The two cultures
It’s an annual meeting, inspired to the text by Charles P. Snow of 1959, in which he expressed the hope that the dichotomy between humanities and hard sciences can be overcome. The meeting, organized in the first week of September by Biogem Scarl, in collaboration with the Biogem Foundation, had already 20 editions, and includes scientific talks, literary meetings, and artistic events.
The meeting hosted several Nobel laureates and important cultural personalities. In 2018 the meeting was opened by the President of Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella.
The ‘Two Cultures’ throughout all the year at Biogem.
Within a conference about the connection between the PNNR (National Plan of Recovery and Resilience) and the South, the director of the newspaper 'Il Mattino', Federico Monga, will open the fourteenth edition of 'The Two Cultures', whose main topic this year is 'Art and Sciences'. An absolute novelty of the meeting will be the distribution of the scheduled events throughout the year. Accordingly, the 'main' meeting, planned from 15 to 18 September 2022, will be preceded and followed by numerous events sharing the same general topic, in order to distribute debates and reflections throughout the year.
We start on Thursday March the 3rd, with a lecture by Federico Monga about hopes and fears related to the PNRR, which is now at the operational phase. The lecture will be broadcasted also in live streaming, like all the events of the Two Cultures. During the same conference, the Biogem president, Ortensio Zecchino, will illustrate the guidelines of a program that is still 'open'.
Then it will follow the presentation of the book 'A prophecy for Italy. Return to the South’ by Ernesto Galli della Loggia and Aldo Schiavone on March the 19th, with the authors interviewed by the Director Marco Demarco.
Two days later, on March the 21st, it is scheduled an 'Introductory course in quantum mechanics for beginner but curious students ...', a three-day seminar cycle (from March the 21st to the 23rd), held by Antonio Ereditato, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bern, and permanent protagonist of the 'Two Cultures' of Biogem.
The program then includes a personal exhibition by the Maestro Ettore de Conciliis, which can be visited from June to September at Biogem Institute, in Ariano Irpino (AV).
Another book, 'The classical dance between art and science', by Flavia Pappacena, will be presented on September the 5th, including a special performance by Alessandra Amato, etoile at the 'Teatro dell'Opera' in Rome, and the pianist Antonella De Vinco.
The conference will be a sort of prologue to the September meeting, this year scheduled from Thursday the 15th to Sunday the 18th September, and introduced, after the opening by the President Zecchino, by a lecture of Professor Giuseppe Remuzzi, Director of the Institute of Pharmacological Research 'Mario Negri '. The second lecture on the opening day will be by Vincenzo Trione, professor of the IULM in Milan, who will talk about 'The arts between the world and beyond the world: from social networks to NFT'. The opening day, traditionally very rich, will be closed by a lectio magistralis of Ettore De Conciliis on 'Painting and the golden section'.
The lecture 'Leonardo in Ambrosiana. Science before science ' will open Friday the 16th. The tribute to the genius of Vinci will be held by the Doctor of the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Monsignor Alberto Rocca, invited as Director of the Art Gallery of the famous institution in Milan. More space for hard sciences may come from the second lecture in the schedule, held by the bio-chemist Ernesto Carafoli, Professor Emeritus at ETH Zurich and member of the Lincei National Academy. The evening will then have a more distinctly humanistic conclusion and will be focused on the figure of Moses, a crucial joint of an enigmatic relationship between art and science, according to the interpretation of two great protagonists of human history, such as Michelangelo and Freud. The suggestive topic will be analyzed by David Meghnagi, Professor of Psychology at the University of 'Roma Tre'.
On Saturday morning, presentation of the book 'Odi et Amo. From perceptive ambiguities to quantum thought ', with the author, Professor Emeritus of the 'Polytechnic' of Milan, Giuseppe Caglioti, and his co-authors Tatiana Tchouvileva and Luigi Cocchiarella, as well as Giorgio Benedek, author of the book’s preface. The afternoon parterre is very rich, with the photography historian, Claudio Marra, and the film historian, Giacomo Manzoli, both from the University of Bologna, who will precede the 'Nobel Prize for Medicine' in 2011, Bruce Beutler, currently Director of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center genetics center.
The closing day of the meeting, Sunday the 18th, will see the presence of the neuroscientist from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Jean-Pierre Changeux, and of the world-famous astrophysicist, Antonino Zichichi, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bologna, who will held the final lecture.
The 2022 edition of the meeting includes also night events dedicated to the great art, not only music: the artistic direction of these events has been given to maestro Nazzareno Carusi by the President Zecchino.
Finally, Biogem will become the exhibition venue for the 'Art & Science Across Italy', an exhibition in collaboration with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, which will be open in October and November.