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290 Germano Maifreda

further show how the perpendicular denotes the distribution of goods and the
horizontal their concentration; I shall then add a very exact Table of the
various angles that characterize the obeisance in the diverse degrees of
39
latitude .
Irony, self-deprecation, a full acceptance of the limits of a method
and of a period which sought «everywhere analysis, demonstrations
and algebraic calculations», these were the blocks with which the En-
lightened Lombards raised a methodologically up to date scientific/critical
edifice. Alessandro Verri’s introspective critical capacities once again
settle upon the inadequacy of any classification which pretends to be
definitive, when he adds caustically: «The first bows, barely deviating
from the perpendicular, are called obeisance of protection, when they
are executed by few individuals, and bows of safety, when they are ex-
ecuted by the many; they are accompanied by a smile or by ‘Your
servant, sir’ if rare, and by a ‘good day, friend’, if common» .
40
The so-called ‘useful sciences’, whose characteristics make them
more immediately applicable to forms of manufacture, are singled out
for the slowness of their progress towards methodological rigor, without
underestimating their importance and, indeed, sometimes highlighting
their formal elegance. «A terse style, stripped of superfluous words, is
the only one I care for», declared Giuseppe Visconti, as he opened his
Meteorological Observations Taken in Milan. On the Barometer (‘Osser-
vazioni meteorologiche fatte in Milano. Sul barometro’). «Such is the
spirit of my native idiom. The time I lost in astrology led me to realize
observation and following nature in its phenomena, though slowly,
step by step, is the only way to fix some rule or laws in the science of
meteors; a science which may also be among the most useful and
where, if one should wish to predict movements, there are nothing but
41
chimera and inconsequence» .
In the pages of Il Caffè, the epistemological debate on traditional
knowledge – above all in the field of agriculture – was incessant and
waged with no polemic holds barred, in the caustic conviction that, as
Pietro Verri tersely put it, «the strongest obstacle all the arts and
sciences encounter in perfecting themselves [is] the stubborn preference
most men have for the old ways» . The privileged object of polemic de-
42
construction is naturally superstition: the very emblem of anti-science.
A passage in the long essay On Agriculture. A Dialogue. Afranio and

39 FR1, 73.
40 FR1, 74.
41 FR1, 72-82, 78.
42 FR1, 72.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XV - Agosto 2018 n.43
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)