 I don't know what they thought, but it reminded me when I did it with Professor Paritzen, it was all done, so we can watch the video. So we should have the. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome everybody to the special ICTP CISA Colloquium. We are glad to welcome today Professor Giorgio Parisi and take this opportunity to congratulate him on his Nobel Prize. This is in fact Professor Parisi's first scientific talk after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics 2021 on October 5. And both ICTP and CISA are honoured and grateful that Professor Parisi chose to be here today with all of us here in the room and also with all the broader scientific community connected online through Zoom. We will start now with a welcome message by ICTP's director Hatish Dabalkar, followed by an introduction by Professor Rufo, director of CISA. Then we'll give the floor to Professor Parisi for his lecture. So now I leave the floor to Professor Dabalkar. Thank you. So it's a great pleasure for me to welcome all of you to this very nice ceremony. It was good to see this very warm ovation, almost like an encore in a musical concert. So maybe it was an encore for a second Nobel Prize. So it's a special pleasure for ICTP and for all of us in theoretical physics to welcome Giorgio to this colloquium today. He has made deep and far reaching contributions to really a diverse topics in theoretical physics, from evolution equations of constitutions of nuclear matter to the physics of complex systems. In fact, I encountered his work on supersymmetric matrix models, the Marinari-Parisi model as a postdoc in the field of string theory and quantum gravity. And I think this remarkable breadth of his scientific ove, I would say, has the kind of open-ended quality, which is reminiscent of the great Renaissance physicist Enrico Fermi in the finest traditions of Italian physics. And his contributions were recognized by this prestigious dirac medal in 1919, awarded by ICTP, and he has strong connections with researchers at ICTP and also CISA. And I'm also very looking forward to the title of his talk, it's quite intriguing. I think there is a famous book by Pancari with the same title called La Valère de la Science. And there is a very marvelous essay by Feynman, again with the same title. So I'm looking forward to what Giorgio has to say about this topic. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Davolcar. Now I leave the floor to CISA's director, Professor Stefano Ruffo, who will make an introduction to Professor Parisi, and an overview of his research and scientific career. So please, Professor Ruffo. Thank you. Giorgio Parisi is an exceptionally deep thinker. His career has given similar contributions in many different areas of physics and beyond, from particle physics to computer simulation, from the theory of turbulence to the statistical physics topics. He received, as you all know, the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales. With an overarching citation for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems. And remarkably, he shared the Nobel Prize with Klaus Hasselman and Shokura Manabe for the physical modeling of the Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming. So, which is a very hot topic for all humanity now. It is difficult to summarize Parisi's achievements. I will first focus on one of them, the Parisi solution of spin glass. He proposed his replica symmetry breaking method that solved the Schrodinger-Kirpatrick model for spin glasses in 1979, opening the way to the study of new class of phase transitions that are different from the usual Wilson class and also different from another big class of the Berezinski-Costellis-Tauris. In this new class where ergodicity is broken in an infinite number of states unrelated by symmetry. Without prior information about the order parameter, the replica symmetry breaking method separates phase space in ergodic components, and gives information on the relative location of these components on the energy hyper-surface. This breakthrough opened the way to applications in neural network theories that remember the Amit-Goodfine-Sompolinsky solution of the OPFIL model, with an impact on the foundations of machine learning, a very, very up to date topic nowadays. In combinatorial optimization, the analytic calculation of the satisfiability threshold of the case of problem with Mezar and Zekina, and recently has allowed an exact description of structural glasses in the limit of infinite dimensions. A research area in which Giorgio is very active nowadays. I would like to briefly mention also his main contribution to particle physics, the Altarelli-Parisi equations, which is not cited in the novel document, but for which he received other important prices, notably the streaming prestigious 2021 wall price for ground backing discoveries in disorder system particle physics and statistical physics. In 1973, well before the 1977 paper with Altarelli, Giorgio started the phenomenological study of scaling violations in deep in elastic scattering in a field theoretic framework. This study culminated in the formulation with Altarelli of the so-called dog shit cell group of the part of Altarelli-Parisi equations for the evolution of the particle densities. These equations are at the basis of all perturbative quantum chromodynamics calculations that have been recently verified with very high accuracy at the large Hadron collider collider in the same experiments where the Higgs boson has been discovered. Besides these two major achievements, there is a countless list of pioneering contribution by Giorgio Parisi to physics, which are exceptional both in depth and in breadth. I might simply list some of them stochastic quantization without gauge fixing, planar diagrams and the one-dimensional supersymmetric string