Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

FEDERICO CESI, THE FIRST ACADEMY, AND UMBRIA 53nation of Lyncean spirituality where the ideal of disinterested scholarship,stimulated by the ‘desire’ for truth, and by the ‘enjoyment’ of peaceis lived and completed in a context of fraternity, of avirtuous and sweet friendship, that knows how to counsel, toexamine with the fullness of charity and with detachment from allcalculation. 72Even as the speech levitates to a more spiritual tone, Cesi’s programmaticconcerns are nevertheless always present in his constant references to thevalue of communal work and to the necessity, also clearly present in the rulesof the Lynceographum, that the participants in this work be ‘selected, wellunitedand fervent subjects’, who after ‘having given up all business’, with‘firm and constant will’ and with ‘continuous warmth and foment of companions’dedicate ‘all their time and all assiduity’ to the common research. 73The undeniable scarcity of actual realizations of these indications on thepart of the Lynceans takes nothing away from the prophetic modernity ofCesi’s scheme. Equally modern in our view is the Cesian affirmation of thenecessity, once arrived at the acquisition of knowledge, of pursuing ‘a propagationof the sciences’, ‘a communication and a perpetuation to the publicbenefit of their virtuous labors and acquisitions’. 74 Cesi reiterates that ‘knowledgeitself is the objective, and suffices to move’; but then adds that the‘accomplishment of knowledge’ is leaving it ‘not to the few [...], but to everyoneand in every place and every time’ and he is convinced above all thatalso to be had from these, in addition to inventions, are the fruits ofheroic and virtuous actions, in the service and profit of their superiorsand elders, I say, in peace, in war, and in every condition. 75Science is always ‘at the service of the public’, addressed ‘to the publicbenefit’; it will create ‘copious and certain fruits’. Cesi and theLynceans feel strongly the need to indicate an ideal of knowledge whichis not resolved exclusively on the level of mere speculative reflection. Forthem, as for Bacon, scholarship has no meaning unless its results are publishedand diffused, if they don’t find concrete application, are not a functionof the satisfaction of practical needs. 7672 A. Rigobello, Motivi di spiritualità nel progetto di Cesi e dei primi Lincei, inConvegno celebrativo del IV centenario della nascita di Federico Cesi, op. cit., p. 68.73 Below, p. 131.74 Below, p. 133.75 Below, pp. 143, 153.76 Below, p. 149 ff. On the modernity of Cesi’s concept of science as a legacy forfuture generations see G. Olmi, op. cit., pp. 215-216.