Forma Mentis Research Articles

„Einsam und unterwegs“. Wurzellosigkeit im Werk Paul Celans

It is in rootlessness that philosophers like Adorno, Said and Flusser discover a human dignity, a possibility to negotiate and restore or invent the violated identity in the form of a new one. Based on these considerations, the paper regards the paradigm of rootlessness in relation to the metaphors of aerial or flying roots, which are historically and literarily connected with the Jewish concept of fate. Thus, the present article proposes the rootlessness-paradigm beyond the findings of Jewish studies as a structure of thought, forma mentis and approach to the thematic complex of migration – nomadism – displacement and applies it to selected texts by Paul Celan. In this way, new applications of this research paradigm will be stressed; at the same time my contribution aims to complement previous scientific approaches to Celan's work.

Cognitive Network Science Reveals Bias in GPT-3, GPT-3.5 Turbo, and GPT-4 Mirroring Math Anxiety in High-School Students

Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly integrated into our lives. Hence, it is important to understand the biases present in their outputs in order to avoid perpetuating harmful stereotypes, which originate in our own flawed ways of thinking. This challenge requires developing new benchmarks and methods for quantifying affective and semantic bias, keeping in mind that LLMs act as psycho-social mirrors that reflect the views and tendencies that are prevalent in society. One such tendency that has harmful negative effects is the global phenomenon of anxiety toward math and STEM subjects. In this study, we introduce a novel application of network science and cognitive psychology to understand biases towards math and STEM fields in LLMs from ChatGPT, such as GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4. Specifically, we use behavioral forma mentis networks (BFMNs) to understand how these LLMs frame math and STEM disciplines in relation to other concepts. We use data obtained by probing the three LLMs in a language generation task that has previously been applied to humans. Our findings indicate that LLMs have negative perceptions of math and STEM fields, associating math with negative concepts in 6 cases out of 10. We observe significant differences across OpenAI’s models: newer versions (i.e., GPT-4) produce 5× semantically richer, more emotionally polarized perceptions with fewer negative associations compared to older versions and N=159 high-school students. These findings suggest that advances in the architecture of LLMs may lead to increasingly less biased models that could even perhaps someday aid in reducing harmful stereotypes in society rather than perpetuating them.

Xenakis and Romanian Music: An Unspoken Relation

Xenakis’ music can be related to an ancient cultural background composed of Thracian, Byzantine and oriental elements, shared by Greece, Romania and other South-East European countries. A central element of this background is mythical thinking as defined by Mircea Eliade: a forma mentis involving a particular relation to the sacred, the coexistence of the archaic and the modern, and the attachment to archetypes. Mythical thinking accounts for the affinities existing between Xenakis and Romanian composers like Niculescu, Olahand Rădulescu, which concern specific aspects such as heterophony, modalism and spectralism. However, Xenakis’ Romanian roots are unassumed and unspoken as they belong to the unconscious and the repressed. They nevertheless occasionally emerge precisely as manifestations of a return of the repressed.

Network psychometrics and cognitive network science open new ways for understanding math anxiety as a complex system

Abstract Math anxiety is a clinical pathology impairing cognitive processing in math-related contexts. Originally thought to affect only inexperienced, low-achieving students, recent investigations show how math anxiety is vastly diffused even among high-performing learners. This review of data-informed studies outlines math anxiety as a complex system that: (i) cripples well-being, self-confidence and information processing on both conscious and subconscious levels, (ii) can be transmitted by social interactions, like a pathogen, and worsened by distorted perceptions, (iii) affects roughly 20$\%$ of students in 63 out of 64 worldwide educational systems but correlates weakly with academic performance and (iv) poses a concrete threat to students’ well-being, computational literacy and career prospects in science. These patterns underline the crucial need to go beyond performance for estimating math anxiety. Recent advances in network psychometrics and cognitive network science provide ideal frameworks for detecting, interpreting and intervening upon such clinical condition. Merging education research, psychology and data science, the approaches reviewed here reconstruct psychological constructs as complex systems, represented either as multivariate correlation models (e.g. graph exploratory analysis) or as cognitive networks of semantic/emotional associations (e.g. free association networks or forma mentis networks). Not only can these interconnected networks detect otherwise hidden levels of math anxiety but—more crucially—they can unveil the specific layout of interacting factors, for example, key sources and targets, behind math anxiety in a given cohort. As discussed here, these network approaches open concrete ways for unveiling students’ perceptions, emotions and mental well-being, and can enable future powerful data-informed interventions untangling math anxiety.