that also Atish was mentioning, bosonization of fermions in lattice gauge theories, perturbative expansion and fixed dimension to compute critical exponent at phase transitions, supersymmetry and dimensional reduction in disordered systems, multifractal models of turbulence, stochastic resonance. Once the Cardard-Parisi-Zan equation for growing interface, I would like to mention that Zan, I checked with Giorgio this morning, was a sister PhD student and he was clearly very smart because he soon understood who were the right person to work with, arriving in Trieste. Stochastic manifolds in random media, collective animal motion. Let us also mention hardware construction. Maybe not many of you know, but Giorgio with Nicola Cabebo was the proponent and the scientific coordinator of the APE project in the 80s and he was directly involved in the design and both software and hardware of a family of parallel computers dedicated to the calculation of the mass spectrum in lattice gauge theories. His impact in statistical physics is comparable only to the one of Kenneth Wilson, Nobel Prize in physics in 1992. All these qualifies Giorgio Parisi as a universal thinker, a renaissance scientist as Atish was saying. Parisi's relation to CISA I would like to mention that he served as the chair of the International Scientific Advocates Committee and some of his numerous master students from Rome did their PhD at CISA and he continued in recent times to co-advice CISA PhD students and postdocs. Now I will finish from the document highlighting the scientific background of the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics I read. We recognize that scientists understand that no single prediction of anything can be taken as an assailable truth and that without understanding the origins of variability, we cannot understand the behavior of any system. I think this sentence can serve as an introduction of today's lecture by Giorgio on the value of science. Thank you, Professor Ruffo, now it is time to leave the floor to Professor Parisi for his talk on the value of science. So please, Professor Parisi, thank you. Okay, thank you very much for this very wonderful introductions. And let me start with my locker room on the sense on the value of science. Now different people, okay, I can take out, sorry, different people had a different opinion, one of the most extreme position but it's very well synthesized was done by Richard Feynman. Richard Feynman, or physicist, you know who he was, he was a wonderful stellar physicist, which won to cause the Nobel Prize, and he was considered one of the greatest physicists of the second half of the previous century. And he said it's the most sympathetic one. He was used to play boom and so on, he's a great sense of humor, and he says that science is like sex. Science, as both of them, science and sex have practical consequences, but most of the time the practical consequences are not the reasons for which we do. So, this sentence, let me not able to translate the Dante things, but it was an imperative that men and women are not done by not created for living like beasts, but we have to follow the virtue and knowledge. This was something that Dante said about what people should do, and now this statement by Feynman reflects very well the subjective position of the scientists, the subject pollutions, how they see themselves. Now, it's clear that science is a normal puzzle, and every piece of this puzzle that is put in the right place, each test, it's something like a test of a mosaic, allow you the possibility of putting other one. Therefore, this is something like a gigantic mosaic, and each scientist adds some kind of a new piece, and someone is lucky one that he will add the test of the eyes. Where all people will look around, but he can put the test of the eyes because other people put the test of the dresses and so on. And what is nice in this kind of building, that everybody knows that he has done a contribution, and also when after some time the name will be forgotten, there will be other people that will arrive that will use this result, and as been said by many people, will go on his shoulder to see if I wait. So, science is a collective endeavor that needs cooperation, science without cooperation is bad, because you discover something, you die, your discovery is forgotten. So it's clear that science is just a huge cooperative enterprise done by the whole humanity, and also science is very interesting that is in some sense, as far as I understand, is a never ending enterprise. Let me try to do a metaphor of the scientific enterprise. Let's say that some people arrives in the night on unknown island, and they are no light, no moon and so on, and they put on a fire on the beach. With the fire, you start to see something, and you understand more what is on the island, but you start to see that there are some black regions of the island that you don't understand, you just barely see something but you don't know. Now you can put more wood on the fire, the fire become bigger and bigger, more bright and bright, and now you start to see more, many more things, more wood you put on the fire, more things you see, but more things you see, you discover that the island is bigger and there are other things that you can just barely see that you don't see. Therefore, this happens more, and this happens more and more, and more you put light, more you discover there's something that you don't know. And this is the same things for science, more we explore the universe, more we know that the new regions of exploring, and its discovery not only allows us to answer to old questions, but to formulate new questions. And before, new questions that before this black discovery, we could not be able to formulate. Let me think through a relatively recent example. We all, people knew from