Complex crises like the coronavirus pandemic are showing us that modern societies are becoming increasingly unable to live in equilibrium with nature. These crises are the result of multiple causes, which interact at different scales and across different domains. Therefore, investigating their proximate causes is not enough to fully understand them. It is also crucial to take into account the structural factors involved. As concerns the global pandemic, I suggest four levels of analysis: (i) the surface or “proximate” level of (...) the crisis; (ii) the human–environment–animal interface, as pointed out by the One Health approach; (iii) the broader socioeconomic context; and (iv) the deeper or worldview level. Furthermore, I argue that there is the need for a mindset shift if we want to properly trace causality. Much more attention must be given to the study of multilevel connecting patterns and nonlinear mechanisms as the producers of emergent global effects. (shrink)

Este artigo busca ressoar um percurso de sensibilização vivido por um professor que descobre a força desestabilizadora e inspiradora da infância das crianças durante as aulas de filosofia. Ao investigar a (im)possibilidade das crianças fazerem filosofia, vemos semelhanças com a experiência de tocar violão, o qual transformamos em um personagem conceitual para nos ajudar a (re)pensar o ensino de filosofia para crianças. Ensaiamos, neste texto, formas de explorar os sentidos que se desprendem de experiências vividas entre a infância e a (...) filosofia a partir de encontros vividos em salas de aula, para encontrarmos/criarmos possibilidades de alimentarmos essa investigação ao invés de pôr fim a ela. Um exercício que nos possibilita encontrar/construir formas mais acolhedoras, sensíveis e inventivas de fazer, viver e habitar a educação entre a infância e a filosofia na escola. Deparamo-nos, assim, com ideia (conceito-corpo) de devir-violão, a qual trabalhamos a partir dos encontros com Gilles Deleuze e Jean-Luc Nancy. Vida. É disso que se trata este texto; e pesquisa, pois, no que diz respeito à educação, essas duas coisas se confundem, acontecem juntas, co-partilham percursos, são inseparáveis; do mesmo modo que não podemos separar o som do arrepio que causam em nossa pele. O texto é, antes de tudo, um convite a nos colocarmos à escuta daquilo que nos toca, não para explicar ou fundamentar nossas práticas, mas sim para descobrir e inventar sentidos: ser em-com-outros, entre educação, filosofia, infâncias e escolas. (shrink)

Descartes's distinction between res cogitans and res extensa is a paradigmatic concept on which Western thought has been grounded. The reductionist and objectivistic approach of modern science draws its fundamental premise from it. This dualism has also instigated a view of human as separate from nature. The complexity approach in its most radical form questions many of these assumptions, asserting that the subjective and objective dimensions are involved in a relation of mutual determination and dependence. This article argues that if (...) the dualistic metaphysics is replaced by a vision emphasizing this mutual dependence, a new way of interacting with nature may also be fostered. (shrink)

(2005). FOCUS: European Views on Complexity, Recursion, and Planetary Ethics Preface to the FOCUS Section. World Futures: Vol. 61, No. 4, pp. 247-249.

The potential for jointly using or integrating Western science and indigenous knowledge, especially in such fields as environmental management, is a hotly debated topic nowadays. However, the difficulties involved in such a task are not always fully understood and co-management experiences achieved only partially the expected outcomes. In this contribution, I show how a sound combination of the two bodies of knowledge would be possible only if there is a way to accommodate different interpretations of reality and knowledge criteria. The (...) issue should then be faced at the epistemological level too, discussing the possibility and implications of a genuine epistemic pluralism. With reference, among others, to Feyerabend’s later writings, here I illustrate some possible insights for addressing the matter that a Western perspectivist stance could provide. (shrink)

