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296 Germano Maifreda

A ridiculous pretension, indeed, is that of those who try to hide their
ignorance in medical theory bragging of their knowledge of practice. The series
of disorders to which the machine of the human body is subject is, alas, vast,
and in comparison the life of any man is a brief burst of lightning. […] The ob-
servations, the experiences – and, perhaps even more, the fortuitous cases
and the very errors of many centuries – have added to the material of that
science; from this whole mass, inherited from by-gone generations, a good
doctor seeks to deduce his practice, which becomes the practice of centuries,
the practice of many men compacted into one single man; and it is this that is
the real practice respected by those who are wise, from which we may hope to
58
draw benefit .
What distinguishes the men of Il Caffè – despite the variety of the
interests they pursued – from the sterile encyclopedic approach of
those who used the new gamut of scientific knowledge as a means of
self-centered exhibition, is precisely this constant, diligent and un-
quenchable questioning (and self-questioning) of what, within con-
temporary historic coordinates, was to be considered scientific and
what was not; of the political significance of science; of the difference
between sciences and objects of scientific inquiry; of the very birth
and development of the category of science. «Philosophic Man» – Pietro
Verri observed in another essay, the Thoughts on the Spirit of Italy’s
Literature 59 (‘Pensieri sullo spirito della letteratura d’Italia’) –,

was also at that time nearly the same as in the preceding century, except that
recent discoveries concerning the globe they inhabited, the busier and more
daring navigation, stimulated in some ideas in natural history, in the figure of
earth, in celestial observations – and with these, some elementary ideas of
geometry. At the end of this great century Galileo appeared: the honor of our
homeland, Newton’s great forerunner, whose name shall remain glorious as
long as mankind conserves the habit of thought – the person, finally, whose
misadventures will be an eternal mark of shame for the century in which he
lived. It was he who first shook the yoke of that science of words which
tyrannized men’s minds and, without loving or seeking the truth, proudly
60
declared itself philosophy .
These great «men born to educate others» gave a «new look» to phi-
losophy in Europe, and «though the number of truths discovered in
this change be not very ample, the way of reasoning introduced was
the cause of discoveries that came afterwards and continue still». This
is the cause of the victory of «reason», «and then a man who believed

58 Ibid., 206.
59 Ibid., 211-2.
60 FR1, 213.

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