Le due culture e il ‘caso’ Galileo

This essay presents an analysis of the dialogue between science and literature in some 20th century Italian authors (Italo Calvino, Ludovico Geymonat, Giulio Preti, Giorgio de Santillana). It points out in particular to Italo Calvino ́s interpretation of Galileo ́s work, joining the contemporary epistemological debate on the heuristic role of writing and imagination in science. According to Calvino, Galilean science opened the way to a new conception of individual experience and its description, through a way of writing that embodies the inexhaustibleness of knowledge of the ‘great book of nature’.