Cybernetic governmentality weakens the capacity of resistant subjectivities to struggle against neoliberal rationality because digitalized subjectivation processes are constantly pushed towards the logics of the market and into codifications of competitive evaluation. Despite the potential for new forms of collectivity contained in the concept of virtuality, technological evolution has disseminated a systemic form of digitality that operates not through collective procedures but through subjective-individualistic ones. Hence arises a danger that was indicated by Deleuze decades ago: that of confusing the virtual (...) with the possible. By constructing a genealogy that is built around Pierre Levy’s optimistic representation of cyberspace, Bernard Stiegler’s work on the contemporary disenchantment of the computerized world, Baudrillard’s metaphysics of code and Antoinette Rouvroy’s analysis of algorithmic governmentality, we will demonstrate that digitality is between us and that this amounts to an irreversible fact entailing a critical confrontation with its current manifestation. (shrink)

The author, starting from what is currently known about cup-marks and their distribution in the north-western Italian alpine area, formulated a hypothesis on their material and ritual functions in the Neolithic period. It is conceivable that cup-marks were originally carved in connection with the ritual use of Amanita muscaria, and that they may later have assumed other functions as well.

Aging is characterized by the decline and deterioration of functional cells and results in a wide variety of molecular damages and reduced physical and mental capacity. The knowledge on aging process is important because life expectancy is expected to rise until 2050. Aging cannot be considered a homogeneous process and includes different trajectories characterized by states of fitness, frailty, and disability. Frailty is a dynamic condition put between a normal functional state and disability, with reduced capacity to cope with stressors. (...) This geriatric syndrome affects physical, neuropsychological, and social domains and is driven by emotional and spiritual components. Sarcopenia is considered one of the determinants and the biological substrates of physical frailty. Physical and cognitive frailty are separately approached during daily clinical practice. The concept of motoric cognitive syndrome has partially changed this scenario, opening interesting windows toward future approaches. Thus, the purpose of this manuscript is to provide an excursus on current clinical practice, enforced by aneddoctical cases. The analysis of the current state of the art seems to support the urgent need of comprehensive organizational model incorporating physical and cognitive spheres in the same umbrella. (shrink)

(2005). Translator's Introduction to RE: From Prefix to Paradigm. World Futures: Vol. 61, No. 4, pp. 250-253.

We study a regularized version of Van Hove’s 1952 model, in which a quantum field interacts linearly with sources of finite width lying at fixed positions. We show that the central result of Van Hove’s 1952 paper on the foundations of Quantum Field Theory, the orthogonality between the spaces of state vectors which correspond to different values of the parameters of the theory, disappears when a well-defined model is considered. We comment on the implications of our results for the contemporary (...) relevance of Van Hove’s article. (shrink)

The radical changes deriving from the COVID-19 emergency have heavily upset some of the most familiar routines of daily work life. Abruptly, many workers have been forced to face the difficulties that come with switching to remote working. Basing on the theoretical framework proposed by the Job Demands-Resources model, the purpose of this paper was to explore the effect of work overload, on behavioral stress, meant as an outcome linked to the health impairment process. Furthermore, the aim of the study (...) was to explore the mediating role of job crafting, considered as a second-order construct consisting of two dimensions in the abovementioned relation. Participants were 530 workers experiencing remote working or work-from-home during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Italy. Hypotheses were explored by using three different latent variables, measured reflexively through indicators on a 5-point scale, extracted from validated questionnaires. Data analysis was performed through Structural Equation Modeling; to test the mediation, bootstrap validation was computed. Results showed that the mediation of job crafting was partial. More specifically, the direct effect between work overload and behavioral stress was positive; moreover, the indirect, negative effect through the mediation of job crafting was also significant. Therefore, results showed that job crafting can play a crucial role as a protective factor supporting the activation and adjustment of suitable resources; these resources can be useful to deal with the negative effects of work overload, particularly under the condition of heavy remote working and use of technologies, on individual outcomes. Starting from the current global scenario of the pandemic that has not yet ceased its effects, the study suggested decisive theoretical and practical implications. Accordingly, findings extended the current trends in occupational health psychology research, with special reference to the mainstream topic “work and COVID-19” in the Italian context. Finally, results can give suggestions to companies engaged in managing change, recommending that they build a collaborative workplace at the individual and collective level to implement job crafting interventions and enrich the personal and organizational resources of workers, which is useful cope with the current demands. (shrink)

v. 1. Dall'antico al moderno -- v. 2. L'età contemporanea -- v. 3. Teoria e metodo.

