Il Corpo vivente come modello di organizzazione sistemica nel pensiero antico.

[Autom. eng. transl.] Through an analysis of the notion of body in the texts of Homer and Aristotle, the essay deals with the Greek origins of the organicist model, which has entered the theory of systems since the 1920s, presenting its characteristics. Already in Homer (where there is still no term to indicate the living body as a whole, but not the idea of a unitary identity of the members of an individual) a principle capable of giving form (eidos) to the bodily elements and of to counteract the natural tendency to disintegrate: the soul (eidos). Only with Aristotle does the living body begin to be understood as an organism, thanks to a hyleomorphic and non-dualistic vision of the relationship of the soul with matter, with which the living organism is explained. It is observed that the term system is used first by Plato and then by Aristotle, none of which never however elaborated a theory in this regard. The study of the Aristotelian notion of a living organism leads to the discovery that it encompasses all the principles that underpin the modern theory of systems, with an emergent property collected and then elaborated by Christian theology, starting with St. Paul. The soul itself, in Aristotle, has the characteristics of a system. From this analysis, the organicist model thus appears to be enriched by the unavoidable notion of form which in turn recalls the need for its own efficient cause, external to the system.