Twins in Medical, Philosophical and Theological Debates from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages
CNCS Grant PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2016-0775
Today’s interest in twins is but the tip of an iceberg. How did we respond to the genetic, anthropological and psychiatric oddity of twinning prior to the very development of these disciplines? Scientific and philosophical perspectives on twins have indeed a longer history in the Western Latin tradition. GEMINI will combine intellectual and cultural historical approaches in order to investigate and further our understanding of the history of thinking about twinning in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It will do so by reconstructing the scientific, philosophical and theological debates that flourished around these contested and somewhat mysterious figures during the time-frame in which the modern notion of identity was forged in the Western tradition (5th-16th century). This project will thereby contribute to filling a substantial gap in the existing scholarship.