The extravagances of quantum mechanics never fail to enrich daily the debate around natural philosophy. Entanglement, non-locality, collapse, many worlds, many minds, and subjectivism have challenged generations of thinkers. Its approach can perhaps be placed in the stream of quantum logic, in which the “strangeness” of QM is “measured” through the violation of Bell’s inequalities and, from there, attempts an interpretative path that preserves realism yet ends up overturning it, restating the fundamental mechanisms of QM as a logical necessity for (...) a strong realism. (shrink)

This textbook covers all the essentials, weaving together the latest theory with the experimental techniques, instrumentation, and observational methods astronomers use to study high-energy radiation from space.

This article discusses three textual problems in Servius’ commentary on Virgil (Serv. on Aen. 11.741; Ecl. 2.58; Ecl. 4.4). In two notes a new conjecture is proposed; in one passage a transmitted reading, so far neglected by earlier editors, is supported.

In this short note I shall address a problem of word order in a passage of Petronius’Cena Trimalchionisby pointing out an attractive variant in the keycodex Traguriensis, which has been neglected thus far.

Beginning with Ken Wilber's framework for the evolution of human consciousness, this essay investigates the critical threshold crossed around the year 500 B.C.E., when human consciousness in the Western world transformed from a predominantly oral and tribal framework to a largely written and abstract one. This transformation has been called the birth of the mental-ego-the birth of an autonomous, willful, and uniquely individual consciousness. Yet, in the Western world this birth was inextricably influenced by a completely novel literary invention-the Greek (...) version of the alphabet. Living at the precise moment when this new invention was rapidly proliferating throughout ancient Greece, the Western world's most famous philosopher, Plato, posited his ontology of human disconnection from the sensory world. For Plato, the "real world" is the abstract world of transcendent Ideas, of which our sensory, human world is only a pale reflection. The following essay asks, then: is it just a mere coincidence that the world's most abstract literacy tool (the Greek alphabet) and the world's most abstract and disembodied philosophy (Plato's theory of Ideas) just happened to flourish in ancient Greece at exactly the same time in history? (shrink)

Nakon uvodnoga dijela u kojem ću govoriti o problematičnosti identiteta i poteškoći njegovog faktičnog priznavanja unutar suvremenog zapadnog kulturnog okruženja, u prvom ću poglavlju analizirati neke vidove suvremenog zapadnog mišljenja koji su problematiku identiteta, u bilo kojem svom obliku, dovele na površinu. U drugom ću se poglavlju usredotočiti na poimanje pojedinca kao individue, budući da se radi o pojmu koji je pretežito zapadnog porijekla i koji ima svoj izvor u antičkoj filozofiji, a unutar suvremenog tehničkog doba sve preduvjete svog završetka. (...) U trećem poglavlju pažnja će biti usmjerena na sagledavanje funkcionalnosti kao na noviji oblik »identiteta« koji neminovno vodi do sve rasprostranjenijeg procesa deidentifikacije, budući da je ljudskom djelovanju oduzeta ona svrhovitost koja ga je razlikovala od ostalih živih bića. Upravo zato cjelokupno obzorje tehničke funkcionalnosti čovjeku postaje sve nedostupnije i neshvatljivije. Zato je unutar tog obzorja potrebno tražiti i pronaći nova značenja za već istrošene pojmove, kao što je pojam identiteta, koji je svoj pravi smisao i izvor nalazio unutar prijašnjeg, antropološkog obzorja.After the introduction which deals with the problem of identity and the difficulty of real recognition in the modern western cultural environment, in the first chapter I am going to analyse some aspects of the modern western thought, which have brought to surface the problem of identity in all its forms. In the second chapter I will concentrate on the concept of the single person as individual, as it is a concept of mainly western origin, which finds its origin in ancient philosophy while in the modern technical age it finds all the conditions for its end. The third part will focus on the examination of functionality as a new kind of “identity”, which, inevitably, brings to a larger process of deidentification, considering that human action has lost the functionality that used to distinguish humans from other living beings. Because of this, the complete horizon of technical functionality is becoming more inaccessible and obscure. Thus, it is within this horizon that we should look for and find new meanings for already old and worn out concepts, among which there is also identity, which has found its sense and origin in the previous, anthropological horizon. (shrink)

