Paolo Rossi (philosopher)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paolo Rossi (born December 30, 1923 in Urbino , † January 14, 2012 in Florence ) was an Italian philosopher and science historian . Until his retirement in 1999, he taught history of philosophy at various Italian universities .

Rossi is a specialist in the history of the development of the Renaissance and the scientific revolution in Europe in the 17th century. In 1997 his work La nascita della scienza moderna was published in Europe under the title The Birth of Modern Science in Europe in German. Since the 1980s he has been opposed to the Heidegger fascination in the more recent Italian philosophy of pensiero debole (weak thinking), which is represented in particular by Gianni Vattimo .

Life and career

After attending school in Ancona and Bologna, Paolo Rossi studied philosophy at the University of Bologna and Florence from 1942 to 1947 , most recently with Eugenio Garin . His thesis dealt with the thinking of Hegel's opponent Piero Martinetti , who in 1931 was one of the eleven Italian professors who refused to take the obligatory oath of allegiance to the Mussolini regime.

From 1947 to 1949 Rossi taught the history of philosophy at the humanistic high school Pliny the Younger (Liceo classico Plinio il giovane) of Città di Castello . In 1951 he married Andreina Bizzarri and the couple have two children.

Between 1950 and 1955 he was assistant to Antonio Banfi at the University of Milan . At the same time he worked for the Mondadori publishing house and edited the Enciclopedia dei ragazzi . In 1954 he completed his habilitation and taught from 1955 to 1961 as a professore incaricato history of philosophy at the Milan Faculty of Literature and Philosophy. In 1959 he received a research fellowship at the Warburg Institute of the University of London .

In 1961 he received a call as a full professor (Professore ordinario) on the chair for the history of philosophy at the University of Cagliari and taught there until 1962 and then until 1966 at the University of Bologna . In 1966 Rossi moved to the University of Florence , where he had been Professor Emeritus since 1999 . In 1970 he was a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College of the University of Cambridge

Act

In 1972 and 1977 Rossi was elected to Committee 08 of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), the Italian national research council. From 1980 to 1983 he was President of the Società Filosofica Italiana , from 1983 to 1990 President of the Società Italiana di Storia della Scienza (Italian Society for the History of Science), from 1986 to 1995 President of the Centro Fiorentino di Storia e Filosofia della Scienza (Center for History and Philosophy of Science in Florence) and since 1998 he has been chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Istituto Antonio Banfi , a center for philosophical studies in Reggio Emilia . He has also been President of the Società per lo studio dei rapporti tra scienza e letteratura (SISL) (Society for Studies on the Relationship between Science and Literature) since 2000 .

Paolo Rossi took an active part in scientific life even in old age. In addition to his extensive journalistic work, for example, he gave the opening lecture at the VII Congress of the Italian Center for Lullism at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Medievali e Francescani of the Pontifical University of Antonianum in May 2008 . The congress, which was held with the participation of highly qualified scientists from various international research centers, was dedicated to Paolo Rossi in recognition of his work.

Think

Paolo Rossi dealt intensively with the Italian historical and legal philosopher of the early modern period, Giambattista Vico , who had worked in the field of the rise and fall of entire civilizations in a forward-looking manner. Next to it was Francis Bacon in the center of his early work.

At the beginning of his career Rossi devoted intensive studies to Giambattista Vico (picture)

His main work was the research on the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, which he published in 1997 as La nascita della scienza moderna in Europe . The book was published in German in the same year under the title The Birth of Modern Science in Europe . Rossi followed the great discoveries in astronomy , physics , medicine and mathematics and the dawn of medieval thinking into the age of natural sciences . He saw the spiritual fathers in the emergence of the modern world view in Copernicus , Kepler , Galileo , Descartes and Newton . For Rossi, the "case" of Galileo has lost none of its topicality in today's intellectual life, as if the trial that was opened against him almost four hundred years ago had still not been concluded.