Mapping computational thinking mindsets between educational levels with cognitive network science

AbstractA significant aspect of computational thinking is as a way of reasoning about the world in terms of data. This mindset channels number-crunching toward an ambition to discover knowledge through logic, models and simulations. Here we show how computational cognitive science can be used to reconstruct and analyse the structure of computational thinking mindsets (forma mentis in Latin) through complex networks. As a case study, we investigate cognitive networks tied to key concepts of computational thinking provided by (i) 159 high school students enrolled in a science curriculum and (ii) 59 researchers in complex systems and simulations. Researchers’ reconstructed knowledge highlighted a positive mindset about scientific modelling, semantically framing data and simulations as ways of discovering nature. Students correctly identified different aspects of logic reasoning but perceived ‘computation’ as a distressing, anxiety-eliciting task, framed with math jargon and lacking links to real-world discovery. Students’ mindsets around ‘data’, ‘model’ and ‘simulations’ critically revealed no awareness of numerical modelling as a way for understanding the world. Our findings provide evidence of a crippled computational thinking mindset in students, who acquire mathematical skills that are not channelled toward real-world discovery through coding. This unlinked knowledge ends up being perceived as distressing number-crunching expertise with no relevant outcome. The virtuous mindset of researchers reported here indicates that computational thinking can be restored by training students specifically in coding, modelling and simulations in relation to discovering nature. Our approach opens innovative ways for quantifying computational thinking and enhancing its development through mindset reconstruction.

Text-mining forma mentis networks reconstruct public perception of the STEM gender gap in social media.

Mindset reconstruction maps how individuals structure and perceive knowledge, a map unfolded here by investigating language and its cognitive reflection in the human mind, i.e., the mental lexicon. Textual forma mentis networks (TFMN) are glass boxes introduced for extracting and understanding mindsets’ structure (in Latin forma mentis) from textual data. Combining network science, psycholinguistics and Big Data, TFMNs successfully identified relevant concepts in benchmark texts, without supervision. Once validated, TFMNs were applied to the case study of distorted mindsets about the gender gap in science. Focusing on social media, this work analysed 10,000 tweets mostly representing individuals’ opinions at the beginning of posts. “Gender” and “gap” elicited a mostly positive, trustful and joyous perception, with semantic associates that: celebrated successful female scientists, related gender gap to wage differences, and hoped for a future resolution. The perception of “woman” highlighted jargon of sexual harassment and stereotype threat (a form of implicit cognitive bias) about women in science “sacrificing personal skills for success”. The semantic frame of “man” highlighted awareness of the myth of male superiority in science. No anger was detected around “person”, suggesting that tweets got less tense around genderless terms. No stereotypical perception of “scientist” was identified online, differently from real-world surveys. This analysis thus identified that Twitter discourse mostly starting conversations promoted a majorly stereotype-free, positive/trustful perception of gender disparity, aimed at closing the gap. Hence, future monitoring against discriminating language should focus on other parts of conversations like users’ replies. TFMNs enable new ways for monitoring collective online mindsets, offering data-informed ground for policy making.

"Společně kráčet již znamená vytvářet jednotu." Ekumenismus v pojetí papeže Františka

The impulses of Pope Francis concerning the unity of Christians are based on his way of thinking, which is shaped by spiritual depth, theological study and life experience. The text examines the sources of Bergoglio’s forma mentis in Jesuit spirituality, in the philosophy of Romano Guardini, and in the historical context of Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century. The focus here is on the antinomic understanding of reality as the core of Bergoglio’s intellectual world, which allows him to formulate a pastoral programme of “culture of encounter” that becomes a means of reconciliation in society, in the Church, but also among Christians. Subsequently, the key features of Francis’ understanding of ecumenism are presented on the background of these realities. Continuity with the previous Magisterium teachings as well as new impulses of the contemporary Roman Pontiff are illustrated with the example of the antinomic perception of unity as a manifestation of Catholic universality, on the role of the Holy Spirit in the ecumenical process and on the conversion of the heart, which constitutes the spiritual precondition of any attempt at unity.

