Galen on the Question of Metabolism
Galen on the Question
of Metabolism
Body and Environment
in Ancience Medicine
Chiara Thumiger
27 May 2025 – 5 PM (CEST)
In current medical-biological understanding, metabolism can be briefly defined as the combination of chemical reactions within the body’s cells which are aimed at changing food into energy.
In this sense, ancient medicine was cognisant of metabolism (despite being devoid of any concept of cellular physiology), and intended it as the challenging process of transforming food and drink into ‘body’.
Focusing on Galen, in this talk I intend to explore metabolism as concept of history of biology, using that datum as starting point for the exploration of a wider metaphorical level: the regulation of the relationship, material as much as conceptual, between self and non-self, and between human and environment (consumption and dietetics, processing, travel, trade, analogy and similarity).
These are equally important in the tradition of Hellenic medicine, and in the writings of Galen of Pergamon, who was fond of environmental imagery in his rhetorical presentation of medical doctrines.
About the Speaker ...
Silvia Di Vincenzo is an Associate Professor of History of Medieval Philosophy at “Ca’ Foscari” University of Venice.
She obtained a dual PhD in Philosophy (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa) and in Arabic Studies (École Pratique des Hautes Études) in 2018. Her research focuses on the reinterpretation of Aristotelian logic within the Arabic tradition, as well as its reception in Latin and Hebrew, with a particular emphasis on the discipline’s marginal areas and its intersections with other sciences. As of March 1, 2025, she is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant 2024 project, “The Uncharted Margins of Philosophy: An AI-Enhanced Material History of Arabic Logic Across Time (12th–19th c.) and Frontiers (from Spain to India)” (UnMaP).
