Chi ama la scienza?

Chi ama la scienza?

Chi ama la scienza non sa e non vuole definirla: se non c’è riuscito Kant, perché mai dovrebbe riuscirci lui?

Chi ama la scienza pensa che possedere più info sia meglio che possederne meno.

Chi ama la scienza è grato ai no-vax: grazie a loro, più info a disposizione.

Chi ama la scienza è grato ai genitori di Charlie Gard: più medicina estrema, più info nel carniere.

Chi ama la scienza è grato a chi sostiene che i dinosauri si siano estinti nel medioevo: la tesi dà la possibilità a molti di rispondere senza ricorrere al principio di autorità. Tra questi, infatti, alcuni condanneranno pensando: “la Scienza dice diversamente”) smascherandosi come nemici della scienza. Chi ama la scienza, infatti, è allergico al  principio di autorità, in altri termini, non dirà mai: “lo dice Aristotele”, oppure “lo dice la Bibbia”, oppure “lo dice la radio”, oppure “lo dice il professor tal dei tali”; ma soprattutto non dirà mai e poi mai: “lo dice la Scienza”.

Chi ama la scienza sa che nessuna ipotesi scientifica  puo’ essere verificata e sa anche che la cosa più semplice da fare al mondo  è costruirsi una teoria in grado di spiegare adeguatamente tutti i fatti. Sa anche che una teoria verificata sul campo  puo’ essere costruita su ipotesi tutte fallaci. Infine, sa altrettanto bene come i fatti siano indistinguibili dalle teorie: in altri termini, chi dice “ho visto”, “ho sentito”, “ho ascoltato”, in genere non fa appello a un mero fatto ma a elaborate teorie della luce, delle onde sonore, del sistema nervoso, eccetera.

Chi ama la scienza sa che la scienza procede per rivoluzioniche azzerano o quasi le nostre credenze pregresse, meglio quindi non affezionarsi troppo. Prendi solo il caso della meccanica quantistica: per secoli guardavamo alla realtà come a qualcosa più o meno determinata dalle leggi di natura… e non era così. Per il pragmatico magari cambia poco ma per lo scienziato – che si occupa di conoscere la verità – cambia tutto.

Chi ama la scienza, come abbiamo detto, non definisce la scienza, la pensa come il sapere che emerge quando non esistono barriere all’entrata, quando non esiste una casta sacerdotale che ammette per cooptazione. In questo senso, è vero, “la scienza non è democratica”: è anarchica!

Chi possiede una mentalità scientifica sa che la scienza è un’impresa di gruppo. Lo scienziato singolo conta poco, quel che conta è la pressione esercitata da tutti i suoi pari. Lo scienziato singolo, lasciato a se stesso, non è meno irrazionale di tutti noi (si affida a tutto pur di perseguire il suo obbiettivo, anche ai sogni), è invidioso (vedi come Galileo fu perseguitato innanzitutto dai suoi colleghi) e si affeziona alle proprie idee molto più che ai fatti (Galileo è qui ancora un caso di scuola). 

Chi ama la scienza sa che a questo mondo esistono soloprobabilità. Il sapere consiste in un aggiornamento di probabilità.

Chi ama la scienza sa bene come il sapere scientifico sia zeppo di dogmi.

Chi ama la scienza sa che tra “credere” e “conoscere” non c’è una reale differenza.

Chi ama la scienza sa che spesso la scienza si occupa dell’esistenza di enti astratti come i quark, il bosone di Higgs, i buchi neri, l’anti-materia, gli universi paralleli oppure Dio.

Il nostro povero individualismo

Il nostro povero individualismo

The Individualist Legacy in Latin America – The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty  – Alvaro Vargas Llosa

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Trigger warning: – la parte sana della tradizione latinoamericana – una una certa vocazione al commercio – scuola di Salamanca –  spirito individualista – ribelli alla corona – municipalità – ripartire dalla cultura del nero –

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It is often said that the root of Latin America’s underdevelopment lies in its statist tradition.1 That tradition goes as far back as the pre-Columbian states, under which masses of laborers toiled for the benefit of the ruling classes;

Note:TRADIZIONE STATALISTA

An individualist spirit has sought to manifest itself in Latin America in all historical periods. This legacy goes as far back as the family units that worked their own land and exchanged goods in ancient times, moving from them to the Jesuits of the School of Salamanca who discovered the monetary causes of inflation and the subjective nature of value at the very time when Spain colonized Latin America in the sixteenth century, and from them to the informal (black-market) economy that represents a contemporary and inventive response by the people to the state’s illegitimacy.

