Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries: Alcmaeon of Croton between physics, medicine and philosophy

Abstract

In recent decades, there has been a growing need to adopt a new approach to knowledge characterized by the broadest possible inter- and trans-disciplinary perspective, capable of responding to the rapid and complex changes in society, and the multidimensional nature of the problems and issues that run through it. Nevertheless transdisciplinarity is not really a product of the 20th century: this holistic approach that aims to hold all scientific knowledge together, that aspires to exist at once between, across and beyond different disciplines, has characterized our culture since antiquity. If we wished to search for the earliest example of transdisciplinary science, we should perhaps turn to the figure of Alcmaeon of Croton, an ‘experimental researcher’ who carried out his research across the fields of physics, medicine (neurophysiology), and philosophy (epistemology). For the concept of health as the isonomy of opposing forces, the study of the senses contained in the head, and encephalocentrism, he is regarded as fundamental to the development of Hippocratic medicine, an ante litteram neuroscientist, and a scientist truly across boundaries.