"The Cosmicomiche have behind them above all Leopardi, the comics of Popeye, Samuel Beckett, Giordano Bruno, Lewis Carroll, the painting of Matta and in some cases Landolfi, Immanuel Kant, Borges, the engravings of Grandeville".
It is all in this sentence the revolution of Italo Calvino, who as a great lover and scholar of scientific subjects has never considered science as a granite and selective topic intended for the understanding of a few but rather as an integral part of our culture, "not alien to poetry" and for this reason to be disseminated, simplified, lightened to make it reach everyone. A goal that the great Ligurian writer has fully achieved if almost thirty years after his death, in 2014, Samantha Cristoforetti for her first mission in space decided to take Palomar into orbit, while the physicist Guido Tonelli, among the protagonists of the discovery of the Higgs boson, continues to be inspired by Calvino to make science understandable to everyone. And again, the rector of Luiss Andrea Prencipe, together with the journalist Massimo Sideri, has written a book entitled 'The rampant innovator', to demonstrate how the American Lessons contain a method also used by those involved in innovation while the artists of NuvolaProject exhibit at Palazzo Merulana, as part of the exhibition 'Urban Technologies' inspired by The Invisible Cities, an installation that combines science, technology and poetry.
100 of these Calvino, the special Ansa that every month, until October when he would have turned 100 years old, tells how the great writer is still a source of inspiration in many fields, this time is dedicated to the relationship between Calvino and science.
To learn more ANSA.it From Boeri to Soldini, the many legacies of Italo Calvino - Specials The special Ansa 100 of these Calvino tells how the works of the great writer have been a source of inspiration for great architectural projects as in the case of Boeri, but also for pop songs as happened to Colapesce and Dimartino or for the solo crossings of the sailor Giovanni Soldini
Calvin to explain science
Tonelli, after reading Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno in his youth, discovered the 'scientific' Calvino when he was already working at Cern as a researcher. "It's time for Cosmicomiche, Ti con zero, Signora Phinko e le tagliatelle: discovering that the things I dealt with could be told to a general audience with this light discursive conversational tone, coupled beauty, rigor with lightness". The possibility therefore of being able to talk to everyone about science. "In the end - he explained to ANSA - I think I really understood Calvino a few years ago when I myself began to publish books and explain what we do, to disseminate science, to tell the beauty of the ideas and concepts we develop. I measured myself with the difficulties that Calvino faced and overcame with great skill and I understood that he first sensed that it is still fundamental today to tell science and its concepts, for the role that modern science plays in all societies. In this Calvino was a forerunner whose validity remains even today".
Video Tonelli: 'Calvino to explain science lightly'
The mark that the great Ligurian writer left is such that for his first mission in space AstroSamantha decided to take him with her. "I love Calvino, he is an author that I have always felt very close to – explained Cristoforetti – and Palomar is a book that I had recently reread just before that space mission. I really liked it for this ability to describe and find interesting the details of reality and therefore in some way it was a wish to be able to live my mission with that ability to observe, to find richness and interesting things in the small details of everyday life in space". A choice, he said laughing, also dictated by a very practical reason: "Trivially I must say that I brought it also because I had a very small, pocket edition, which lent itself to a flight into space".
Video Cristoforetti, space and Palomar
From American Lessons to Innovation
Calvino read a lot about science, his is a well-known review of The New Alliance of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Chemistry Ilya Prigogine, written together with Isabelle Stengers.
"The New Covenant - he writes - is a book of the history of science and at the same time of science in its making (...) but it is also a passionate mediation on man and the universe, which, rejecting the separation between the "two cultures", weaves densely into the same discourse the paths opened by scientists and the questions of philosophers; Not only that, but he does not consider the paths trodden by poetry foreign or distant".
A vision of science that Calvino fully embraces and combines, in fact, with the need to disseminate scientific subjects. Which also enter the American Lessons, a source of inspiration also from the point of view of innovation.
"With Massimo Sideri - explained Prencipe - we wrote The rampant innovator who actually draws inspiration from the beauty and concepts that Calvino gives us in the American Lessons written to project readers into the literature of the future millennium, or of this millennium, but Calvino went further because he inspired two scholars of innovation". And innovation, according to Prencipe, "is lightness and heaviness, it is speed and slowness, visibility and invisibility, this continuous contrast of concepts is our 'Calvino method' that allows us to better scrutinize the phenomenon of innovation. To be innovative, you need to be an experimenter." An example for all, the smartphone and multiplicity: "Innovation - he assured - always needs multiple knowledge, just think of how many technologies are needed to design a smartphone but only through their integration can it become the unique object we use".
Video Andrea Prencipe, rector of Luiss, talks about the 'Calvino method' for innovation
Calvin, clouds, transistors and poetry
Calvino read a lot about science and computer science and was a great experimenter. After all, it is enough to read what he wrote in 1967 in the essay Cybernetics and Ghosts to realize this.
Instead of that iridescent cloud that we carried in our heads until yesterday and of which thickening or dispersing we tried to realize by describing impalpable psychological states, umbratile landscapes of the soul, - instead of all this today we feel the very fast passage of signals on the intricate circuits that connect the relays, diodes, transistors of which our skullcap is crammed.
Video Calvino and the Clouds in the installation of NuvolaProject
A perfect definition for the installation of the artists of NuvolaProject that at Palazzo Merulana in Rome, as part of the exhibition 'Urban Technologies' dedicated to The Invisible Cities curated by Serenella Di Marco and Luca Ceresoli, exhibited a giant cloud that is actually "a detector of phenomena, intercepts the discussions that take place on social media and extracts information that is then shown on a screen", explain Gaia Riposati and Massimo Di Leo. Next to the 'Cloud' another installation called 'Brain storming', proposes a "hypothetical conversation between two artificial intelligences represented with clouds that vaguely recall the shape of the human brain. You can insert yourself into this conversation with a message that will then be processed in order to receive a response. At the end of each discussion on different topics, especially sustainability, the clouds write a short poem, a synthesis to recirculate through art the topics on which human beings should focus".
An installation that combines science, technology, innovation and "the paths beaten by poetry", Calvino would have said.
To deepen Agenzia ANSA Calvino and the 'urgent' music that reaches Capossela - Indices - Ansa.it The great writer also wrote lyrics for several songs, including 'Oltre il Ponte' rearranged by Modena City Ramblers and an opera libretto with maestro Berio. Pianist Prosseda saw Bach and Beethoven in the American Lectures
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