the first European festival on creativity

2016 Programme

Event #26

Piergiorgio Odifreddi

Let’s make space for stupidity

Piergiorgio Odifreddi affirms: «As Umberto Eco, whose wit is greatly missed, used to say: “90% of people are idiots”. Particularly, many of them will be among those who attend a conference on stupidity, which will talk about this rule and others like it. Naturally, we all agree on that 90% figure, also due to the fact that every one of us believes he or she is part of the remaining 10%: that way, everyone is happy, and nobody does anything to get rid of stupidity. Which, as we will see, governs every sphere of human knowledge: politics, religion, literature, philosophy, art, social life, daily life. As Aristophanes wrote in the comedy The frogs, we’re all forced to carry a load of shit on our backs. And the reason, as Forrest Gump contributed, is simply that shit happens. A good thing to know beforehand, even when attending a conference».

https://www.festivaldellamente.it/it/live-streaming-alessandro-barbero/

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Piergiorgio Odifreddi

is a mathematician, logician and essayist. He has taught Logic at the University of Turin and acted as visiting professor at Cornell University, at the University of Monash in Melbourne, the Academia Sinica in Beijing, the University of Nanjing, the University of Buenos Aires and the Italian Academy at Columbia University. He writes for l’Espresso, Le Scienze and la Repubblica. He has received the Galileo Prize from the Unione Matematica Italiana, the Italgas Prize and the Galileo Literary Award. His books include: Abbasso Euclide (2013), a trilogy on the history of geometry published by Mondadori; Il museo dei numeri (Rizzoli, 2014), Sulle spalle di un gigante (Longanesi, 2014), Il diavolo in cattedra (Einaudi, 2015), Il giro del mondo in 80 pensieri (Rizzoli, 2015). His latest work, Dizionario della stupidità (Rizzoli) will be released in August.

2016 Programme

Event #26

Piergiorgio Odifreddi

Let’s make space for stupidity

An idea of public space

That place called “home”

The space of words: Helen and Odysseus

The last day of summer

The birth of space (and time)

The birth of space (and time)

The space of war. The First Italian War of Independence

Immunity and the brain: a dialogue between two chief systems. From memory to vaccines.

New males: as teenagers, in couples, as fathers

Tv series: a newly emerged continent

Across the American deserts: a voyage through 20th century collective imagination

What do algorithms think of?

That place is gone

The space of rebellion

Other maps, other worlds. Representations of space

The analyst at the movies: thinking by images

From the stars to Life: one, one hundred, one thousand Earths

Architectural space in the past, the present, the future

Families confined and without borders

The best ideas of our lives. Make room for innovation (the real kind)

The space of absence: Patroclus and Andromache

On the other side of the sea

Play it again

The space of war. The second Italian War of Independence

School is an idea of the world

Asperger Talk Show

Let’s make space for stupidity

Voyages through spaces real and imagined

Is there space for us all? The future of European migrations

When painters left their studios to paint en plein air

The memory of space. The rubble of climate and rubbish in our homes

Graffiti, tags and murals: when art extends to walls

The poetry of space. Words and drawings on that place we call home

The river is never wrong

Mirror neurons: anatomy of a revolutionary discovery

The boundaries of the soul and of the world