El tema de la decadencia es central en un filósofo definido, paradójicamente, como “poeta del alba”. Y el ricorso es su envés: un pueblo no puede avanzar, no puede levantarse y continuar construyendo su historia paso a paso sin haber caído antes, es el ricorso lo que salva a la civilización de la barbarie retornada. Con el profesor Tessitore asistimos a una reflexión sobre este tema clave en la filosofía, la historia y la jurisprudencia viquianas, apoyada principalmente en significativos textos (...) de varias de sus obras.Palabras clave: decadencia, ricorso, historia ideal eterna, historicismo.The issue of decadence is crucial in a philosopher that is paradoxically defined as “the poet of dawn”. And the ricorso is its reverse: a nation would not able to advance, stand up and keep on building its own history step by step, if it had not fallen before. It is thus the ricorso what saves civilisation from returning to barbarism. In this paper, Professor Tessitore reflects on that subject, a key point in Vico’s philosophy, history and jurisprudence, through the study of different crucial fragments from some of his works.Keywords: decadence, ricorso, ideal eternal history, historicism. (shrink)

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)

Many scholars have claimed that satire is a genre. At the same time, however, it is also widely acknowledged that satire has changed over the centuries, that it has taken various forms and that it still appears in a variety of other genres. Far from being a drawback in identifying satire as a genre, I will claim that variability is a natural property of genres if the latter are conceived of as dynamic cognitive categories that emerge out of a complex (...) interplay of heterogeneous factors which cluster differently under the effect of different contextual and cotextual attractors. I will assume that, in satire, these factors include a range of linguistic and rhetorical devices which interact in different ways to dynamically bring about specifically intended effects. I will further claim that understanding satire is a context-sensitive complex process which implies setting up and maintaining multiple mental representations, and drawing pragmatic inferences. (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.

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)

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)

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.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific experts advised governments for measures to be promptly taken; they also helped people to understand the situation. They carried out this role in the face of a worldwide emergency, when scientific understanding was still underway. Public scientific disputes also arose, creating confusion among people. This article highlights the importance of experts’ epistemic stance under these circumstances. It suggests they should embrace the intellectual virtue of epistemic humility, regulating their epistemic behavior and communication accordingly. In so (...) doing, they would also favour the functioning of the broad network of knowledge-based experts, which is required to properly address all the aspects of the global pandemic. (shrink)

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)