- Istituto Superiore di Sanità Viale Regina Elena 299
00161, Roma, Italia - +390649902579
Alessandro Giuliani
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Dipartimento Ambiente e Salute, Department Member
Un libro che raccoglie le opinioni di diversi autori di formazione filosofica. teologica e scientifica sul rapporto tra conoscenza scientifica e verità.
Research Interests:
Breve introduzione alla complessità che parte dal suo (solo apparente) contrario: la semplicità, correttamente intesa non come semplificazione arbitraria ma come ordine emergente.
Research Interests:
This book is dedicated to the consolidation and to the expansion of theoretic systems thinking as a necessary integration of the general reductionist and analytical attitude dominant in our culture. Reductionism and analytical approaches... more
This book is dedicated to the consolidation and to the expansion of theoretic systems thinking
as a necessary integration of the general reductionist and analytical attitude dominant in our
culture. Reductionism and analytical approaches have produced significant results in many
fields of contemporary knowledge giving a great contribution to relevant scientific discoveries
and to their technological application, but their validity has been improperly universalized as
the only and best methods of knowledge in every domain. It is nowadays clear that analytical
or mereological approaches are inadequate to solve many problems and that we should
introduce – or support the diffusion of - new concepts and different research attitudes. A good
candidate to support such a shift is the well known theoretical approach based on the concept
of “system” that no more considers the elementary constituents of an object, but the entity
emerging from the relations and interactions among its elementary parts. It becomes possible
to reconstruct several domains, both philosophical and scientific, from the systemic point of
view, introducing fresh ideas in the research in view of a general rational vision of the world on
more comprehensive basis.
as a necessary integration of the general reductionist and analytical attitude dominant in our
culture. Reductionism and analytical approaches have produced significant results in many
fields of contemporary knowledge giving a great contribution to relevant scientific discoveries
and to their technological application, but their validity has been improperly universalized as
the only and best methods of knowledge in every domain. It is nowadays clear that analytical
or mereological approaches are inadequate to solve many problems and that we should
introduce – or support the diffusion of - new concepts and different research attitudes. A good
candidate to support such a shift is the well known theoretical approach based on the concept
of “system” that no more considers the elementary constituents of an object, but the entity
emerging from the relations and interactions among its elementary parts. It becomes possible
to reconstruct several domains, both philosophical and scientific, from the systemic point of
view, introducing fresh ideas in the research in view of a general rational vision of the world on
more comprehensive basis.
Research Interests:
The dream of a manmade living creature dates back to the dawn of civilization [1]: the Jewish legend of Golem and the late‐romantic Mary Shelley’s character of Frankenstein’s Monster are just two of the most famous archetypes of synthetic... more
The dream of a manmade living creature dates back to the dawn of civilization [1]: the Jewish legend of Golem and the late‐romantic Mary Shelley’s character of Frankenstein’s Monster are just two of the most famous archetypes of synthetic (human) biology. The passage from myth and metaphor to science and technology has been continuous and, since the eighteenth century mechanic automata up until today, the basic view of synthetic biology research has basically been the same [2].
The emphasis shifted from the eighteenth‐century “organism as a clockwork” metaphor to the nineteenth‐century organism as a “thermal machine,” ending up with the organism as a “computer” of the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries (with a more marked emphasis on network systems in these days with respect to the logical flux of information of the second half of the previous century).
Notwithstanding that, both the fiction and technological ideas edounded
about the idea of the existence of a “basic mechanism of life” that, albeit
complex, could, be replicated in a laboratory (at least in principle).
Thus, it is not without interest to have a closer look at the concept of synthesis.
Not all the projects of artificial life are properly “synthetic.” We do not use
the word synthesis (characterized by the Greek prefix “syn” pointing to the emergence of new features by the organic fusion of different elements) for cars or computer programs. On the other hand, we currently speak of organic synthesis, referring to the production of new organic molecules not present in nature and “synthesizer” is the name given machines devoted to the fusion of different sounds in electronic musical composition.
The emphasis shifted from the eighteenth‐century “organism as a clockwork” metaphor to the nineteenth‐century organism as a “thermal machine,” ending up with the organism as a “computer” of the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries (with a more marked emphasis on network systems in these days with respect to the logical flux of information of the second half of the previous century).
Notwithstanding that, both the fiction and technological ideas edounded
about the idea of the existence of a “basic mechanism of life” that, albeit
complex, could, be replicated in a laboratory (at least in principle).
Thus, it is not without interest to have a closer look at the concept of synthesis.
Not all the projects of artificial life are properly “synthetic.” We do not use
the word synthesis (characterized by the Greek prefix “syn” pointing to the emergence of new features by the organic fusion of different elements) for cars or computer programs. On the other hand, we currently speak of organic synthesis, referring to the production of new organic molecules not present in nature and “synthesizer” is the name given machines devoted to the fusion of different sounds in electronic musical composition.
Research Interests:
Un libro sullo stato della scienza tra artigianato e idolatria
Research Interests:
Il problema dell'interpretazione delle notizie scientifiche che appaiono nei media da parte di chi scienziato non è è qui trattato in una serie di brevi capitoli che cercano di far comprendere il senso profondo dell'agire scientifico e... more
Il problema dell'interpretazione delle notizie scientifiche che appaiono nei media da parte di chi scienziato non è è qui trattato in una serie di brevi capitoli che cercano di far comprendere il senso profondo dell'agire scientifico e così fornire anticorpi per difendersi dalla superstizione scientista.