2015 Programme
Event #7
Andrea Moro
Beyond the boundaries of Babel
The event has been moved from Chiostro di San Francesco to Auditorium I.I.S. Parentucelli-Arzelà
As a physical object, human language is made of waves: outside our bodies these are airwaves (sound), within us they are electrical waves (neural activity). We know that the Babel of language has boundaries of a biological nature, but what relationship exists between these two families of waves? Is there a way of exploring the code through which neurons transmit information? Using sophisticated neurophysiological techniques we will see how these two worlds are much more similar than we could have believed, and that for the first time the possibility is unfolding of investigating the contents of language by directly measuring the brain’s activity.
Andrea Moro, Professor of General Linguistics at the Scuola Univestitaria Superiore IUSS of Pavia, studies the link between human languages structure and the brain. He has been visiting scientist at the MIT and at Harvard University. He is member of the Accademia Pontificia di Arti e Lettere. Planning artificial grammars, he showed that language rules are not just arbitrary conventions but are restricted by the neurobiological architecture of the brain. He published essays in various languages, among them Breve storia del verbo essere (Adelphi, 2006) and Le lingue impossibili (Cortina, 2017). He also debut in fiction with the novel Il segreto di Pietramala (La nave di Teseo, 2018) with which he won the Flaiano Award. At the end of August he will publish the essay La razza e la lingua. Sei lezioni contro il razzismo (La nave di Teseo).
Event #6
Alessandro Barbero
The historian's responsibility. Gaetano Salvemini: from Socialist interventionism to anti-Fascism
Event #8Approfonditamente
Marco Rossi-Doria, Giulia Tosoni
Kids and school: what, how and where are they learning
Event #13Approfonditamente
Adolfo Ceretti, Simonetta Agnello Hornby, Alfredo Verde
Gender-based violence: Perpetrators, victims and models of intervention.
Event #22
Alessandro Barbero
The historian’s responsibility. Marc Bloch: from the Sorbonne to the Gestapo prisons
Event #25Approfonditamente
Marco Belpoliti, Gianfranco Marrone, Anna Stefi
Laziness, fatigue, and our constant running
Event #26
Eugenio Borgna, Simonetta Fiori
Knowing ourselves and knowing others: a different way of being responsible
Event #35
James R. Flynn, Armando Massarenti
Without an alibi: a voyage across life’s greatest questions
Event #38
Alessandro Barbero
The historian’s responsibility. Ernst Kantorowicz: from the Freikorps to McCarthyism
Event #57Children / Kids
Sante Bandirali e Lorenza Pozzi di uovonero
Read like you’ve never read before