LO SPIRITO INDIVIDUALISTA

Trade and Property in Ancient Times

Despite the limits on communication imposed by the absence of pack animals and by the fact that the wheel had not yet been discovered in the area, trade occurred in all three of the great pre-Columbian civilizations—the Incas, the Aztecs, and the Mayas (who used the wheel only in toys).

Note:COMMERCIO

Trade played an important part in making possible the loose confederate organization of the Maya culture that flourished in the Yucatán Peninsula and the surrounding areas,

Note:MAYA

A commercial tradition was also strong in Mexico. Before Tenochtitlán established itself as the undisputed capital of what is known as the Aztec Empire, that city-state coexisted with Tlatelolco, an entirely mercantile center.

Note:MESSICO

The pochtecas specialized in long distance commerce and supervised markets in the Valley of Mexico.

Note:POTHECAS

Important cultures had surfaced in what is known today as Peru long before the Incas. The people of the Tiahuanaco culture, born around A.D. 500 in the mountains of southern Peru, traded intensely with the coast and even with Central America. Before the Inca Empire came into being, when the Inca kingdom was but one among many others, trade continued to be a part of life in the Andes.

Note:PRE INCAS

Because the people had no written language, scant evidence exists of just how intense trade was before the Inca Empire and how much of it survived until Spain conquered South America, but notarial records of early colonial times attest to the Indians’ acquaintance with contract and commerce despite the stifling controls put in place by the Inca Empire.

Note:TANTO COMMERCIO PRIMA DELLA CONQUISTA

Another element of individualism, apart from commerce, also existed in the ancient Andes. Between the time of the Tiahuanaco culture’s decline and the emergence of the Inca Empire, a political eclipse occurred during which the people went back to their small land-based clans, which employed a form of private property. Each ayllu consisted of one or more families claiming to descend from some remote godlike ancestor.4 The families owned the land, which the chief distributed.

Note:PROPRIETÀ PRIVATA

Anyone who visits a market fair among the Indian communities of the Andes, southern Mexico, or Guatemala will detect a powerful spirit of trade among peoples who in many ways remain remote from the mainstream of Western culture.

Note:FIERE E MERCATI

So among the Indians who came to be organized in vast empires under the Aztecs and the Incas, and in powerful city-states in the case of the Mayas, the spirit of the individual was not dead.

Note:CONCLUSIONE

Rebellion and Sound Economics in Colonial Times

The conquest of South America was marked by tensions over property and autonomy between the conquerors and the Spanish monarchy that chartered them.

Note:SPAGNA E CONQISTADORES

In the mid-1540s, the Spanish monarchy established direct control over the colonies and enacted laws limiting the conquistadores’ estates (Muro Orejón 1945). The ensuing conflict in Peru saw the emergence of an ideologically motivated movement under Gonzalo Pizarro. Major intellectual voices justified their sedition against absolutism with ideas of government by consent and private property. The rebels based a good part of their claims on St. Thomas Aquinas’s natural-rights doctrine and on the medieval Spanish legal codes known as Las Siete Partidas,

Note:GONZALO PIZARRO… IL RIBELLE

In documents such as Representación de Huamanga, the manifesto of the rebellion, as well as in letters to the king, Gonzalo Pizarro and his men stated that defending property and questioning laws that had been passed without consultation was not tantamount to disloyalty (Lohmann Villena 1977).

Note:IL MANIFESTO DEI RIBELLI

A much more systematic and profound (if equally unheeded by the political authorities) contribution to the individualist spirit in the sixteenth century was the School of Salamanca, a group of Jesuit and Dominican scholastic thinkers now considered forerunners of the Austrian school of economics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Note:SCUOLA DI SALAMANCA

Although their teachings did not shape public policy in Spain or therefore in Latin America, where in practice scholasticism meant the theological justification of colonial oppression, the Salamancan scholars constitute a venerable legacy of sound economic thinking.

Note:ININFLUENTI

Long before the Austrians, the School of Salamanca discovered the subjective nature of value,

Note:IL VALORE SOGGETTIVO

Alejandro Chafuén (1986) has aptly described many other contributions made to the capitalist ethos by the School of Salamanca.

