La scienza del tatto

Since ancient times, science has questioned the nature and functioning of the sense of touch: its location in the body, the qualities it perceives, and its relationship with the other senses. The history of the conceptualization of touch also passes through the Middle Ages, a period, in this regard, still little studied. This book investigates the teachings on touch formulated, at the crossroads between natural philosophy and medicine, by some thinkers of the fourteenth century, retracing four nodal themes left open by Aristotle and inherited from the late medieval Aristotelian tradition: the identification of the bodily organ of touch and its functioning by contact; the problem of the perceptual objects specific to touch and, in particular, its role in the perception of pleasure and pain; the meanings according to which touch and taste can be considered necessary for living beings; and, finally, the correspondence between touch and the element of earth.