“There is no future here.” With these words, a leading scientist at one of Italy's foremost research institutions concluded her assessment of her country's prospects for scientific success. Her list of concerns was long: a growing scientific brain drain; failure to promote young scientists on the basis of merit; widespread nepotism; the indifference of Italy's school system to science; and the almost complete inattention of government to the value of science as a part of Italian culture (“there are no votes in science”). What seemed to upset the Italian scientists I met last week more than anything was the feeling that Italy simply no longer cared about science. The hallmark of an educated Italian, I was told, was an ability to be accomplished in the ancient Greek and Latin languages, and to be familiar with the history of those cultures. Italy is a great country. But it thinks of itself as great because of its art and music, not because of its sciences. This situation is very strange for an outsider to comprehend. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), an Italian, deserves to be credited as the founder of modern science. Also consider: Alessandro Volta, Guglielmo Marconi, and Enrico Fermi. Medicine owes its own debt to Italian science—Marcello Malpighi, Camillo Golgi, Giovanni Morgagni, and Antonio Scarpa, to name but a few of the great anatomists and microscopists. One of the first medical textbooks was Italian (Johannes de Ketham's 1491 Venetian Fasciculus Medicinae). And the first western medical school was also Italian (the 15th century Salerno School). The still vigorous, but ever smaller and more fragile, medical research community in Italy is facing existential erosion. Italy's last remaining scientists have not surprisingly turned to Europe for salvation. Again, disappointment has, in places, supervened. Italian applications to the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme, for example, have sometimes foundered, I was told, because of a failure to focus on the creation of wealth. The only kind of innovation European bureaucrats seem to be interested in is market-oriented innovation. The scientific ills of Italy are being amplified across much of continental Europe, within nations and among Europe's institutions, and have been magnified vastly since the 2008 financial crisis. The cultural philosopher George Steiner, in his recently republished book, The Idea of Europe, defends the importance of science as a creator of knowledge and the value of scientists to Europe's future. Steiner identifies five characteristics that define the idea of Europe. First, its cafés, for “the poet or metaphysician [or, one might add, the scientist] at his notebook”. Second, the fact that Europe can be walked. Its borders are “the perceived horizons of human feet”. Third, that Europe reveres and remembers its poets, artists, composers, philosophers, and scientists in the names of its streets and squares—the “echo-chambers of historical, intellectual, artistic, and scientific achievements”. Fourth, Europe is the inheritance of two cultures, one from Athens, the other from Jerusalem, including “the epic of mathematical conjecture and proof”. Finally, Europe is characterised by a sense of what Steiner calls “tragic finality”. By which he means, the sense of an ending to Europe itself, the “apprehension of a closing chapter”. Steiner's definition of Europe puts science at its centre, as an indispensable part of European culture. But he also asks whether the idea of Europe has reached a natural endpoint. Steiner concludes that the “logic of mortality in civilisations” is a “distinct possibility”. He sees the great threat as a “detergent, exponential tide of Anglo–American”. To survive, Europe's priority must be to “fight for its languages” and “local traditions”. But it must also fight for “the dignity of Homo sapiens…the realisation of wisdom, the pursuit of disinterested knowledge, the creation of beauty”. European leaders must “arrest, so far as is possible, the drain of our best young scientific…talent” to the USA. The weakening of Italian—and European—commitment to science is a pitiful story to hear. How different the hopes for Europe once were. Dostoevsky sought out Europe in the middle of his life to study the marvels of a continent that had invented an inspiringly flourishing culture, one that he hoped could have a lasting influence on his own country, Russia. Writing about Europe in his Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863), he observed, “After all, everything, literally almost everything we can show which may be called progress, science, art, citizenship, humanity, everything, everything stems from there, from that land of holy miracles”. It seems unimaginable that Dostoevsky would write those words today.
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Jun 22, 2024
Javier C Angulo + 1
Open Access