Forma mentis networks map how nursing and engineering students enhance their mindsets about innovation and health during professional growth.

Reconstructing a “forma mentis”, a mindset, and its changes, means capturing how individuals perceive topics, trends and experiences over time. To this aim we use forma mentis networks (FMNs), which enable direct, microscopic access to how individuals conceptually perceive knowledge and sentiment around a topic, providing richer contextual information than machine learning. FMNs build cognitive representations of stances through psycholinguistic tools like conceptual associations from semantic memory (free associations, i.e., one concept eliciting another) and affect norms (valence, i.e., how attractive a concept is). We test FMNs by investigating how Norwegian nursing and engineering students perceived innovation and health before and after a 2-month research project in e-health. We built and analysed FMNs by six individuals, based on 75 cues about innovation and health, and leading to 1,000 associations between 730 concepts. We repeated this procedure before and after the project. When investigating changes over time, individual FMNs highlighted drastic improvements in all students’ stances towards “teamwork”, “collaboration”, “engineering” and “future”, indicating the acquisition and strengthening of a positive belief about innovation. Nursing students improved their perception of ‘robots” and “technology” and related them to the future of nursing. A group-level analysis related these changes to the emergence, during the project, of conceptual associations about openness towards multidisciplinary collaboration, and a positive, leadership-oriented group dynamics. The whole group identified “mathematics” and “coding” as highly relevant concepts after the project. When investigating persistent associations, characterising the core of students’ mindsets, network distance entropy and closeness identified as pivotal in the students’ mindsets concepts related to “personal well-being”, “professional growth” and “teamwork”. This result aligns with and extends previous studies reporting the relevance of teamwork and personal well-being for Norwegian healthcare professionals, also within the novel e-health sector. Our analysis indicates that forma mentis networks are powerful proxies for detecting individual- and group-level mindset changes due to professional growth. FMNs open new scenarios for data-informed, multidisciplinary interventions aimed at professional training in innovation.

Forma Mentis Networks Reconstruct How Italian High Schoolers and International STEM Experts Perceive Teachers, Students, Scientists, and School

This study investigates how students and researchers shape their knowledge and perception of educational topics. The mindset or forma mentis of 159 Italian high school students and of 59 international researchers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) are reconstructed through forma mentis networks, i.e., cognitive networks of concepts connected by free associations and enriched with sentiment labels. The layout of conceptual associations between positively/negatively/neutrally perceived concepts is informative on how people build their own mental constructs or beliefs about specific topics. Researchers displayed mixed positive/neutral mental representations of “teacher”, “student” and, “scientist”. Students’ conceptual associations of “scientist” were highly positive and largely non-stereotypical, although links about the “mad scientist” stereotype persisted. Students perceived “teacher” as a complex figure, associated with positive aspects like mentoring/knowledge transmission but also to negative sides revolving around testing and grading. “School” elicited stronger differences between the two groups. In the students’ mindset, “school” was surrounded by a negative emotional aura or set of associations, indicating an anxious perception of the school setting, mixing scholastic concepts, anxiety-eliciting words, STEM disciplines like maths and physics, and exam-related notions. Researchers’ positive stance of “school” included concepts of fun, friendship, and personal growth instead. Along the perspective of Education Research, the above results are discussed as quantitative evidence for test- and STEM anxiety co-occurring in the way Italian students perceive education places and their actors. Detecting these patterns in student populations through forma mentis networks offers new, simple to gather yet detailed knowledge for future data-informed intervention policies and action research.

