Science must be more humble “or we will see irrational phenomena” including those related to “No vax”. This was indicated by the Nobel Prize in Physics, Giorgio Parisi, in his Lectio Magistralis on the theme “The Sense of Science” at the inauguration of the Academic Year 2021-2022 of the Sapienza University of Rome, which was attended by the President of the Republic , Sergio Mattarella.
The current “deep integration between science and technology – Giorgio Parisi argued – could lead us to think that science has a bright future in a society that is becoming more and more dependent on advanced technology (the widespread cell phones of today arrive at a computing capacity of hundreds of billions of arithmetic operations per second, more or less like the mammoth supercomputers of twenty-five years ago). In reality today the opposite seems to be true: there are strong anti-scientific tendencies in today’s society, the prestige of science and trust in it are rapidly diminishing ». And then he added: “Along with a voracious technological consumerism, astrological, homeopathic and anti-scientific practices are spreading widely – see for example NoVax – and a frankly witch-like practice such as biodynamic agriculture is about to be recognized by a law of the Italian state small quantities of manure are matured inside the horns of cows that have had at least one child (the indispensable cornolete) », said the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021.
What Mattarella said about biodynamic agriculture
The President of the Republic also expressed his opinion on the laws being examined by Parliament who explained that, with regard to these laws in question, “I notoriously cannot pronounce myself, but I can well say that before the provision on biodynamic agriculture becomes law there there are some other passages, even parliamentary ones above all, that make this hypothesis distant ”.
The reason for the lack of confidence in science
Parisi then observed that «it is not easy to fully understand the origin of this phenomenon; it is possible that this mass mistrust in science that reaches our parliament is also due to a certain arrogance of the scientists who present science as absolute wisdom, compared to other questionable knowledge, even when in reality it is not at all. Sometimes arrogance consists in not trying to get the public the evidence at your disposal, but asking for unconditional assent based on trust in the experts ». It is precisely the refusal not to accept one’s own limits, according to the Nobel Prize “that can weaken the prestige of scientists who sometimes flaunt an excessive security that is not authentic, in front of a public opinion that somehow perceives its partiality of views and limits », the physicist warned.
The j’accuse of Parisi to the government
And then there is the whole game linked to research and culture on which the Nobel Prize for physics focuses. Without sparing a thrust also to the government. There is a “divestment of the financial commitment of the Italian government in cultural heritage – underlined Parisi – and suffice it to say that the restoration of the Colosseum was done with private funds”. Parisi, in his j’accuse, noted that “we are entering a period of pessimism about the future that has its origin in crises of various kinds: economic crisis, global warming, depletion of resources, pollution. In many countries there is an increase in inequality, insecurity, unemployment, wars. While once it was thought that the future would necessarily be better than the present, faith in progress, in the magnificent and progressive destiny of human people, has been undermined: many fear that future generations will be worse off than the present ones “.