CFP: Natural Histories. Genesis and Transformations of a Philosophical Method

The expression “natural history”, in the sense canonised by Pliny’s Naturalis historia, designates a body of knowledge concerned with the description and classification of natural beings and phenomena. From the early modern period into the contemporary age, however, it came to encompass not only the object of inquiry but also a method of knowledge: a form of reconstruction that starts from what can be observed in the present and works backwards towards the processes that produced it. At the same time, the term “natural” also began to acquire the meaning of “non-supernatural”.

From the Baconian tradition to Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, the collection of facts no longer aimed merely to produce an inventory of what exists but made it possible to investigate phenomena and transformations that are not yet, or are no longer, directly observable. How can a process be reconstructed from the effects it has left behind? And what epistemic status should be assigned to the conjectures that connect the present with a past that is no longer accessible? Conjecture here performs a heuristic function: it selects the relevant facts and directs observation towards traces that would otherwise remain mute. Natural history thus takes the form of a conjectural narrative that regards its object as the outcome of a constitutive process. In this way, it introduces time into what appears stable, bringing to light, within present configurations, the events that have become sedimented in them. A set of closely connected questions follows: the continuity or discontinuity of reconstructed processes, the place of progress, the problem of teleology, and the possibility of conceiving non-linear temporalities in which the past persists through traces and survivals, while processes originating at different moments continue to operate alongside one another.

On these grounds, in the second half of the eighteenth century, natural history also extended into the moral sciences, becoming a method for reconstructing the formation of societies and civilisations. From Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment to Kant, a decisive question emerged: how can transformations in beliefs and institutions be made intelligible without reducing them either to the mere contingency of events or to the necessity of a predetermined development? Natural history occupies the space opened between these two extremes, reconstructing possible courses of development that neither possess the force of universal laws nor have been realised everywhere in the same way. The relationship between human nature and circumstances, the value of probability, the status of testimony, and the philosophical function of conjecture consequently become central. In this sense, the “natural” character of the method reveals a secularising tendency: it frees inquiry from recourse to providence and from eschatological interpretations of history, without necessarily entailing a radical or principled rejection of such interpretations.

In Darwin’s history of living forms, those forms become intelligible as provisional outcomes of processes of transformation, while classification acquires a genealogical meaning. In Marx, historical reconstruction targets the supposed naturalness of economic forms. In Nietzsche, it turns to the conditions under which values were formed. Natural history can thus disclose becoming where an immutable origin had been presumed, allowing contingency to reappear beneath the appearance of necessity.

This critical function was radicalised in the twentieth century. In Benjamin and Adorno, history becomes legible in remnants and petrified forms: what has been historically produced can assume the coercive appearance of nature, while nature itself reveals its own transience. Natural history no longer reassembles events into a unitary process but interrogates the time sedimented in the configurations of the present. What form of knowledge becomes possible when historical continuity is broken? At the threshold of the twenty-first century, W. G. Sebald’s Natural History of Destruction reopens this question on the terrain of catastrophe and testimony, searching in the present for the effects of an event that continues to exert its force precisely because it has not been assimilated.

This issue of Lo Sguardo aims to investigate the different configurations assumed by natural history, from Bacon to contemporary thought, considering it both as a method of reconstruction and as an instrument of philosophical critique. In what ways does natural history render the passage of time visible within its objects, thereby making it possible to think non-linear temporalities in which different processes overlap? What philosophical status should be accorded to the conjecture through which such processes are reconstructed? Under what conditions can natural history identify continuities and discontinuities without presupposing an idea of progress? To what extent does the characterisation of the method as “natural” entail a reformulation of categories of theological origin? And how can it reconstruct such processes without resolving the contingency of events into a universal or teleological philosophy of history?

We particularly, though not exclusively, welcome contributions addressing the following areas:

• Epistemic statuses and methods of natural history: methodological questions involved in reconstructing processes that are not directly observable, with particular attention to the philosophical function of collecting facts and to the heuristic scope of conjecture; the epistemic status of verisimilitude, probability, and forms of inductive reasoning.
• The temporalisation of nature: the emergence of the temporal depth of the Earth and of living beings, and the ways in which transformation renders natural forms historically intelligible.
• Natural history of humanity: the reconstruction of the genesis of beliefs and institutions, and the interpretation of human nature itself in terms of a natural history, in relation to historically determined circumstances.
• Genealogy and the critique of naturalisation: the analysis of the processes through which historically produced forms acquire the appearance of natural and necessary givens.
• Natural history and supernatural history: the naturalistic reformulation of elements and categories of theological origin.

ACCEPTED LANGUAGES: ITALIAN, ENGLISH, FRENCH, SPANISH, GERMAN

DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING CONTRIBUTIONS: MAY 30, 2027

How to Submit: Submit your article, complete in all its parts and formatted according to the journal’s editorial guidelines, via Lo Sguardo’s OJS publishing platform, selecting the appropriate call under the “Section” heading:

https://editorial.losguardo.net/ojs/index.php/LS/about/submissions

Articles will undergo double-blind peer review. The entire submission and selection process will take place via the aforementioned platform.

Matteo Marcheschi, Laura Nicolì, Paola Rumore
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