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INTRODUCTION
Salvatore Santoli, Ph.D, a nanobiologist *, i.e. a scientist devoted to the emerging field of the physics of subcellular living structures the size of some billionths of a meter, when asked to tell about why and how his scientific research raised his interest in the Arts and Philosophy, so explains his path toward what he considers to be a crossroad where the boundaries between so different attitudes in our reaction to reality merge and look like sharing the same root: “When a scientist starts working in an utterly new field, where all is to be done from scratch, I mean, when one has to set forth first principles, to devise novel proper experiments and to choose the proper mathematical tools to deepen unexplored ideas, he/she finds him/herself working in a kind of no-man’s land, where the boundaries between Science, Philosophy and the sense of beauty fade out, and intuition plays the major role. The analytical mind, at work when dealing with problems in a well established field, must give way to the pictorial mind. This position is no different from that of an artist exploiting tools and materials without having a fully clear idea of what the final product will be. In his/her very early creative moment, the scientist’s basic choices will be dictated, maybe in a subliminal way, by his/her ultimate sense of reality: a moment definitely of philosophical nature. In Science, we are always trying to find unity in multiplicity, I mean, a unifying principle in the apparently independent aspects of Nature. Symmetry, in the Euclidean as well as in abstract spaces, and in chaotic dynamics, has been one of our powerful tools in this unifying effort. I wonder whether this yearning for unity underlies some masterpieces of painting, sculpture and poetry. Is it lurking in the untraceable source of light that brightly carves the figures out of a mysterious darkness in the paintings of Caravaggio? or, in modern art, in the dissolving of particular outlines and traits and of real colors, and their restitution as a creative synthesis into abstract, unconstrained forms and shades? Indeed, I found traces of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Carnap, the Vienna Circle etc. in the basic assumptions set forth to tackle some really vexing physical questions that keep open as yet. Indeed, quite soon in my research I experienced that moment, when I realized that doing real Nanobiology means doing physics from Biology, not for Biology, i.e., that the nanobiologist should try and find new physical principles to explain the very deep, unsolved questions about life and biological intelligence, because our present physical concepts are unable to explore and understand the origin of life, its evolution, the complex machinery of cells, how the brain works, and ultimately language, semantics, human creativity, consciousness, and free will. Life is teaching us now a very special lesson in fundamental physics. Moreover, I became convinced that the study of relationships between creativity in Science, in the Arts and in Philosophy would be inspiring for the nanobiologist. At the same time, I was much impressed by Bohm’s views about Quantum Physics and the ultimate nature of the Universe, because they look like being a suitable framework for some concepts we have developed in Nanobiology. For instance, they perfectly fit our notion of biological structure and function as entities not existing independently of one another, but as a solidary physical unity, something like Einsteinian “spacetime”. Bohm’s and his co-workers’ concept of an “undivided Universe” seems to stem from a really pictorial inspiration. And Bohm’s scholars are surely well aware of his deep interest in the Arts and its relationships with Science. His correspondence with a painter was recently collected into a book.” __________________________________ * Dr. Salvatore Santoli -- intitsnt@uni.net is the Director of the INT - reproduced with permission of the author |
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