ScienzaNuova, Mathematics Also Thinks Over Ontology

THE THIRD EDITION OF THE RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION FORUM ON THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE, IN COLLABORATION WITH THE ACCADEMIA DI STUDI ITALO TEDESCHI AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CARIPLO AND SUEDTIROLER SPARKASSE FOUNDATIONS

In its first two editions, devoted to the concept of temporality, ScienzaNuova, the research and experimentation forum on the fundamental concepts of modern science, encouraged philosophers to move in a field usually trodden by physicists. With the third edition, Ontologie / metafisica, fisica, matematica, neuroscienze (Merano, 21-27 July), it is natural scientists who have to follow the opposite path, «in a context of dialogical research that does not start from an idea of subordination of some sciences with respect to others, nor aims at unlikely convergences, but that wants, on the contrary, to bring out the differences», says one of the scientific directors, Gino Zaccaria.
 
With this edition, mathematicians also become part of the scientific dialoguing community of ScienzaNuova. One of the speakers will be a young mathematician with a strong focus on the foundations of the discipline: Olivia Caramello, a collaborator of Laurent Lafforgue’s, who received the Fields Medal in 2002.
 
The scientific directors of ScienzaNuova are Mauro Carfora, theoretical physicist at the University of Pavia, Ivo De Gennaro, moral philosopher of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, and Gino Zaccaria, theoretical philosopher at Bocconi University.  The project is managed by Bocconi’s ASK Centre and the Accademia di Studi Italo-Tedeschi of Merano, which hosts the event. The audience is made up of about twenty students, recent graduates and PhD students of various disciplines, from different Italian universities. The initiative is financed by the Cariplo and Suedtiroler Sparkasse Foundations.
 
Thanks to relations with Prof. Lafforgue, with Columbia University’s Department of Philosophy where one of the speakers, Achille Varzi, researches, and with the ISI Foundation chaired by Mario Rasetti, the third edition of ScienzaNuova also marks the strengthening of an internationalization process.

by Fabio Todesco