Intorno al teologhema della שכינה e all’antiallegorismo dello ἱλαστήριον presso Filone Alessandrino

This essay analyses the use of the term/concept hilasterion (‘propitiatorium’, i.e. the cover of Ark of Covenant) in the hypomnematic corpus by Philo of Alexandria. This subject needs to be examined in relationship with the Greek translation of the Septuagint and the exegesis of the Hebrew kapporeth ; so it will be argued that here Philo deals with semitic thought more than with the categories of Greek philosophy, since the real and bodily presence of God on hilasterion differs ontologically from any allegoric interpretation : only a sound Hebrew contextualisation of the theme as šekhînâ might take away this concern. As a result it means that, speculatively, there does not exist Philo Gracus only but this coexists with a sort of often neglected Philo Hebraicus too, when Greek allegory and allegorism fail to make sense, just as in the case of the special point of view of hilasterion, due to its semitic nature not totally compressible into Greek forma mentis.

A control education software suite to bridge methodological and engineering aspects

Software obviously plays a relevant role in both control education and engineering. Methodology-centred tools help learning in the class and are also useful for high-level tasks in the profession. Engineering-centred ones are necessary for any realistically sized problem, and their comprehension helps designing efficient and well maintainable control applications. However, brutalising for brevity, the two sets of tools hardly intersect one another, and are most often addressed with very different educational viewpoints—and frequently with some under-emphasis on the engineering side if not for laboratory practice. This paper provides a reasoned overview of the scenario just sketched, and based on a long experience, proposes a coordinated set of tools, selected among well assessed and solidly maintained ones, to help the students bridge methodological and engineering aspects into a unitary forma mentis.

Neo-Populism: Applying Paul Taggart’s Heartland to the Italian Five Star Movement and League parties

In the early 2000s the British academic and expert in the field of populism, Paul Taggart, conceptualised the heartland – which he defined as ‘a version of the past that celebrates a hypothetical, uncomplicated and non-political territory of imagination.’ The idea is that populists envision this return to an almost utopic, laborious, morally pure, and culturally homogenous ‘place’ where professional political administration is not completely rejected but certainly kept at a minimum. Applying Taggart’s heartland to leaders and parties allows us to build on an efficient comprehension of specific uses of populist dialogue, as well as their general discursive styles and political narratives. Those who have capitalised on the current populist zeitgeist (a term Cas Mudde often uses), such as the American President Donald J. Trump, have mobilised masses by implicitly calling for a return to the heartland with slogans such as ‘Make America Great Again’. However, Trump is not the only politician who has discursively framed the concept of heartland in the twenty-first century. Interestingly, the heartland can also be applied to ‘right-wing’ national- populists and ‘left-wing’ techno-populists in Italy. The League, believes that with their involvement, their country can return to be a safer, more stable, hard-working, producerist society. Similarly, the Five Star Movement pressures the elites for a more virtuous, honest, and transparent way of doing politics through the digital web and direct democracy practices. Those values are the ones that shape their idea of heartland. This piece untangles the two distinct versions of heartland that exist within the forma mentis of the two Italian populist parties, compares them, and contrasts them in the hope of contributing to the already existing literature that has presented little evidence so far on how Taggart’s relevant concept can be identified in populist discourse, monologue, and ideology. Also, some advice is given on how to deal with the new populists worldwide in a way that involves dialogue that is both constructive and inclusive.

Forma mentis networks quantify crucial differences in STEM perception between students and experts.

