Page 90 - Mediterranea 43
P. 90

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)
   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95