Patrick Geddes in Naples. The beginning of his ecological thinking

The paper focuses on the years of Patrick Geddes’ (1854-1832) training as a biologist and the research he carried out in Naples between 1879 and 1881 at the Zoological Station founded by Anton Dohrn in 1872. In those years, Geddes made a series of discoveries on the symbiosis between marine organisms that led him to formulate the theory of “reciprocal accommodation” in evolutionary terms, which formed the basis of his first scientific publications and laid the foundations for his urban and social ecological thinking. His exploration of the topic of symbiosis, central to the debate on the “struggle for survival”, placed him in the context of a specific strand of studies on cooperation and mutual support that in fact made him one of the forerunners of ecological thinking. At the height of the Victorian era, his thinking joined that of other exponents and groups who, like him, opposed contemporary industrialisation and advocated different models of development and cities, not only in Britain. The aim of the paper is precisely to trace these early scientific experiences in order to reconsider his ecological approach also based on his Neapolitan experience.