In order to investigate how high school students and researchers perceive science-related (STEM) subjects, we introduce forma mentis networks. This framework models how people conceptually structure their stance, mindset or forma mentis toward a given topic. In this study, we build forma mentis networks revolving around STEM and based on psycholinguistic data, namely free associations of STEM concepts (i.e., which words are elicited first and associated by students/researchers reading “science”?) and their valence ratings concepts (i.e., is “science” perceived as positive, negative or neutral by students/researchers?). We construct separate networks for (Ns = 159) Italian high school students and (Nr = 59) interdisciplinary professionals and researchers in order to investigate how these groups differ in their conceptual knowledge and emotional perception of STEM. Our analysis of forma mentis networks at various scales indicate that, like researchers, students perceived “science” as a strongly positive entity. However, differently from researchers, students identified STEM subjects like “physics” and “mathematics” as negative and associated them with other negative STEM-related concepts. We call this surrounding of negative associations a negative emotional aura. Cross-validation with external datasets indicated that the negative emotional auras of physics, maths and statistics in the students’ forma mentis network related to science anxiety. Furthermore, considering the semantic associates of “mathematics” and “physics” revealed that negative auras may originate from a bleak, dry perception of the technical methodology and mnemonic tools taught in these subjects (e.g., calculus rules). Overall, our results underline the crucial importance of emphasizing nontechnical and applied aspects of STEM disciplines, beyond purely methodological teaching. The quantitative insights achieved through forma mentis networks highlight the necessity of establishing novel pedagogic and interdisciplinary links between science, its real-world complexity, and creativity in science learning in order to enhance the impact of STEM education, learning and outreach activities.

Italian Minor Theatre, 2000–14: the Development of ‘Short Forms’ and the Politics of the Stage

Brevity in experimental Italian theatre is not merely an expressive dimension of scenic creation, but a forma mentis, a conceptual vocation of young companies. The 2000s produced a minor theatre in Italy – first because of the reduced stage size, and second because of the brevity of works such as installation pieces. Moving from the linguistic disintegration of the historical avant-gardes of the twentieth century, this theatre is especially inspired by the visual arts, even though its historical roots remain fragmented and art is still seen in the synthetic language of modern dance and Futurist variety. Short forms actually become a tool for crossing artistic genres and languages. Starting from Deleuze’s and Guattari’s philosophical concept of minor literature, in this article Silvia Mei explores and analyzes work by such Italian contemporary companies as gruppo nanou, Città di Ebla, Anagoor, Opera, ErosAntEros, and Teatro Sotterraneo – all representative of what can be called installation theatre, a new theatrical wave that crosses the boundaries and specificities of artistic language, leading to the deterritorialization of theatre itself, a rethinking of the artistic work as well as its relationship with the audience. Silvia Mei is Adjunct Professor of the History of Theatre Directing and Theatre Iconography at the University of Bologna, having been a Research Fellow at the University of Turin. Her recent publications include ‘La terza avanguardia: ortografie dell’ultima scena italiana’, in Culture Teatrali, No. 14 (2015), and Displace Altofest (Valletta: Malta 2018 Foundation).

Biblioteche di conservazione & Data Curation: dal Custos catalogi al Digital Librarian. Il caso della Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana

The massive projection of information contents in the digital world and the ever-increasing pervasiveness and ubiquity of web-based resources are unstoppable phenomena that force a careful reflection on the role that public libraries and conservation libraries play in the traditional cultural scene; on how they are perceived by users; on how they are solicited by the digital world and how they adapt (or at least try to do so) to change towards this aspect. The concept of public library can certainly be considered as one of the most disruptive cultural innovations of the modern era: this innovation has profoundly marked the development of our society up to the present day, helping to shape its forma mentis and gradually becoming more and more “transparent” because now considered “normal”; however, there are many pitfalls and difficulties that our society ‒ hyper-connected and bulimic in the spasmodic search for accessible contents in digital ‒ puts forward the public library, even more, if it corresponds to the particular meaning of the conservation library. The public library and the conservation library are very often faces of the same coin, souls of the same institution, face the challenge of the digital dimension.

Mentalidade Empreendedora: Do Modo de Pensar ao Modo de Agir do Indivíduo Empreendedor