Moj rad u vezi s Vicovom misli polazi od stajališta da sveukupna zapadna filozofska misao – kao uostalom i religija i moderna znanost – predstavlja proizvod čovjekovog obrambenog mehanizma protiv straha od smrti kao sveopćeg ništavila, odnosno kao obrana od evidentnosti da stvari izlaze iz ničega u kojem se, na kraju egzistencijalnog ciklusa, neminovno i vraćaju. Riječ je o evidentnosti koju je starogrčka filozofija prva evocirala i prikazala.U sklopu tog općeg filozofskog obrambenog mehanizma i Vicova »Nova znanost« promatrana je kao (...) još jedan pokušaj da se u kaotičnost još neuređenih društvenih činjenica uvede određeni epistemski red, tako da se fenomenološka zbilja obuhvati u jednom racionalnom totalitetu koji će ljudskom biću pružati sigurnost.U tom smislu, Vicova filozofija, a posebice njegovo glavno djelo Načela nove znanosti, zauzima posebno mjesto unutar zapadne filozofske tradicije, jer u sebi sadržava i ujedinjuje dvije važne komponente europske misli koje će se u moderno doba razvijati u različitim pravcima. Misli se, s jedne strane, na filozofsku misao koja će svoj vrhunac dostići u Hegelovoj sistematizaciji zapadne filozofske misli i, s druge strane, na modernu znanost koja će, u svojoj sve većoj specijalizaciji u sve partikularnije znanstvene discipline i parcijalizaciji same stvarnosti, istinu identificirati s djelotvornošću proučavanih činjenica, ostavljajući po strani apstraktnu, epistemsku istinu filozofije.My report on G. B. Vico’s thought moves from the assumption that all Western philosophy – just as religion and modern science – represents the product of the defence mechanism human beings use against the fear of death seen as absolute nothingness, that is defence from the evidence that things come from the nothingness to which, at the end of their existence, they imminently return. It is the obviousness that Greek philosophy has evoked and showed first.Within this general philosophical defence mechanism Vico’s “New Science” is also seen as an attempt to introduce a kind of epistemic order in the chaos of social facts not yet systemised according to reason, trying in this way to understand the phenomenological reality inside a rational whole capable of granting security to human beings.In this sense Vico’s philosophy and especially his main work, Modern Science, holds an important position in the Western philosophical tradition, as it contains and combines two important constituents of Western thought which in the modern age will develop in various directions. We are referring to the philosophical thought which will reach its climax in Hegel’s systematisation of Western philosophy and on the other hand, to the modern science that, considered its ever increasing specialisation into always more detailed scientific disciplines and the fragmentation of reality itself, will identify truth with the fulfilling efficacy of tested facts, leaving behind the abstract epistemic truth of philosophy. (shrink)

This essay offers an overview of Historicism by looking at its prominent figures in XX century. Starting from the first use of the term storicismo, the author highlights the substantial difference between Giovanni Gentile’s and Benedetto Croce’s historicistic perspectives, especially emphasized in the Thirties and the Forties . The author’s historical reconstruction then illustrates the “crisis” which Historicism had to face up to after the II World War, alighting the more significant cases of the anew sought “paradigm of historicity”, and (...) the interpretations of “Historicism” between the Sixties and the Seventies against which Pietro Piovani talked explicitly of a “New Historicism”. Starting from Piovani’s positions, Fulvio Tessitore and his school propose a radical form of critical and problematic neo-historicism which, recalling the outcomes of Weber’s Historismus in a strictly anti-metaphisical direction, is centered on the ideas of individuality, difference, ethical and gnoseological pluralism, understanding of the other, life. (shrink)