Ricerc@Sapienza

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the discontinuity between
animal and human birth. Starting from theories on animal instinct and those on
animal/human behaviour; from Aristotle to Darwin, and the evolutionary
synthesis of the 1940s, from distorted interpretations of Darwin’s thought to
some aspects of modern ethology and animal psychology, and the human birth
theory, the manuscript tries to respond to the old question: what differences
exist between animal behaviour and human behaviour? Trying to answer these
questions, the Aristotelian scientific method and Darwin’s theory of evolution
are here discussed. The scientific-rational method is still not adequate to
completely comprehend humankind. The main issue is the biological origin of
the human psyche, the human birth theory postulated by Fagioli (2019a) several
decades ago. The capability to imagine, which relates to the disappearance
fantasy at human birth, is a crucial concept in the separation between humans
and animals. These aspects will be thoroughly debated.