The essay takes a look at the Italian writer Italo Calvino’s ‘literary’ interpretation of Galileo’s work, joining in the 20th century epistemological debate on the heuristic role of imagination in science. According to Calvino, Galilean science opened the way to a new conception of individual experience and its description, through a way of writing that paradigmatically embodies the inexhaustibleness of knowledge, always open to acquaintance with the infinite variety of the universe, with which the ‘great book of nature’ is written. For Calvino, Galileo’s scientific work is not so totally distinguishable from a work of literature, from a complete mastery of the potentialities of expressive structures, and from a language that in setting out experiences and controversies constantly makes use of stories and metaphors, allowing for science and myth to come together.
La luna e il libro della natura. Su Italo Calvino e l'eredità di Galileo / Allocca, Nunzio. - In: AZIMUTH. - ISSN 2282-4863. - STAMPA. - 4:(2014), pp. 67-81.
La luna e il libro della natura. Su Italo Calvino e l'eredità di Galileo
ALLOCCA, Nunzio
2014
Abstract
The essay takes a look at the Italian writer Italo Calvino’s ‘literary’ interpretation of Galileo’s work, joining in the 20th century epistemological debate on the heuristic role of imagination in science. According to Calvino, Galilean science opened the way to a new conception of individual experience and its description, through a way of writing that paradigmatically embodies the inexhaustibleness of knowledge, always open to acquaintance with the infinite variety of the universe, with which the ‘great book of nature’ is written. For Calvino, Galileo’s scientific work is not so totally distinguishable from a work of literature, from a complete mastery of the potentialities of expressive structures, and from a language that in setting out experiences and controversies constantly makes use of stories and metaphors, allowing for science and myth to come together.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.