The science historian Albert Schirrmeister described Rossi's analyzes as follows:

“Paolo Rossi thinks that the obfuscation of knowledge characterizes scientific procedures in the 17th century. At this point the claim of literature to proclaim truth gives authority to scientific hypotheses. Paolo Rossi names Descartes and Galileo as examples of this method. "

- Albert Schirrmeister: Science and Dream: Legitimizing Knowledge in the Early Modern Age. 2002.

Paolo Rossi himself wrote about his thinking:

“Methodologically, I am of the opinion that the specific theories that form the hard core of every science are in no way the result of specific historical-social conditions. Rather, I am convinced - and all my work so far has been in this direction - that history has a lot to do with the ideas of science that exist in culture (ie with the discourse about what science is or should be ). […] I hope this book makes the following clear: The incessant weaving of the continuity strand is nothing more than a mediocre historical philosophy that is superimposed on real history. With the help of historical research, no phase or epoch can be discovered in the past to which even a single paradigm could be assigned, such as a face of a certain person. "

- Paolo Rossi: The Birth of Modern Science in Europe. 1997, p. 21.

Rossi firmly opposed the Heidegger fascination in the recent Italian philosophy of pensiero debole (weak thinking), which is represented in particular by Gianni Vattimo . On October 2, 1988, Rossi offered a material-rich, three-part introduction to Umberto Eco's novel The Foucault Pendulum in the weekly Panorama magazine . Based on the question Perché l'occultismo? (Why occultism?) In the meeting, as Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus explains, he complains that Eco is an ally of his fight against Heidegger .

honors and awards

Publications and works

Technical articles, editorial work

Paolo Rossi has published several hundred articles and essays in Italian and foreign journals. At some publishing houses he is a member of the editorial team or advisory committees. These include Intersezioni , Iride , Rivista di Filosofia , Annali di Neurologia e Psichiatria , European Journal of Philosophy , Informazione Filosofica , Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza , Science in Context , SAPERE and Time and Society . He is also on the advisory board of the Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution , which Wilbur Applebaum published in 2000. Between 1979 and 1991 he regularly ran the Scienza e filosofia (science and philosophy) section of the weekly Panorama . In one of the most widely read business newspapers in Italy, Il Sole 24 Ore , he has been writing the Storia delle idee (History of Ideas) section for the Sunday edition since 1999 . He is also currently managing the Storia della scienza (History of Science) series by Leo S. Olschki together with the philosopher Walter Bernardi .

In addition, Rossi edited the writings of philosophers such as Carlo Cattaneo , Francis Bacon , Giovanni Battista Vico , Diderot and Rousseau .

Works (selection)

In German language

  • The birth of modern science in Europe. Translated from the Italian by Marion Sattler Charnitzky and Christiane Büchel. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 978-3-406-42812-8 . Original title, also 1997: La nascita della scienza moderna in Europa.
  • The scientist. In: Rosario Villari (ed.): The man of the baroque . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1997, ISBN 3-593-35686-4 , pp. 264-295.
  • The magical world: Cassirer between Hegel and Freud. In: Enno Rudolph (ed.): Cassirer's way to the philosophy of politics. Cassirer research 5. Verlag Meiner, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-7873-1456-3 .