Note:CHAFUÉN

Francisco de Vitoria, a leading scholar, denounced the slavery of Indians as running contrary to natural law; Domingo de Soto and Tomás de Mercado criticized common ownership; Juan de Mariana justified killing tyrants because they violated law and consent, and he asked for both moderate taxes and a reduction of public spending; Martín de Azpilcueta, Luis de Molina, and Diego de Covarrubias y Leyva understood the monetary causes of inflation, a major topic at a time when the importation of Latin American bullion was affecting prices in Europe; and, finally, Fray Felipe de la Cruz and others, though not going so far as to accept the concept of interest, which was an anathema at the time, justified the discounting of bills of exchange.

Note:CONTRIBUTI

Liberalism in Republican Times

The Spanish monopoly was an essential target of the Creole revolt. Being able to trade with England, France, Holland, and other places was a major aspiration. Additional forms of government intervention were also severely questioned. The ideas of Rousseau and other collectivists of the Enlightenment were not the only ones feeding Latin Americans’ imagination. The French Physiocrats, with their message of minimal government direction and their belief that progress came from the freedom of individuals to multiply the resources of nature, also had a strong impact, as did the American Founding Fathers, especially for leaders such as Francisco de Miranda.

Note:RIBELLI LIBERALI

Civic engagement at the local level during the independence struggle was symptomatic of grassroots efforts to decentralize power. These efforts were not like New England town-hall meetings, but the municipalities were focal points of citizen discussion and participation and of efforts at liberation from the centralized colonial structures.

Note:MUNICIPALITÀ

The independence movement was a complex mix of liberal and conservative tendencies. The 1812 Constitution, signed by Spanish politicians and a number of Latin American delegates in the Spanish city of Cádiz under Napoleon’s occupation, became a symbol of liberalism for the independence movements. Yet this ideal on the part of some participants coexisted with a conservative distrust of liberalism on the part of many Creoles, for whom French influence in Spanish affairs actually became a reason for breaking ties with the metropolis.

Note:CONSERVATORI E LIBERALI

Amid the chaos and the furor of Latin America’s nineteenth century, one story speaks to us of a significant degree of civilization: Argentina’s relatively limited government under its 1853 Constitution, which laid the foundation for some seven decades of economic expansion. The name of Juan Bautista Alberdi, a leading member (together with Domingo Faustino Sarmiento) of the remarkable Argentine “generation of 1837,” has been lost amid the names of the more colorful, larger-than-life despots of his time (including that legendary tyrant José Manuel Rosas, who ruled from Buenos Aires until 1852). …Because of institutional reforms and no doubt also a cultural predisposition on the part of many European immigrants, the country experienced the second highest rate of economic growth and enjoyed the greatest rate of foreign investment …

Note:ARGENTINA 1853… UN ESEMPIO

Today’s Individualist Survivors

For proof that Latin Americans are the same as others in their instinctive pursuit of self-interest through enterprise and exchange, no contemporary phenomenon speaks more eloquently than the informal (“underground”) economy. It should be called the “survival economy” because it refers to the millions of people all over the world who carve out an existence for themselves

Note:IL SOMMERSO COME SEGNO DI VITALISMO

Housing, transport, manufacturing, retail commerce, and other activities to which informal producers devote their time represent approximately 60 percent of all hours worked in Peru (Ghersi 1997). Informal employment accounts for more than 50 percent of the working population in Mexico and for 40 percent of wage earners in Argentina (Ricci 2002), and it involves more Brazilians than the combined number of people in the public sector and in formal industry in that country (Neves 1999).

Note:  %

The informal economy has created not only a parallel economy but also a sort of parallel culture.

Note:CULTURA PARALLELA

As early as 1971, anthropologist Keith Hart had delivered an address in which he spoke of the informal economy in some African nations as “a means of salvation” that allows people “denied success by the formal opportunity structure” to “increase their incomes” (Hart 1973, 67).

Note:NERO COME SALVEZZA

In Latin America, despite ritual gestures in favor of the informal economy, such as distributing property titles or deeds that signify “ownership,” but not real, fungible property in practice, the legal sector continues to exclude the “other” by imposing barrier after barrier to entry.

Note:BARRIERE

The individualist legacy is dual. One dimension is academic and intellectual, extending all the way from the School of Salamanca at the time when Latin America was an Iberian colony, to the handful of Latin American intellectuals who set out as early as the 1970s to debunk contemporary myths, among them Carlos Rangel in Venezuela and the pioneers of the Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala,

INTELLETTUALI DI RIFERIMENTO

Divertirsi a rompere l’incantesimo

Divertirsi a rompere l’incantesimo

RELIGION FROM THE OUTSIDE – The Scientist as Rebel – Freeman Dyson

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Trigger warning: – atei di professione – la religione da dentro e da fuori – credere di credere – la religione fa male o bene al mondo? – la religione a scuola – amore e terrorismo

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BREAKING THE SPELL of religion is a game that many people can play. The best player of this game that I ever knew was Professor G. H. Hardy, a world-famous mathematician who happened to be a passionate atheist.

