Le grandi conquiste che l’uomo deve al suo genio sono lì da vedere.
Il giudizio su alcune puo’ dividere, lasciamole da parte. Tanto ce ne sono molte che ci vedono più o meno tutti d’accordo nel definirle tali.
Charles Murray ha cercato di inventariarle mediando quanto riportano le enciclopedie più autorevoli.
La quantificazione di Murray è contenuta nel monumentale “Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950” che copre quasi tre millenni della storia umana.
E’ inevitabile che ci siano delle approssimazioni, cosicché, per prudenza, è buona norma limitarsi a segnalare e commentare solo le tendenze inequivocabili.
Detto questo – una volta compilato l’inventario - è inevitabile porsi le domande chiave. Per esempio: cosa facilità le “conquiste dell’umanità”, cosa accelera il suo avanzamento?
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Ci si aspetta che la pace debba coniugarsi con la prosperità e l'avanzamento dell' uomo...
... Besides being worthy goals in themselves, peace and prosperity might reasonably be expected to promote accomplishment. War and civil unrest disrupt all sorts of human activities...
Eppure la guerra non sembra così distruttiva come sembrerebbe di primo acchito...
... consider how few years it took Germany and Japan to recover from the devastation of World War II...
Si pensi solo al caso anomalo della Grecia di Pericle...
... Nowhere was the disruption of daily life greater than in Athens itself, ravaged by both war and a plague in –430 that killed a third of the population. And yet this century and a half of war and devastation embraces the Periclean Age. Skipping over the merely significant figures and listing just the major ones, those were the years that saw Aeschylus, Pindar, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Herodotus, Protagoras, Euripides, Myron, Polykleitos, Lysippos, Phidias, Thucydides, Socrates, Democritus, Hippocrates, Polygnotus, Aristophanes, Zeuxis, Eudoxus, Praxiteles, Theophrastus, and, of course, Plato and Aristotle. Everyone in that list from Aristophanes to the end did his most important work in the darkest years of Athens’...
O a quello per molti versi simile della Firenze rinascimentale...
...Life in Renaissance Florence was not quite as harrowing as in Athens, but it was not tranquil. In the autumn of 1495, the Florentine Renaissance was about to enter its most sublime decades. Leonardo da Vinci, age 43, was beginning work on The Last Supper. Michelangelo, just turned 20, had already completed Madonna of the Stairs and was entering the period that would account for much of his finished sculpture. Raphael had turned 11 and was learning his craft from his father. Also that autumn, Florence had just ousted its ruler, was invaded by a French army under the command of Charles VIII, and was spared destruction only because it paid a large ransom. Florence would spend the next five years as a theocratic republic under the religious radical Savonarola, followed by his ouster and execution. The year 1495 is illustrative, not anomalous. Florence was in a chronic state of civil strife, invasion...
O il periodo d'oro olandese...
... The Dutch golden age in the last two-thirds of 17C gathered strength in the middle of the Thirty Years’War and ended in 1648 with its treaty with Spain...
Alla fine diventa eccezione il caso opposto: quello francese, per esempio...
... Of the most famous golden ages, only France’s La Belle Époque, dated in various ways between 1870 to 1914, was a time of peace...
Il senso comune non ne esce confermato ma il test, bisogna dirlo, è povero: la pace è troppo scarsa nella storia dell'uomo per poter testare in modo affidabile il suo influsso...
... Peace cannot explain the trajectory of human accomplishment because there hasn’t been enough peace for a good test. This doesn’t mean that some degree of war and civil unrest are good for human accomplishment, just that they haven’t consistently impeded it...
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La prosperità economica, invece, fa bene sia alle arti che alle scienze...
... ECONOMIC WEALTH AND GROWTH Accomplishment in the arts and sciences is facilitated by growing national wealth, both through the additional money that can support the arts and sciences and through indirect spillover effects of economic vitality on cultural vitality...
Qui il senso comune è confermato: le società più ricche sono anche quelle che producono più conoscenza, e anche il nesso non è contestabile.
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Poi ci sono fattori meno ovvi rispetto a pace e prosperità. Per esempio la presenza di modelli esemplari da imitare...
... Streams of accomplishment become self-reinforcing as new artists and scientists build on the models before them... Raphael and Faraday provides inspiration for aspiring young artists and scientists... Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides appeared within a few decades of each other...
L'emulazione conta. Se sia spinta da invidia o ammirazione conta meno...
