LECTURE 2025
The first of the “GIUSEPPE LOCATI LECTURES”
Date - 16 October 2025
Venue - Le Village by Crédit Agricole, Milan and online
Theme
Interdisciplinarity and the unity of knowledge: the humanistic dimension of scientific research
Speaker: Prof. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti
Co-speaker and Discussant: Prof. Francesco Valagussa
Art critic - Luigi Marsiglia
Testimony - Dr. Giacomo Maria Arrigo
Moderator - Dr. Milena Provenzi
Joint Winners
Dr. Angelica Crosato earned her bachelor’s degree in Modern Literature at the University of Padua (110 cum laude), defending a thesis entitled: “Strutture dell’ambivalenza e figure dell’alterità. Il personaggio femminile della novellistica di Federigo Tozzi”.
She completed her master’s degree in Modern Philology at the same University (110 cum laude), with an interdisciplinary thesis on the relationship between Primo Levi and science, entitled: “La scrittura “scientifica” di Primo Levi: Fascino e inquietudine fra astronomia, genetica e cibernetica”.
Her research interests focus primarily on the emergence of structures of
Ambivalence in contemporary literature and on interdisciplinary studies investigating the relationship between literature and science.
Dr. Valentina Montesano earned her bachelor’s degree in Sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca (110 cum laude)
She completed her master’s degree in Marine Sciences at the same University and at the Maldives National University (110 cum laude) with an interdisciplinary thesis written in collaboration with the University of Tokyo entitled: “Sea of changes. Japanese social actors’ understanding of and relationship with the sea, and their implications for conservation”
Since September 2025 she has been a PhD candidate at Uppsala University, in Sweden, on the Gotland campus, in the Department of Earth Sciences, on the topic of marine biodiversity and the role of consumers.
The work we are awarding has already been presented and discussed at the ICYMARE 2025 conference in Bremerhaven, Germany.
The interdisciplinarity of the sciences and the unity of knowledge in the thought of Giuseppe Locati
In the thought of Giuseppe Locati, interdisciplinarity is not a mere methodology, but a profound necessity for understanding reality in all its complexity. His work – which unites philosophy, art, science and spirituality – arose precisely from the need to overcome the boundaries between the disciplines and to build a unified vision of knowledge.
Locati always rejected a fragmentary conception of knowledge, maintaining that only an integrated approach, capable of bringing humanistic and scientific culture into dialogue, can grasp the deepest meanings of existence. In his writings, he speaks explicitly of the need for an “open reason”, capable of opposing reductionism and of embracing the complexity of the real.
In his artistic and theoretical production, interdisciplinarity is expressed in the meeting between philosophical reflection and visual form, between mathematical logic and aesthetic intuition. His sculptures and canvases are never merely formal works, but true “scripts of thought”, visualisations of a process that moves between abstraction and concreteness, between symbol and concept.
Locati speaks of “philoscience”, a neologism he coined to express the impossibility of separating scientific research from philosophical reflection. Reality, according to him, is a multifaceted unity: matter and spirit, sensory perception and language, rational analysis and inner meditation coexist as aspects of a single truth in the making.
His thought is founded on the idea that words, images and numbers are imperfect but indispensable tools for approaching truth. Knowledge is therefore always a relational process, never concluded, that requires openness, precision and awareness of one’s own limits. In this sense, Locati proposes a new way of thinking, in which each discipline is not an end in itself, but part of a shared path towards understanding the world.
His example reminds us that the unity of knowledge is not an abstract utopia, but a concrete, current and achievable need, to be pursued with rigour, imagination and critical spirit.
A cultural dialogue of exchange starting from the universities but open to all, to anyone who wishes to explore and engage with these themes.
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