Le vocabulaire de l'hérédité et de la génération

Medical Terminology and Epistemology for a Dictionary of Genetics and its Degenerations from Hippocrates to ICD-10


Call for papers  

An International Conference to be held at the Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy), 4-6 May 2015


The FIRB (Futuro in Ricerca) Project 2010 (www.lessicodellagenetica.it) – is organizing a three-day International Conference for the study of medical terminology and epistemology. The Conference will focus on genetics and on generation and heredity, and will therefore present in a diachronic perspective the notions of hereditary disease and genetic degeneration, and their etiological, diagnostic and therapeutic aspects.

The Conference is aimed at presenting current international research on the formation of a specific and more and more specialised medical terminology for the purpose of defining the onset, development and outcome of hereditary and/or congenital diseases. Accordingly, we encourage submissions concerning different historical periods, from Antiquity (Greek and Roman, but not only) to nowadays.

In this way, the Conference will also explore the different ways in which physicians and philosophers have been identifying, classifying and communicating to other people – both specialists and laymen – congenital disease and its inheritance, and the therapeutic strategies to which physicians in different historical periods have resorted, according to their knowledge and epistemological and ethical assumptions.

Therefore the organizers hope this Conference – together with the results of researches of the members of the FIRB Project – will lay the foundations for a historical and critical Dictionary of genetics – focused on generation and pathologies concerning it (degenerations) – from Hippocrates to ICD-10.

In accordance with the interdisciplinary nature of the FIRB Project, the Conference organizers welcome submissions from classical scholars, philologists, scholars in the history of medicine and science, philosophers of language, scholars in the history of philosophy, and also from geneticists and scholars in the history of genetics.

The list of confirmed speakers includes: Véronique Boudon, Claude Calame,Véronique Dasen, Jacques Jouanna, Vivian Nutton.

The list for possible topics for papers includes (but is not limited to):

- the terminology of genetics and heredity from ancient Greece to nowadays (history of words);

- epistemology, semeiotics and philosophy of ancient, modern and contemporary medical science (meanings of words);

- history of medicine and of the notions concerning generation, genetics and heredity in different historical periods, from Antiquity to nowadays (history of diseases).


Those who wish to offer a paper, preferably in English (25 minutes, including discussion) are invited to send an abstract of max. 300 words along with their personal data (name, affiliation, e-mail) by 1st February 2015, to meg2015@unipa.it.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to: rossella.costa@uniroma1.it

All the proposals will be considered by the Scientific Committee:

• Prof. Valeria Andò
• Dr. Mauro Capocci
• Prof. Gilberto Corbellini
• Dr. Rossella Costa
• Dr. Salvatore Di Piazza
• Dr. Giulia Frezza
• Dr. Franco Giorgianni (P. I.)
• Dr. Antonietta Provenza

Notifications of accepted proposals will be sent by 15th February 2015.

The organization will be able to cover speakers’ meals and accommodation in full.