La federazione delle parti. Sul concetto di individuo in Rudolf Virchow

An introductory essay to the Italian translation of R. Virchow’s lecture Atome und Individuen, the paper presents his notion of organic individuality as an outcome of his new cell theory. Virchow’s emphasis on the federal structure of the biological individual as composed of “cell-territories” supersedes the previous cellular atomism, and can be considered as a turning point in the establishment of a modular approach to the organism.