As problemáticas do mundo contemporâneo demandam sujeitos que atuem como agentes de mudança. Existe um ator essencial nesse processo que ainda carece de maior entendimento no que se refere à sua natureza e desenvolvimento: o indivíduo empreendedor. Dentre os elementos-chave que determinam e explicam o modo de ser e agir empreendedor está o pensamento desse ator, uma dimensão fundamental, mas ainda pouco investigada. Processos que estão na base da estrutura do pensamento, e a partir dos quais a ação pode ser concebida, e em seguida realizada, carecem de um maior entendimento e sua compreensão pode trazer avanços nas pesquisas sobre a atividade empreendedora. Diante desse panorama, esta pesquisa de desenvolvimento teórico tem o objetivo de analisar as diferentes dimensões da mentalidade empreendedora, reunindo e confrontando os principais resultados e entendimentos alcançados sobre o tema. O empreendedorismo tem sido investigado e descrito não mais como uma forma de saber, mas sim como uma forma de ser, e o indivíduo empreendedor como um sujeito que tem uma mentalidade que se manifesta em um comportamento ou ação empreendedora. Resgatando e confrontando o funcionamento dos modelos mentais, das representações empreendedoras e da forma mentis do indivíduo empreendedor, este estudo descreve como a mentalidade empreendedora estrutura o seu modo de perceber e entender a si e o mundo ao redor, definindo, por consequência, o seu modo de agir por meio da ação empreendedora.

«Oppongo al cordoglio un certo manierismo»: Patmos e il tragico nella poesia dell’ultimo Pasolini

This research, according to a historical perspective, tries to study why Pasolini, author of forma mentis, as relevant scholars said, since the late 1960s, even in front of tragic events of Italian history, chose humorous representation mode. The answer to this question is that Pasolini poses the problem of the tragic in relation to the Auerbach's theory of styles, according to whom styles were forms of Mimesis of several social forms of language: and the tragic style, primarily used to represent the people, appeared to Pasolini inadequate in the world of Afterhistory, in which the entire society tended to ideologically recognize herself in the neocapitalist bourgeoisie. Patmos, therefore, the poem dedicated to the massacre of Piazza Fontana, dealing with the anthropological disaster recorded by Pasolini, tries to express itself in humorous forms, since humor is not a rejection of the tragic, but rather its masking.

Recycling of Urban Remainders: Case Study of Naples in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract The research presented was mostly carried out between 2010 and 2015 in the laboratory GERPHAU (UMR CNRS 7218 LAVUE) during the preparation of a doctoral thesis in architecture, co-led by Paris 8 university in France and Federico II in Italy. A study is proposed of the historical evolution of Naples in connection with the topic of the management of different kinds of remains. The analysed period, the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, seems crucial from this point of view: an action of urban metamorphosis , both technical and ideological, was being implemented, aiming at the transformation of the existing city into a modern metropolis, and we recognise the subject of recycling the leftovers - not only waste, used materials and organic excreta, but also abandoned buildings, vacant parcels and derelict structures - as a real issue. The strategies analysed seem to suggest a sort of forma mentis peculiar to preindustrial Naples, based on a principle of persistence and on an enhancement of what already exists. We will thus address optimisation strategies of different urban and architectural fallouts generated by the control of metabolic functioning and by the government of the built city and its territory. Our hypothesis is that this comparative reading will allow us to highlight the general paradigm linking men to resources, urban systems to natural environments, and stress the importance of looking at these from a new point of view: a multidisciplinary historical perspective.

Evolution of accounting education in Italy, 1890–1935

This article focuses on the development of the study of accounting in the Italian education system between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also focuses on the subsequent formation of a scientific and experimental forma mentis that would prepare students for administrative and managerial activities in industry, commerce and public administration. Starting from the second half of the nineteenth century – when the presence of accounting in education was limited to secondary school and implemented with sporadic educational initiatives by private bodies – and covering approximately the 50 years after the unification of Italy, this study analyses, through the lens of Foucault’s power–knowledge relationship, the institutional and structural measures adopted by the State to develop the study of accounting in Italy, in the period 1890–1935.

Forma mentis: appearance and reality in the Germania of Tacitus

El objetivo de este trabajo es interpretar la Germania de Tácito en tanto texto etnográfico y autoetnográfico, i.e. como crítico de la sociedad romana. Se rechazan los presupuestos filosóficos de “No Place like Rome: Identity and Difference in The Germania of Tacitus” de Ellen O’Gorman (§1), se analiza la escritura etnográfica de Tácito a través de la guerra y el comercio, enfatizando las ideas de forma, belleza, materia, mores y mente (§2). Por último, se destaca el uso utópico y de crítica interna que adquiere el texto de Tácito (§3).