\u201cFrom a single clue to the meaning of everything, until we go beyond what is already known without loose the contact with reality, as Pope Francis has invited us to do,\u201d said Marco Bersanelli, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Milan, at the conference held in Auditorium Intesa Sanpaolo D5 about the method and the meaning of scientific research. Bersanelli introduced the other scientists: Yves Coppens, French Paleontologist and Paleoanthropologist, and Honorary Professor at the College de France; Laurent Lafforgue, Professor at the Institut des Hautes \u00c9tudes Scientifiques, France; and Christopher Impey, University Distinguished Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, USA.
\nImpey said that \u201ceveryone is born a scientist, every child is born with a certain curiosity. However, it is necessary to elaborate a common language capable of interesting and involving everyone in science.\u201d Coppens, whom Bersanelli invited to narrate his experience of anthropology, recounted that \u201cwhen you are young, there is the desire to discover. But my motivation has changed over the years. I remain close to the object of my research, to the scrap of the bone, to the piece of crockery and to all the information I can obtain from it on the social context, and on to dating the evidence in order to recreate a more general system.\u201d Lafforgue shares Bersanelli\u2019s theory which connects mathematics to the good, so that even mathematical research is motivated by the search for the good. Like Coppens, the French mathematician considers it necessary return to the object. In the case of mathematics \u201cit is about material objects, but with an objective nature that exists outside us, and doesn\u2019t depend on us.\u201d Lafforgue added that \u201ccomprehension happens suddenly and consists in receiving an independent truth and recognizing it. No scientific discipline seems more poor than math, yet even this has an infinite wealth.\u201d
\nBersanelli exhorted the speakers to address the second part of the title of the Meeting: \u201cdestiny has not left man alone.\u201d Speaking of the successes of modern astrophysics, Impey said that \u201cnature is complex, not linear and deterministic. However each scientific statement challenges the idea that we live in a meaningless world. We have the opportunity that is a duty; thinking about our position in the universe is particular prerogative of the human being.\u201d Coppens, after tracing the origin of the universe until the appearance of the first humans, agrees with Impey: \u201cWhat we think we can understand will not be everything, but we must explain it nevertheless. And it is always a great pleasure.\u201d Lafforgue explains the irony in his scientific work: \u201cWorking on a Langlands\u2019 programme \u2013 the research area that earned him the Fields prize \u2013 means to be at the periphery!\u201d Responding to Bersanelli\u2019s provocation, he reveals that \u201cthe more we know reality, the more abundant it seems. The scientific process itself dispells the dream that man can know everything.\u201d
\nLafforgue quipped that even two mathematicians cannot understand each other, because of the excessive specialization of knowledge. Therefore, \u201call our experiences, the people we meet, the knowledge we have become marginal, and one not sufficient to fulfill us.\u201d However, \u201cthis marginality reveals that we lack something, it is the nostalgia of a center that we carry inside of us. We want a center, and we carry the hope that destiny has not left man alone. The fact that we are able to investigate, with our creativity, all the sickness of reality, is a sign that supports this hope.\u201d
\nFor that reason Bersanelli, remembering that \u201cthe edges are a point of encounter with the inexhaustible wealth of reality,\u201d mentioning Dostoevskij: \u201cThe horizon of the infinite and the immense is as much indispensable to man as that small planet he lives on.\u201d
\n(A.C.,F.Pi.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cFrom a single clue to the meaning of everything, until we go beyond what is already known without loose the contact with reality, as Pope Francis has invited us to … <\/p>\n