Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

ON THE NATURAL DESIRE FOR KNOWLEDGE 109ious means, words, and signs accommodate things to our understanding,the latter allow us to hear the doctrine itself of the absent and elder andkeep us at all hours in the midst of the conversation of the most eminentliterati. Nor is this sufficient, since, in order to do something on our own,it is necessary to read well this great, veracious and universal book of theworld; 26 it is necessary therefore to visit its parts and exercise oneself inobservation and experimentation so as to ground in these two good meansan acute and profound contemplation, the first representing to us things asthey are and how they change by themselves, the other how we ourselvescan alter and vary them; 27 how many parts, therefore, it is necessary to seeand how many difficulties there are in our peregrinations and gainingaccess to certain places and times, each may consider; nor should he be surprisedby the death of Pliny. 28 If then the advances made by study are to begreater, and the greatest if they bear fruit to the benefit of others, as everygood philosopher must seek, it will be necessary to have the help of companionsand amanuenses, of writers and publications and such like.The time that these things require is thus long and continuous, andsince on the contrary our life is short, 29 one must begin early and neverstop; nor will we do this in the early years, puerile imperfection fleeingfrom it, unless we have a good father and incentives and provisions, andhere we see that study secondarily requires many other things. 30Provisions for all living expenses, and principally for health, quiet andidleness from other tasks and affairs and family occupations, and thus a26 The image, which has become famous in the version described by Galileo in IlSaggiatore, is in fact much older, but it had illustrious recent and contemporary examplessimilar in tone to Cesi’s, also in Montaigne (Essays, I, XXVI) and in Descartes(Discours de la Méthode, I). Cf. E.R. Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinischesMittelalter, Bern 1948, chap. XVI; and H. Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt, Frankfurt1981, chap. 7.27 Certainly a very important passage, which manifests in its articulation the Cesianideal, in the gradation of study first under the guidance of teachers, then in the readingsof the great, and finally in the ‘reading’ of the book of nature, mediated by ‘observationand experimentation’; it should be noted, furthermore, that observation and experimentationare connected respectively to the natural and artificial variations of things, in amanner akin to modern scientific method.28 Reference to the famous case of Pliny the Elder, who, due to his desire to study itat too close range, died during the celebrated eruption of Vesuvius in 79 BC.29 Ars longa vita brevis: cf. the famous expression of Seneca, De brevitate vitae, I, I,and the original of Hippocrates, Aphorisms, I, I.30 Read: needs many favorable conditions.