In Italian

  • Giacomo Aconcio. 1952.
  • Francesco Bacone. Dalla magia alla scienza. 1957.
  • Clavis Universalis: arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz. 1960,
  • I filosofi e le macchine 1400–1700. Feltrinelli, 1962.
  • I segni del tempo. Storia della Terra e storia delle nazioni da Hooke a Vico,
  • The sterminate antichità: studi vichiani. 1969.
  • Aspetti della rivoluzione scientifica. 1971.
  • La rivoluzione scientifica. Loescher, 1973.
  • I segni del tempo: storia della Terra e storia delle nazioni da Hooke a Vico. 1979.
  • La nuova ragione. Scienza e cultura nella società contemporanea. il Mulino, 1981.
  • Clavis universalis. Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz. 1983.
  • I ragni e le formiche: un'apologia della storia della scienza. 1986.
  • Storia della scienza moderna e contemporanea. Tea, 1988.
  • La scienza e la filosofia dei moderni. Bollati Boringhieri, 1989.
  • Il passato, la memoria, l'oblio. 1991.
  • Editor: La filosofia. UTET, Turin, 1995, 4 volumes.
  • La nascita della scienza moderna in Europe. 1997; German also 1997: The birth of modern science in Europe.
  • Introduzione. in Forse Queneau - Enciclopedia delle scienze anomale. Zanichelli, Bologna 1999.
  • Le sterminate antichità e nuovi saggi vichiani. La Nuova Italia, Florence 1999.
  • Un altro presente. il Mulino, 1999.
  • Bambini, sogni, furori: tre lezioni di storia delle idee. Feltrinelli, Milan 2001.

literature

  • Storia della filosofia, Storia della scienza: saggi in onore di Paolo Rossi. a cura di (= ed.) Antonello La Vergata e Alessandro Pagnini, Nuova Italia, Florence 1995 (Italian).
  • Marcel Hänggi , Review of Rossi's: The Birth of Modern Science in Europe. In: Spectrum of Science . No. 3, 1998 ( excerpt ).
  • Segni e percorsi della modernità: saggi in onore di Paolo Rossi. a cura di Ferdinando Abbri e Marco Segala, Dipartimento di Studi Filosofici dell'Università di Siena, 2000 (Italian).
  • F. Bacone: Dei principi e delle origini. presentazione di Paolo Rossi, introduzione, traduzione, note e apparati di Roberto Bondì, Milano, Bompiani, 2005 (Italian).
  • John L. Heilbron (Ed.): Advancements of Learning: Essays in Honor of Paolo Rossi. Biblioteca di Nuncius, No. 62, Leo S. Olschki Verlag, Florence 2007, ISBN 978-88-222-5655-3 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d ( page no longer available , search in web archives: Paolo Rossi, Nota Biografica ) Istituto Banfi (Italian).@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.istitutobanfi.it
  2. ^ Marco Ivaldo: Spruce in Italy. In: Giornale di filosofia. P. 7 ( giornaledifilosofia.net PDF).
  3. ↑ Otto Kallscheuer : Noberto Bobbio and the tradition of liberal socialism in Italy. In: Richard Faber (ed.): Liberalism in past and present. Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 165 ISBN 3-8260-1554-1 .
  4. ↑ a b c Festivaletteratura ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Paolo Rossi, short biography (Italian). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.festivaletteratura.it
  5. ↑ Fraternitas. German edition, Volume XLI, No. 145 - OFM, Rome July 1, 2008, p. 4.
  6. ↑ Paolo Rossi. ( Memento of the original from August 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Enciclopedia Multimediale delle Science Filosofiche. Short biography (Italian). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.emsf.rai.it
  7. ↑ Giancarlo Nonnoi: The modern Galileo. In: Eberhard Knobloch , Michael Segre (Ed.): The untamed Galilei. Contributions to a symposium. Sudhoffs Archive , Supplements, Volume 44, Verlag Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07208-X , p. 91.
  8. ↑ Albert Schirrmeister: Science and Dream: Legitimizing Knowledge in the Early Modern Age. Unpublished text, 2002 holy.or.at ( Memento of the original dated August 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF), abstract ( Memento of the original dated August 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.holy.or.at @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / sammelpunkt.philo.at
  9. ↑ Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus : Sam Spade in the realm of the occult. Umberto Eco's Il Pendolo di Foucault and the detective novel. In: K.-D. Ertler, W. Helmich: Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus - The essay. A digitized complete edition. ( Institute for Romance Studies, Karl-Franzens-University Graz ).
personal data
SURNAME Rossi, Paolo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian philosopher and historian of science
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Urbino
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 2012
Place of death Florence