Editorial

Abstract

«I have often stepped on bridges that unite (or should unite) scientific and literary culture by crossing a crevice that has always seemed absurd to me. There are those who wring their hands and call it an abyss but do nothing to fill it. There are also those who strive to enlarge it, as if the scientist and the man of letters belonged to two different human subspecies, mutually alloglot, destined to ignore each other and not to be interfecund. It’s an unnatural, unnecessary, harmful cleft […]». (Primo Levi, 1985, p. 14, translation by the author)

This is how Primo Levi wrote to underline the unreasonableness of a deep-rooted separation between scientific and humanistic culture. We agree with the writer: this is really an unreasonable separation, and we want to take the side of those who are trying to do something, however small, to bridge the abyss.

Thus, the ninth issue of the journal, the first special issue, tries to provide ideas for uniting the two “worlds” evoked in the quotation, choosing two specific disciplines: mathematics and the Italian language, which have been for too long mistakenly understood as separate at both the scientific and the didactic level. Keep reading...