... Dean Simonton attacked the question anew with an arsenal of quantitative techniques... he demonstrated that the strongest predictors of creativity in a current generation are the number of creative persons and products in the two preceding generations...
Il modello esemplare si forma se il grande genio viene onorato e rispettato nella cultura in cui opera. E’ una questione di dignità e status sociale che scatena la gara benefica verso la “grande conquista”.
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Serve poi una rete che metta in connessione le élite...
... CRITICAL MASS: ELITE CITIES Streams of accomplishment are fostered by the existence of cities that serve as centers of human capital and supply audiences and patrons for the arts and sciences...
Qui la città è stata decisiva...
... Cities are not only where the significant figures worked, but where they were born and raised. Cities as Nurturers of Talent...
Ma non tutte le città sono uguali. Quelle che propongono una diversità culturale spiccano...
... Dean Simonton discusses this raw material in terms of cultural diversity.10 The literature on creative personalities consistently demonstrates the importance of relativism, complexity, diversity, and richness. Simonton notes that, historically, talented children who grew up in a rich, diverse cultural environment were more likely to develop than those who grew up in a culturally monolithic environment...
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Altro fattore importante: la libertà...
... FREEDOM OF ACTION Streams of accomplishment are fostered by political regimes that give de facto freedom of action to their potential artists and scholars...
Ma non quella politica...
... Political freedom technically defined fails to explain anything about accomplishment in the arts and sciences... most human accomplishment occurred under regimes that had almost no guaranteed political freedoms... Perhaps, given time, political freedom will prove to be a better environment for accomplishment than any other system...
Gli stati totalitari non hanno fatto male nella storia delle grandi conquiste, purché siano stati in grado di creare delle enclave di libertà per pochi fortunati...
... Totalitarian states effectively quash human accomplishment in the arts and philosophy. They are only slightly less stifling in the sciences, and then because they create isolated enclaves within the totalitarian state that mimic to some degree the intellectual incentives and institutions of non-totalitarian states...
URSS...
... Totalitarian states effectively quash human accomplishment in the arts and philosophy. They are only slightly less stifling in the sciences, and then because they create isolated enclaves within the totalitarian state that mimic to some degree the intellectual incentives and institutions of non-totalitarian states... Soviet Union had produced no significant figures in the visual arts who had not made their reputations before the revolution. Only two composers (Kabalevsky and Shostakovich)...
Ma come può formarsi un'oasi di libertà in un regime?...
... Freedom of action in an autocracy or strong monarchy could be the result of liberties established by custom, or it could be the result of a tolerant ruler...
Il totalitarismo senza sbocchi è invece la tomba della creatività umana…
... That the Balkans did not produce great art and science under the Ottomans is no mystery... The results are that countries with a history of despotism show sharply reduced levels of accomplishment. Parliamentary monarchies and liberal democracies were generally more productive than tolerant autocracies...
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Ma l'uomo è fatto per eccellere oppure vive bene nella mediocrità? Qual è la sua natura?...
... Is it to be drawn to excellence and, given the chance, to pursue it, or is excellence something that must be elicited from human beings who are naturally indifferent to it?...
Secondo Aristotele l'uomo tende a realizzare in pieno tutte le sue potenzialità. Ama farlo, lo desidera. Potremmo chiamare tutto ciò "Principio di Aristotele"...
... Other things equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity... The things we enjoy the most deeply are the things at which we are most expert...
In psicologia una simile concezione dell'uomo era vista come ridicola, almeno negli anni sessanta, quando il paradigma dominante era il comportamentismo. Per i comportamentisti non esiste un’ambizione interiore: l’uomo desidera fare cio’ che gli incentivi esterni lo inducono a fare. Punto e basta...
... Until the 1960s, any psychologist who claimed that the Aristotelian principle says something true about the behavior of human beings faced ridicule...The human mind and personality are driven by positive and negative reinforcements, the behaviorists said. A concept such as “enjoyment” is illusory—human beings will enjoy whatever they are trained to enjoy....
Abraham Maslow fu il primo a seminare dubbi...
... Abraham Maslow published an article entitled “A Theory of Human Motivation”(1943)...Humans persistently exhibited tendencies to enjoy the stimulation of new things, complexity, surprises, even in the absence of any perceptible external reinforcement... humans enjoy not just competence but excellence...
La sua visione venne presto sistematizzata dai suoi discepoli...
Csikszentmihalyi published a series of books elaborating the data and the theory that now goes under the label of flow...