astronomy that there were some spots on the sky that something like a neighbor and so on, but it was not clear the origin. At a certain moment, they discovered that there were galaxies, because they could see some of the spots, some of the stars and so on. Now it's clearly that this discovery has answered the nature of the neighbor that you can see, but open an infinitely many use number of questions, which are the galaxy, which are the property of the galaxies and so on. And therefore, this means that science is never ending exploration, but beyond this kind of consideration, I think that for scientists, for most of the scientists, it's fundamental that it should be amusing to solve the puzzle. My mentor, Nicola Capbibbo, was always saying when we were discussing physics, why should we study this problem if we do not amuse ourselves in doing it. Sometimes, especially when we were young, there was some kind of surprise that we were paid for doing something that we would like to do. Usually, you are not paid for what you want to do, but when scientists are paid for what you do, and my good friend, unfortunately, died already a good luck, always was saying to work as a physicist, to be a physicist is a hard work. It's quite tiring, but it's always better than to work. I mean, the reality is that it's only the following because it takes something, if you do something that you like to do, you can remain in the night after one o'clock, two o'clock working, and you don't feel the tiredness because it's you that you want to do. You have to remember that, however, that unless there were cases with the scientists that were rich men, and the research was done in the period where the rich men were not working. I'm thinking of Fermat, I'm thinking of Plinus the old. The scientists had always a problem that he has also to eat, has to find the to eat, and the application of science and being always important in order to be to eat while doing science. And you have to think to do one of the first science in astronomy. It's difficult now we live in cities which are well illuminated by electric lights. But if you think of primitive civilization where the amount of light of fire in the street was very low, the effect of the power, the prestige of those which were to control the season. To have, when the stars and so on and so on, that they controlled the movement of the stars or the planets, and they can be predicted as a crisis. They can be predicted the crisis of moon, which was already in a sudden event if you are not, if you are not cultivated, if you don't know astronomy. And also you could predict this terrifying phenomenon, which is eclipses of sun. You have to understand that eclipses of sun, if you don't know, may throw people in terror. And if somebody could tell you don't worry, there will be a crisis of sun. I will stop it when I will move my hand. The eclipses will stop and so on. This was very important for the power. And it's clearly that the people that were doing science got prestige for these things. The power, the government were paying for their life in order to do these things. So the astronomy was in some sense the first applied science. Although we think astronomy to be only pure science at the beginning, astronomy was an important science. And the motivation of the people, the astronauts, were not only culture, but sometimes were for having prestige. However, the scientists knew the importance of practical applications. For example, Galileo, you know, that discovered the Galilean planet, the Medici planet around Jupiter. And you know that this planet, at some moment, they go behind Jupiter and they cannot be seen. The time at which this happens can be predicted very easily by the law of physics at that time. And for the idea of Galileo that you could use this occultation, the planets by Jupiter as a watch, as a clock. That may be used in all parts of the world and could be used to synchronize clock in South America with a clock in Europe. And now the synchronization of the clock is fundamental because the problem of computing is the longitude. And that was very difficult to compute. The problem, the proposal Galileo was not so sufficient and practical. And after the solution was solved with a clock, the clock watch. However, that was with the aim of coordinating scientific research. In 1617, there have been founded many academies which dominated the role still as the academic society, the academic science, the American philosophical society in 1743. The American philosophical society was founded by Benjamin Franklin with the aim of providing useful knowledge. However, with going on times, science become always more useful to society. And nowadays economic development is based on scientific progress, not only on the beginning of the industrial resolution, but the science especially these days become more cost, needs more money, bigger resources and an organization which is much more complex. The second world war, science, the beginning of mass science, and not only with the Salamos that you know, but with all problems of world need a machine and so on, was crucial. And Van Rappbusch coordinated the effort of 6,000 scientists. And okay, now the scientist, the science which institution needed to be financed by society. And I think the society does not care at all if scientists amuse themselves or not. This point of view has been oppressed in a very clear way from the Soviet delegation to the Congress or history of science and technology that happened in London in 1931. That probably someone remember was one of the leaders of the Russian revolution that unfortunately died by during Stalin. He was a very popular in the United Nations type. He wrote the idea that the science as aims to itself is an internal view of the science is named. This idea mixed the subjective functions of the