Note:HARDY: ATEO DI PROFESSIONE

There are two kinds of atheists, ordinary atheists who do not believe in God and passionate atheists who consider God to be their personal enemy.

Note:DUE TIPI DI ATEISMO

Paul Erdös was another world-famous mathematician who was a passionate atheist. Erdös always referred to God as SF, short for Supreme Fascist. Erdös had for many years successfully outwitted the dictators of Italy, Germany, and Hungary, moving from country to country to escape from their clutches.

Note:IL SUPER FASCISTA

And now comes Daniel Dennett to take his turn at breaking the spell. Dennett is a philosopher. In Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon1 he is confronting the philosophical questions arising from religion in the modern world.

Note:DENNETT

Why does religion exist? Why does it have such a powerful grip on people in many different cultures? Are the practical effects of religion preponderantly good or preponderantly evil? Is religion useful as a basis for public morality? What can we do to counter the spread of religious movements that we consider dangerous? Can the tools and methods of science help us to understand religion as a natural phenomenon?

Note:LE DOMANDE DI DENNETT

Dennett defines scientific inquiry in a narrow way, restricting it to the collection of evidence that is reproducible and testable. …He does not accept as scientific the great mass of evidence contained in historical narratives and personal experiences. Since it cannot be reproduced under controlled conditions, it does not belong to science. …

Note:COS’È LA RICERCA SCIENTIFICA PER DENNETT

He quotes with approval and high praise several passages from The Varieties of Religious Experience, the classic description of religion from the point of view of a psychologist, published by William James in 1902. …James is examining religion from the inside, like a doctor trying to see the world through the eyes of his patients. …He studied the personal experiences of saints and mystics as evidence of something real existing in a spiritual world …

Note:WILIAM JAMES

For Dennett, the visions of saints and mystics are worthless as evidence, since they are neither repeatable nor testable. Dennett is examining religion from the outside, following the rules of science.

Note:ESPERIENZE NON BRIPETIBILI

He explains them tentatively as products of a Darwinian competition between belief systems, in which only the fittest belief systems survive. The fitness of a belief system is defined by its ability to make new converts and retain their loyalty. …it has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the beliefs. …

Note:COME SPIEGARE LE RELIGIONI

He observes that belief, which means accepting certain doctrines as true, is different from belief in belief, which means believing belief in the same doctrines to be desirable. He finds evidence that large numbers of people who identify themselves as religious believers do not in fact believe the doctrines of their religions but only believe in belief as a desirable goal.

Note:CREDERE DI CREDERE

The phenomenon of “belief in belief” makes religion attractive to many people who would otherwise be hard to convert. To belong to a religion, you do not have to believe. You only have to want to believe, or perhaps you only have to pretend to believe. Belief is difficult, but belief in belief is easy.

Note:VOGLIA DI CREDERE

He quotes Alan Wolfe, one of the sociologists who study American religious organizations and practices: Evangelicalism’s popularity is due as much to its populistic and democratic urges—its determination to find out exactly what believers want and to offer it to them—as it is to certainties of the faith.…

Note:EVANGELICI E POPULISMO

Like Hardy and Erdös, Dennett plays the game of breaking the spell by making religion look silly. Many of my scientist friends and colleagues have similar prejudices. One famous scientist for whom I have a deep respect said to me, “Religion is a childhood disease from which we have recovered.” There is nothing wrong with such prejudices, provided that they are openly admitted.

Note:DIVERTIRSI A ROMPERE L’INCANTESIMO

In a long chapter entitled “Morality and Religion,” he blames religion for many of the worst evils of our century. He blames not only the minority of murderous fanatics whose religion impels them to acts of terrorism but also the majority of peaceful and moderate… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:FANATISMO E GUERRE

He quotes with approval the famous remark of the physicist Stephen Weinberg: “Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things—that takes religion.” Weinberg’s statement is true as far as it goes, but it is not the whole truth. To make it the whole truth, we must add… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:SIMMETRIA?

