Project Description
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.