La hybris dell'aspirazione alla longevità. Buffon e la lotteria della vita

In the 18th century the question of immortality ceased to be just a problem of theologists and experts of the supernatural to become a target of philosophical investigation. The idea that scientific advances were to discover how to preserve physiological life and promote never-ending youth was diffused amongst charlatans and prominent philosophers alike. This is the cultural background against which Buffon's considerations on aging and death are to be evaluated. Indeed, he found the idea of preventing both phenomena unreasonable and scientifically unfeasible because it challenges the fundamental requirement of life: change, everything in nature must progress through degradation to death. In the place of these unreasonable research Buffon proposes a naturalistic study of physiological moderators of human longevity and the probabilistic analyses of life expectancy. This approach brings him evidence against the view that a long-lasting life is a good life.