The main point of Christianity is that it is a religion for sinners. Jesus made that very clear. When the Pharisees asked his disciples, “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” he said, “I come… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:LA RELIGIONE DEI PECCATORI

I see no way to draw up a balance sheet, to weigh the good done by religion against the evil and decide which is greater by some impartial process. My own prejudice, looking at religion from the inside, leads me to conclude that the good vastly outweighs the evil. In many places in the United States, with widening gaps between rich and poor, churches… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:UN BILANCIO

Dennett, looking at religion from the outside, comes to the opposite conclusion. He sees the extreme religious sects that are breeding grounds for gangs of young terrorists and murderers, with the mass of ordinary believers giving… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:IL BILANCIO DI DENNETT

I see religion as a precious and ancient part of our human heritage. Dennett sees it as a load of superfluous mental baggage… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:EREDITÀ O ZAVORRA?

in the end,” he says, “my central policy recommendation is that we gently, firmly educate the people of the world, so that they can make truly… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:SCELTA INFORMATA

To give the recommendation a concrete meaning, the meaning of the little word “we” must be specified. Who are the “we” who are to… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:MA CHI EDUCA CHI?

“We” might be the parents of the children to be educated, or a local school board, or a national ministry of education, or a legally established ecclesiastical authority, or an… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:GENITORI? SCUOLA? ESPERTI?

The control of education is the arena in which political fights between religious believers and civil authorities become most bitter. In the United States these fights are made peculiarly intractable by the legal doctrine of separation of church and state, which forbids public schools to provide religious instruction. Parents with fundamentalist beliefs have a legitimate grievance, being… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:SCUOLA

When public education was instituted in England in 1870, eleven years after Darwin’s theory was published, Huxley was appointed to the royal commission which decided what to teach in the public schools. Huxley was himself an agnostic, but as a member of the commission he firmly insisted that religion should be taught in schools together with science. Every child should be taught the Christian Bible as an integral part of English culture. In recent times the scope of religious instruction in England has been extended to include Judaism and Islam.… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:SOLUZIONE HUXLEY

The teaching of religion in public schools coincided with a decline of religious belief and a… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Note:ESITO DELL’INSEGNAMENTO CONGIUNTO

Dennett also advocates more intensive research on religion considered from a scientific point of view. Here again, we can all agree with the recommendation, but we may disagree about the meaning of “research.” Dennett limits research to scientific investigations studying religious activities and organizations as social phenomena. In my opinion, such research, looking at religion from the outside, can be helpful but will never throw much light on the central mystery. The central mystery is the perennial sprouting of religious practices and beliefs in all human societies from ancient times until today. My mother, who was a skeptical Christian like me, used to say, “You can throw religion out of the door, but it will always come back through the window.”

Note:NON SOLO SOCIOLOGIA

Let me state frankly my own philosophical prejudices in opposition to Dennett. As human beings, we are groping for knowledge and understanding of the strange universe into which we are born. We have many ways of understanding, of which science is only one. Our thought processes are only partially based on logic, and are inextricably mixed with emotions and desires and social interactions.

Note:AFFERMARE IL MISTERO

To understand religion, it is necessary to explore it from the inside, as William James explored it in The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Note:STUDIARE DA DENTRO

The sacred writings, the Bhagavad Gita and the Koran and the Bible, tell us more about the essence of religion than any scientific study of religious organizations.

Note:IL SACRO

We can all agree that religion is a natural phenomenon, but nature may include many more things than we can grasp with the methods of science.

Note:NATURA E SCIENZA

The best source of information about modern Islamic terrorists that I know of is a book, Understanding Terror Networks, by Marc Sageman.2 Sageman is a former United States foreign service officer who worked with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Chapter 5 of his book, he describes in detail the network that planned and carried out the September 2001 attacks on the United States. He finds that the bonds holding the group together, during its formative years in Hamburg, were more personal than political. He concludes: “Despite the popular accounts of the 9/11 perpetrators in the press, in-group love rather than out-group hate seems a better explanation for their behavior.”

Note:AMORE E TERRORISMO

We have no firsthand testimony from the young men who carried out the September 11 attacks. They were not as highly educated and as thoughtful as the kamikaze pilots, and they were more influenced by religion. But there is strong evidence that they were not brainwashed zombies. They were soldiers enlisted in a secret brotherhood that gave meaning and purpose to their lives, working together in a brilliantly executed operation against the strongest power in the world. According to Sageman, they were motivated like the kamikaze pilots, more by loyalty to their comrades than by hatred of the enemy.

DAL MALE COMPIUTO IN NOME DELLA RELIGIONE COMPRENDIAMO MEGLIO IL BENE CHE PUÒ FARE.