Per costoro a noi piace fare quel che sappiamo fare e ci piace farlo al meglio. Fare al meglio cio’ che sappiamo fare ci realizza. Si parla di solito di “teoria del flusso”.
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Purtroppo è doveroso concludere con una mesta notizia: siamo in declino. Un declino iniziato nel XIX secolo…
… Though the results vary among the inventories, the overall story is one of recent decline, usually starting sometime in 19C…
Ma questi sono solo crudi dati: bisogna interpretarli!
Per comprendere le cause dobbiamo comprendere meglio la dinamica. Sarebbe bene sapere se ci sono meno geni in rapporto alla popolazione oppure meno persone si occupano delle materie che fanno emergere il genio e producono la conquista epocale?…
… When the ratio of significant figures to the total population goes down in literature, to continue with that example, one of two changes (or possibly both in tandem) must have occurred: the proportion of the total population involved with good literature as producers, critics, and audience, has gone down, or the proportion of people who write lasting work has gone down…
Forse la spiegazione del declino è benigna, chi puo’ dirlo? Forse il genio si impegna in campi non tradizionali o comunque non coperti dall’inventario…
… The explanations for a falling accomplishment rate can be benign. The first half of 20C offers an obvious possibility for the case of literature: among all the new talents who might have been engaged in novels and plays, a large portion became engaged in film and, later, television…
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Vediamo più da vicino il caso delle scienze e cerchiamo di interpretarlo in modo benigno.
Oggi, anche se c’è un rallentamento, le conquiste impattano di più sulla vita di tutti i giorni (qualcosa che l’inventario trascura)…
… If the scientific inventories were designed to measure the impact of events on daily life, the rate of accomplishment unquestionably would have gone through the roof. But that’s not what the inventories purport to measure. Rather, they are designed to capture significant advances in knowledge…
L’eliocentrismo ha cambiato la vita a pochi. Ma il caso del motore a scoppio è ben diverso…
… The impact of an invention such as the internal combustion engine was so far-reaching that it is hard to imagine a metric that could express it. But as an increment in human understanding of how the world works, it was similar to many other contemporaneous developments…
Inoltre, nei secoli del declino, la popolazione generale è esplosa mentre la popolazione di scienziati potrebbe non aver tenuto il passo, anche se è aumentata…
… The market for science and technology becomes saturated after a certain point, and the West passed that point in mid 19C…
Queste considerazioni ci portano a ritenere che l’inventario sottostimi il reale avanzamento scientifico.
Forse abbiamo già raccolto tutti i frutti bassi dell’albero: dal 1800 il lavoro si fa molto più difficile…
… Scientific and technological discoveries after the mid 1800s were more complex than in earlier days, and therefore the increments in knowledge they represent could be undercounted…
L’esempio della radio…
… Consider, for example, the radio—an invention of incalculable importance, but one that depended on many scientific and technological advances. If the inventory of events had invention of the radio as just one entry, it would be vulnerable to charges that it undercounts complex technological accomplishments…
Sarebbe ingiusto incolpare un’epoca se il lavoro che si trova davanti è più duro di quello delle epoche precedenti.
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Adottiamo ora un’ottica pessimista.
C’è chi ha parlato esplicitamente di fine del progresso…
… In 1969, Gunther Stent, a molecular biologist at the University of California’s Berkeley campus, published The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End of Progress…
Forse le cose da scoprire sono in numero limitato, almeno in molte materie tradizionali…
… Stent acknowledged that his readers would resist the idea, but he asked them to consider the proposition in its component parts. No one would argue that anatomy or geography were subjects without limits, for example… Everything there is to know about chemical reactions, for example, can be known. Once known, that field will be as closed…
Ultimamente queste posizioni sono state riprese…
… Stent’s argument, widely derided at the time, has been taken more seriously by his colleagues in recent years, as described in John Horgan’s The End of Science (1997)….
Inutile negare che nella storia della scienza ci siano periodi più o meno fortunati: periodi in cui c’è più da scoprire e periodi in cui c’è meno…
… Physicist Richard Feynman had a strong sense of how lucky he was to have come along when he did. “It is like the discovery of America—you only discover it once,”…
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Per le arti il giudizio è ancora più complesso: il concetto di capolavoro è obsoleto, non si accorda con le nuove tecnologie impiegate nella produzione e nella diffusione artistica. Questo solo fatto invaliderebbe l’utilità di un inventario dei capolavori per giudicare la nostra epoca.
