Title of the paper: Tradition as genealogy of truth. Hippocrates and the Ducth Hippocrates between assimilation, variation and deviation.
• Seminar at the University of Palermo (Dipartimento di Studi Greci Latini Musicali, Dottorato di Ricerca in Filologia e Cultura Greco-Latina, April 6th, 2006). Title of the paper: “Educazione medica e funzione cognitiva degli errori nei testi della Collezione ippocratica”.

Teaching activities

• Academic Year 2011/12, Summer term: Marcus Aurelius, Ad se ipsum (Hauptseminar, BA/MA, Institut für Philosophie/Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy)
• Academic Year 2011/12, Summer term: Leib und Seele in der Medizingeschichte von der griechisch-römischen Antike bis zur freuen Neuzeit (GTE Modul, co-taught with Philip van der Eijk and Chiara Thumiger)
• Academic Year 2011/12, Summer term: Der Körper in der Spätantike: Verständnis, Erleben und Darstellung des menschlichen Körpers in der römischen Kaiserzeit (Hauptseminar, BA/MA, Institut für Geschichte, co-taught with Claudia Tiersch, Philip van der Eijk, Georgia Petridou, Chiara Thumiger and Wolfgang Häfele)
• Academic Year 2011/12, Winter term: Aristoteles über Seele, Körper, Gedächtnis, Schlaf und Traum / Aristotle on Soul, Body, Memory, Sleep and Dreams (Hauptseminar, co-taught with Prof. Ph. J. van der Eijk)
• Academic Year 2011/12, Winter term: Hesiod (BA/MA Übung, co-taught with Prof. M. Asper)
• Academic Year 2010/11, Summer term: Shrewd Greeks and stupid barbarians? The environment-linked science of man in the 5th and 4th century B.C (Hippocrates’ On Airs Waters Places, Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle) (Seminar)

Roles and responsabilities

Coordinator of the PhD Programme „History of Ancient Science“ (HistAS) of the „Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies“ (BerGSAS) http://berliner-antike-kolleg.org/bergsas/studienprogramme/history-of-ancient-science/

Publications

Monographs

• In forma di senso. La dottrina encefalocentrica del trattato ippocratico Sulla malattia sacra nel suo contesto epistemologico, Roma, 2008.

Volumes edited

• R. Lo Presti – N. Allocca (eds), Entre mécanisme et téléologie : Anatomie, physiologie et philosophie des fonctions (seizième/dix-huitième siècles), special issue of  ‘Gesnerus - Revue Suisse d’Histoire de la Médecine et des Sciences’ (in preparation).
  
• F. Bourbon – R. Lo Presti (eds), De Fabrica Artis Medicinae : Les redéfinitions de la médecine à la Renaissance, special issue of ‘Renaissance and Reformation / Réforme et Renaissance’, vol. 33, no. 3 (2010).

Articles and chapters in refereed journals or books of international standing

• La « fabrica corporis» est-elle une machine ? Remarques sur l’histoire et la préhistoire d’une forme de représentation du corps humain de Vésale à Spinoza, in N. Allocca (ed.), Macchina e vita. Modelli epistemologici e implicazioni morali (sec. XVII-XIX), Springer (forthcoming)
  
• La notion d’automaton dans les textes médicaux (Hippocrate et Galien) et la Physique d’Aristote: hasard, spontanéité de la nature, et téléologie du comme si, in K.D. Fischer (ed.), Proceedings of the 30th Arbeitskreis Alte Medizin (Mainz, 3./4. Juli 2010), ‘Les Etudes Classiques’ (forthcoming)
• Mental disorder and the perils of definition: Characterizing epilepsy in Greek scientific discourse (5th-4th centuries B.C.E.), in W. Harris (ed.), Mental Disorders in Classical Antiquity, Oxford (forthcoming).
• Roberto Lo Presti & Silvio Marino, ‘Dialegesthai: fisiologia di un atto. Interazioni fra lessico medico e lessico filosofico fra V e IV secolo (Corpus Hippocraticum e Platone), Journal of Ancient Philosophy V.2 (2011), http://www.filosofiaantiga.com/documents/volumes_v_2011_1.html
  
