Science in Trieste seeks and embraces “participation” – Corriere.it

An exhibition dedicated to science, its communication and its presence in culture and society: the 7th edition of Science and Commain Trieste from Thursday 4 to Tuesday 9 May, the third with the artistic direction of the writer Paolo Giordano and will have as its theme the Participation, i.e. the democratization of scientific knowledge. A divulging desire that passes through books, at the center of numerous events of the review, but also theater and cinema, to which some evenings of the festival will be dedicated.

During the presentation on Tuesday 4 April in Trieste, Giordano illustrated the spirit of the festival, organized by the SISSA Interdisciplinary Laboratory (International School for Advanced Studies): In a very generalist moment in cultural politics, in which the quantitative element of events, Science and Comma looks at quality, with a focus on the content we claim. We try to give multiple keys to complexity. And he concluded: The keyword Participationbecause science needs public participation: there is a prejudice about the inaccessibility of the scientific world but now, after what we experienced during Covid, I think science must open up to a moment of participation for all of society.

The start and close of the festival propose two freebies: the documentary film opens on Thursday 4 May Margherita pizza. The voice of the stars dedicated to Margherita Hack; the focus concludes on Tuesday 9th Italo Calvino’s reminders to face the third millenniuma tribute to the writer on the centenary of his birth, starting with the book The rampant innovator (Luiss University Press) by Andrea Prencipe and Massimo Sideri; leads the physicist Roberto Trotta.

Challenging themes for dialogues which Giordano will lead during the festival: on Friday 5 May, the debate on parenting, access to motherhood and assisted procreation, with Antonella Lattanzi, author of Things that are not told (Einaudi) together with the specialist Giuseppe Ricci; Saturday 6, illness and health in dialogue with Francesca Mannocchi, author of White is the color of the damage (Einaudi Freestyle).

Science must enter an era of epistemic humility: says Sheila Jasanoff, Holberg Prize 2022, who on May 7 will talk to Giordano about the need for gentle science to regain the trust of citizens. One of the world’s leading experts in string theory, the physicist Cumrum Vafa (Dirac medal 2008), will be at the festival (Saturday 6) with the book Puzzles to decipher the world (Maze). Among other topics: the history of nuclear power in Italy, in the meeting on the 7th with astrophysicist Silvia Kuna Ballero, on her book Overwhelmed by an atomic destiny (Chiarelettere); research on HIV, with the immunologist Alessandro Aiuti and the biotechnologist Annamaria Zaccheddu; the secrets of the brain with the neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara; and the memory of Vito Volterra, founder of the Cnr, in the comic strip The function of the world (Feltrinelli) by Dario Grillotti and Alessandro Bilotta. It’s still: i focus on the future, with Roberto Paura and Danilo Zagaria, and on scientific humanism, with Guido Saracco, Mariacristina Sciannamblo and the professor of Sociology of pseudoscience Giuseppe Tipaldo. Workshops, astronomical observations, cinema (on the 7th the vision of drought by Paolo Virz; will intervene Giordano, among the screenwriters), and theater, with theAntigone Darwinian by Guido Chiarotti.