Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

FEDERICO CESI, THE FIRST ACADEMY, AND UMBRIA 55And if the ‘labors’ and the ‘contemplations’ and the ‘experimentations’are therefore to have an effective ‘propagation’ and ‘communication’, thisinvolves a binding commitment to diffuse the results of one’s ownresearch and a special interest, on the part of the Academy itself, in theactivity of publishing. The publication ‘with one’s own writings’ ofresearch results is an obligation provided for in the regulations of theAcademy and ‘the Lynceans must obtain and maintain their name, theirhonor and their fame only with books and works’. 77 This explains whyCesi dedicates special attention to the question of the publication of thewritings of the Lynceans, to the fact that the Academy must take responsibilityfor all of the printing expenses for the purpose of freeing theauthors from all preoccupations of a material nature. Entrusted to theAcademy, publication becomes an act of collective responsibility, an obligationwhich guarantees the authors themselves, even after their death. 78This is a far-sighted and modern aspect of Cesi’s mentality, due less to asnobbish self-satisfaction for his own productions and those of his companionsthan to a truly democratic conception of culture.It must nonetheless be pointed out that, despite Cesi’s insistence andzeal on this point and apart from the Galilean publications of the MacchieSolari (Letters on the Sun Spots) and the Saggiatore (The Assayer), despitethe undertaking of the Tesoro messicano (1651), the concrete results of thisproject were rather disappointing. 79 It should be added, however, that oneof Cesi’s most innovative and original ideas was the publication of an ‘epistolaryvolume of the celestial novelties’, 80 which was to have collected themost scientifically important letters among the Lyncean correspondence.The idea of giving priority to correspondence, along with the printing of scientificworks, responds to the necessity of collaboration on which isgrounded the very idea of the academy itself; the idea of instituting a typeof continual and periodic information, so as not to leave our companions‘disunited, scattered, hidden and with no correspondence, guidance, orcounsel’. 81 The well ‘regulated correspondence’ would have to guarantee,above all, besides the opportunity of open contact with scholars domesticand foreign, the ‘beautiful union’ of the Academy, based on ‘mutual aid and77 Federico Cesi to Francesco Stelluti, mid-April 1513, in Carteggio, p. 350.78 Below, pp. 135-137.79 J.-M. Gardair, op. cit., pp. 175-176.80 Federico Cesi to Giovanni Faber, 7 July 1612, in Carteggio, p. 249.81 Below, p. 137.