• Origins of knowledge: ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ as categories of thought in the Hippocratics, in ‘Quaderni del Ramo d’Oro online’ 3 (2010), 164-192. http://www.qro.unisi.it/frontend/node/78
• Approches hippocratiques du sommeil, in Approches philosophiques et médicales du sommeil de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, sous la direction de V. Leroux, N. Palmieri, C. Pigné (forthcoming).
• The matter of sense, the sense of matter: What does the enkephalos-hermeneus perform in On The Sacred Disease’s encephalocentric doctrine?, ‘Rhizai’ VII.1 (2010), pp. 147-180
• La machine plus que machine, ou l’automate transfiguré. L’anthropologie de Julien Offray de La Mettrie et la réinvention du mécanisme médical", ‘Gesnerus’ 67/2 (2010), pp. 163-187.
• F. Bourbon – R. Lo Presti, Introduction à De Fabrica Artis Medicinae : Les redéfinitions de la médecine à la Renaissance, special issue of ‘Renaissance and Reformation/Réforme et Renaissance’, vol. 33, no. 3 (2010), pp. 3-7
• Anatomy as epistemology: The Body of Man and the Body of Medicine in Vesalius’ Anatomical Renaissance, in F. Bourbon – R. Lo Presti (eds), De Fabrica Artis Medicinae : Les redéfinitions de la médecine à la Renaissance, special issue of ‘Renaissance and Reformation / Réforme et Renaissance’, vol. 33, no. 3 (2010), pp. 27-60.
• Perceiving the coherence of the perceiving body. Is there such a thing as a ‘Hippocratic’ view on sense perception and cognition?, in L. Dean-Jones, R.J. Hankinson (eds.), What is Hippocratic about the Hippocratic Corpus?, Leiden (forthcoming)
• ‘Shaping the difference. The medical inquiry into the nature of places and the early birth of Anthropology in the Hippocratic treatise On Airs Waters Places’, in P.A. Baker, H. Nijdam, K. van´t Land (eds.), Medicine and Space. Body, Surroundings and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Leiden 2012, pp. 169-195.
• Tradition as genealogy of ‘truth’. Hippocrates and Boerhaave between assimilation, variation and deviation, in The Medical Education. Proceedings of the XIIth Colloquium Hippocraticum, ed. by H.F.J. Horstmanshoff, Leiden 2010, pp. 475-522.
• The physician as teacher. Epistemic function, cognitive function and the incommensurability of errors, in The Medical Education. Proceedings of the XIIth Colloquium Hippocraticum, ed. by H.F.J. Horstmanshoff, Leiden 2010, pp. 137-167.
• Le rappresentazioni del corpo "anaisthetos" nel "Corpus Hippocraticum": una 'via negativa' verso la conoscenza in ‘Quaderni del Ramo d’Oro online’ 2 (2009), pp. 51-91. http://www.qro.unisi.it/frontend/node/45
• Between distinction and separation. Rethinking the centrality of the brain in Alcmaeon’s theory of sense-perception and cognition, in ‘Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption’ XIX (2009), pp. 9-30.
• Il sapere del malato nel trattato ippocratico Perì technes, “Medicina nei Secoli”, 19.3 (2007), pp. 705-720.
• The ambiguous role of perception. Empiricist views and biological perspectives on sense perception within the Hippocratics, “Acta Classica”, L (2007), pp. 129-146.
• La medicina alla prova. Verso una pragmatica della ricerca biomedica, in Processo alla prova. Modelli e pratiche di verifica dei saperi, a cura di V. Andò e G. Nicolaci, Roma 2007, pp. 235-263.

Shorter pieces

• Entries in "Geschichte der  Altertumswissenschaften. Biographisches Lexikon (DNP Supplement 6)", hrsg. von S. Kipf, J. B. Metzler Verlag und Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, Weimar (in Press):
  • S. Fornaro, R. Lo Presti, “Karl Kerényi”
  • S. Fornaro, R. Lo Presti, “Concetto Marchesi”
  • S. Fornaro, R. Lo Presti, “Karl Otfried Müller”
  • S. Fornaro, R. Lo Presti, “Giorgio Pasquali”
    
  • S. Fornaro, R. Lo Presti, “Hermann Usener”
  • S. Fornaro, R. Lo Presti, “Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker”
• Julien Offray de la Mettrie, 1743. Observations de médecine pratique, Paris : Huart (Notice numérisation collection Medic@ Philomed)
  
• Julien Offray de la Mettrie, 1738. Traité du vertige, avec la description d'une catalepsie hystérique, Paris : Huart (Notice numérisation collection Medic@ Philomed)
• Herman Boerhaave, 1713. Institutiones medicae, in usus annuae exercitationis domesticos digestae, ab Hermanno Boerhaave (Notice numérisation collection Medic@ Philomed).
• Herman Boerhaave, 1761. Praelectiones academicae de morbis nervorum (Notice numérisation collection Medic@ Philomed).
• Constructing Boerhaave’s iconography: the early Accounts of his life and work, “OMSLAG- Bulletin of the Scaliger Institute, Leiden University Library”, 2008 (2), pp. 5-8.
• Une connaissance aveugle face au futur. Modèles causaux et pouvoir cognitif du malade dans le traité hippocratique Perì technes, in Proceedings of the XLth International Society of History of Medicine Conference, Budapest (Academy of Sciences) 2006, Vol. II, pp. 825-829.

Reviews

• Review of F. Hoffmann, “Differenza tra la dottrina di Stahl e la mia in patologia e terapia. Introduzione, traduzione e note di Francesco Paolo de Ceglia”, “Gesnerus” (forthcoming).
• Review of Ch. Gill, Naturalistic Psychology in Galen and Stoicism, ‘Les Etudes Classiques’ (forthcoming).
• Review of B. Holmes, The Symptom and the Subject. The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece, ‘Gesnerus’ (forthcoming).
• Review of D. Frede, B. Reis, Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy, ‘Lettre d’information du centre Jean Palerne’ (forthcoming).
• Review of S. H. Podolsky, C. S. Bryan, O. Wendell Homes, Physician and Man of Letters, ‘Gesnerus’ 67.2 (2010), 289-291.
• Review of J. T. Hughes, Thomas Willis 1621-1675: His Life and Work, ‘Gesnerus’ 67.1 (2010), 132-134.
• Review of G. Barroux, Philosophie, maladie et médecine au XVIIIè siècle, ‘Gesnerus’, 66.1 (2009), pp. 169-170.
• Review of Maria Michela Sassi (ed. by), Tracce nella mente. Teorie della memoria da Platone ai moderni, “Classical Review”, 59.1 (2009), pp. 295-296.