A new series of five conferences starting november 21st, titled Le voci della Scienza. The 5 evenings will touch different topics spanning from mathematics to the relationship between maths and comics, to the understanding of action and emotion to space exploration, ending with a journing alongside Giacomo Leopardi. The event is coordinated by Andrea Gambassi, professor of Physics at SISSA and Director of ILAS, and Giuseppe Mussardo, professor of Physics at SISSA and Director of Science and Society activities at ILAS.
November 21st
Alberto Saracco, Mathematician, University of Parma
Francesco Artibani, Comic Book Writer
The Science of Donald Duck
Caffè degli Specchi (Piazza dell'Unità d'Italia, Trieste) – 18.00-19.30
The Science of Donald Duck A dialogue between Francesco Artibani, comic book and cartoon writer and Alberto Saracco, mathematician from the University of Parma.
Comic books are a high impact medium. Of course, they are influenced by science, but the image of science they present is not necessarily the most appropriate. A mathematician and a comic book writer will explore, each from his own point of view, the fascinating interaction between comic books and science. Paying close attention to Disney comics in particular, we will talk about uses of science in comics, the uses of comic books to communicate science and how the project Topolino Comics & Science tries to merge this two different points of view.
November 28th
Gian Italo Bischi, University of Urbino
The mathematical Fury of Leonardo Sinisgalli
SISSA (via Bonomea 265, Trieste) – Room 128/129 – 18.00-19.30
“Furor mathematicus” by Leonardo Sinisgalli is just recently coming back in bookstores, reproducing unabridged for the first time the unavailable edition from 1950 with the addition of a new and extended introduction. Furor mathematicus is a unicum in 20th century Italian literature, a collection of short essays, letters, and autobiographical excerpts, born from the “Quaderno di Geometria” written in his hometown of Montemurro, Lucania, in the winter of 1935, and then enriched with writings on themes spanning from mathemathics, poetry, painting, architecture, design, physics, philosophy, technology, artisanship. The blending between different knowledge and languages, brought to overlap and penetration, are both method and message of the entire book.
Mathematics was the first big passion from Sinisgalli, which brought him to enroll at the University of Rome in Mathematics and Physics, where he later graduated in engineering, a passion he cultivated for all is life in all his writings and activities. For Sinisgalli Mathematics is a habit of thought, a language, and a forma mentis through which he interprets reality, a metaphor for life. Synthesis, essentiality, the immediacy of intuition, the slow settling and the continuity between tradition and innovation are the traits that are common to mathematics and the other fields in which Sinisgalli operated, bringing together logic and imagination, on the difficult ground of cultural contamination.
In Furor mathematicus Sinisgalli’s eclettism becomes the blueprint for the culture of the second half of the 20th century. It’s a synthesis between his background and his intense cultural activity, and a launching pad for the his later years, when Sinisgally will become a protagonist in the shaping of Italy as an industrial powerhouse, in his role as editor and creator of very innovative industrial magazines of wide cultural interest. In the pages of Furor Sinisgalli offers ideas on esthetics, ethics, lifestyle and how to evaluate the new economic and social context, which he would later call “the machine civilization”. New professions and new ways of life that required new esthetics, new ethics, or, in brief, new poetics. Sinisgalli found continuity in change, with contact points between new and old knowledge, old and new disciplines. A great effort of connection and blending for the creation of a cultural substrate which would help the transition towards the second half of the 20th century, overlapping reality and the imaginary, fact and dream, rationality and imagination, measure and invention, rule and flair, science and poetry, esprit de géométrie e esprit de finesse.
December 5th
Corrado Sinigaglia, University of Milan
How do we understand other people from the inside
[Presentation of the author’s latest book Specchi nel cervello, Raffaello Cortina]
Caffè San Marco (via Battisti 18, Trieste) – 18.00-19.30
Corrado Sinigalia is full professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Milan. His main research interests include the motor theory of social cognition. Recently he wrote with Giacomo Rizzolatti the book “Specchi nel cervello. Come comprendiamo gli altri dall’interno” published by Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano
How do we understand the actions and emotions of other people? Which mechanisms and processes allow us to act together in unison, at least in the most simple forms? Numerous studies suggest that the motor and visceral-motor processes and representations, which are normally involved when we act or feel emotions personally, are involved even when we observe other’s emotions and actions, even influencing what we think about the goal of the observed act and inferring the emotions felt by the actor. In my talk I will try to clarify how this is possible, explaining in particular how these kinds of representations can change how we experience action and emotion, and do that in very similar way both if we feel them ourselves in first person or when observing in others.
December 12th
Rossella Spiga, INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri
The Future of Space Exploration
Caffè San Marco (via Battisti 18, Trieste) – 18.00-19.30
Fifty years after the moon landing we ask ourselves what are the new frontiers for space exploration. Where are the new borders for humanity in space? What are the next stages for the new Race to the Moon? What will be the new direction for the scientific and technological progress that up to now allowed us to reach exceptional results and has had massive impact on society, economy and politics? Tracing the next steps of space exploration, we must ask ourselves big questions on the sustainability of the next Race to Space. We are surely in front of new, exciting space challenges that we cannot miss.
December 18
Giuseppe Mussardo, SISSA, Trieste
Gaspare Polizzi, University of Pisa
Leopardi’s Infinite Science
[Presentation of their latest book L'infinita scienza di Leopardi, Scienza Express]
Caffè San Marco (via Battisti 18, Trieste) – 18.00-19.30
A journey between science, philosophy and poetry to discover the great scientific passions of Leopardi: his attraction for the Moon, the Cosmo, its stars and galaxies; his fascination for the chemistry and the countless transformations of the matter; his reflections on the infinite. Leopardi has a shockingly modern voice on Nature, a view that destroys many illusions on the natural world but never ceases to fascinate us with the blowing of the wind or the unending spaces of his “Infinito”, high poetry, sweet and immortal.