Jacob Moleschott and the conception of science in the 19th century. Scientific materialism as “totalizing” worldview.

Through the analysis of the manuscripts of the physiologist, philosopher and politician Jacob Moleschott (1822-1893), which are conserved at the Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio in Bologna, this master thesis aims at providing a revised picture of scientific materialism in the 19th century and of its conception of science. Moleschott’s commitment in politics and scientific popularization gives evidence of his attempt to bring together science, religion, ethics, education and politics in one all-encompassing form of knowledge; his work therefore constitutes a strategic perspective for questioning the standard image of scientific materialism, which has been conceived as affirming the superiority of science on every other form of knowledge and as aiming at excluding all non-scientific disciplines from the domain of true knowledge. According to the standard picture, the materialistic conception of science was purely empiricist, having eliminated every metaphysical ambition, it implied a clear and radical rupture with the philosophical tradition (in particular, with Naturphilosophie) and, finally, it was atheistic and completely separated from, or even opposed to, religion. The consideration of Moleschott’s work shows, instead, that scientific materialism was in contact with very heterogeneous philosophical and scientific traditions, and that its relation to them was not one of exclusion, but rather an open and flexible one, where there was no rigid demarcation between scientific and non-scientific spheres. Through the comparison of scientific materialism with the philosophical thinking of the main authors it was related to, we demonstrate how scientific materialism tended to inclusiveness rather than exclusion. To this purpose, we have underlined differences and analogies with: Feuerbach’s materialism and, in particular, his epistemology; the Kantian conception of organism and of the unity of nature conceived as regulative ideas of reason; Hegel’s and Schelling’s philosoph