Added to your basket:
Lettera sopra alcuni ostacoli che la logica, e l’ideologia presentano alle osservazioni ideologiche sugli ostacoli che la cecità presenta allo sviluppo delle facoltà intellettuali dell’uomo, e sulla poca attitudine dei ciechi ad apprendere, ed insegnare le matematiche, dell’Abate Baldassare Spampinato ...

Checkout now

Very rare first edition of this work on the intellectual faculties of the blind, written by the Neapolitan nobleman Blasco Florio in reply to the Osservazioni ideologiche sugli ostacoli che la cecità presenta allo sviluppo delle facoltà intellettuali dell’uomo (Catania, 1824) of the Sicilian scholar Baldassare Spampinato.

Florio – much better known for his writings on fencing – here investigates the relationship between blindness and intelligence, and the ability of the blind to learn and teach mathematics. He compares the intelligence of sighted and blind people, discusses the advantages of written language over spoken, and examines the relationship between blindness, the senses, and memory.

There are several passages on the blind English scientist and mathematician Nicholas Saunderson (1682–1739), who served as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University; the blind Swiss entomologist François Huber is also mentioned. Along the way, Florio refers to the work of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Xavier Bichat.

Spampinato taught physics and ideology in Catania and was a member of the Istituto d’incoraggiamento alle scienze naturali of Naples.

No copies traced on OCLC or Library Hub. OPAC SBN records a single copy, at the Biblioteca della Società napoletana di storia patria.