science of the professional scientist that works in a system of very, where the work is very strongly divided with the role, the objective social role of this kind of activities. And this is an activity with utmost practical importance. Now, it's clear that it's not possible to think of the technology that developed without an advancement of science. In the book of Lapid Arquiteto, 1977, science, pure science not only give to the applied science that needed the knowledge to develop language, metaphor, conceptual framework, but has a role more in it than and not less important. Indeed, the scientific activity of this works as some kind of very large circuit in order to test the new product, develop a new product technological product. And they have some first place where high advanced technology is used. Now, the point that science and technique are so well integrated, may think that the science will have a wonderful future in a society that become always more dependent about advanced technology. However, if you give a look around, you see that you are starting to have some problems. Indeed, you have problems that are of different kinds. The prestige of science is sometimes decreasing. There are strong anti-scientific tendency in our society. Well, not so strong, but they have a certain weight and you can see also here. And some trust in science is decreasing with the time. And as you start to have some not only people that come back to astrology, to homoeropathy, and you have anti-scientific position, for example, you can see Novaks, you can see all the story about Silelli and South Italy, bio and also the, how to say, the bio-dynamics agriculture that should be approved, I hope not by law or state. And it's amusing that this kind of anti-scientific position, let's say, are diffused themselves with, together with a very hungry consumeristic idea of consuming product-high technology. I mean, most of the people have a very, very smart phone. This main smart phone is some incredible condensator technology and so on. But having a smart phone does not forbid the people to make anti-scientific statement. And it's not easy to understand really the origin of this phenomenon. However, as a scientist and also a citizen of our country, it's clear that at least myself, maybe I hope also you, you don't like this phenomenon or this anti-scientific position because of this anti-scientific position, the end I damage the whole society. But, however, if you want to fight something, you have first to understand the deep roots. If you don't understand the deep roots of something, it's clear that you cannot put no remedy if you don't know the course. Now, one could say that it's possible that this starting of this untrusting, missing trust in the science can be done from the fact that the scientists are not sometimes too present in an arrogant way. Sometimes they are anti-patic when they speak and they try to present science as absolute knowledge and respect to all other knowledge that can be discussed. However, this they present also when there are some scientific positions that are not completely sure. And, for example, therefore, they have some way, I mean, it's clear that if you have two people, if someone sees the television, there are two people. One is sympathetic, one is anti-patic. You believe to the sympathetic one. And the scientist is the television is anti-patic, no matter what he says. He may be perfectly right, but the result is negative. I speak in arrogance because sometimes you try to have, you don't try to show to the public the proof that you have or something, but you ask to the public to believe in an unconditional trust and an expert. Now, just the need, just the fact that sometimes the scientists do not accept their limits. I mean, there are many things that the scientists do not know, but it's very hard to hear the public talk to some scientist say, no, that I don't know. I mean, you have to understand that you have limits and there is not an acknowledgement of the limit that may limit the prestige of scientists. Sometimes they are too safe on something which is, on which you are not so safe. And sometimes the public opinion is very good in realising the limiting of the scientists and they understand the partiality of what they say. Now also, there is another point that there are people that are doing, they present science in a bad way and science is presented as some kind of wizardry. I mean, what is a wizardry? I mean, think of the old wizardry. You move something and something transforms something else. For example, like in many of our favourites. Sometimes, therefore the results are presented in such a way that you cut all the things intermediate and you discover this as a wizardry, more or less. And now, because you cut all the steps. And now this is, and also something is done for the publisher also to get publicity to some kind of propaganda. We had many times in the news and newspaper a big discovery for medicine that ended nothing or may appear on the market in 20 years and so on. And so this way that the scientists do present themselves as propaganda, doing propaganda to get money, to impress the public to get support. And they present things like a wizardry cut in the intermediate stage. This is very dangerous because someone that is not a scientist may be driven into an irrational position in front of a science that is also perceived as a wizardry. And therefore to prefer to science something that is also irrational, that is very irrational. This has been discussed a long time ago by a wonderful book on Mark Otero, or Rappel Architekto. But in a nutshell, if science becomes absurd or wizardry, why don't you don't choose the original wizardry and not an imitation of the wizardry? I mean, and I don't say that science is an imitation of wizardry, but the way that sometimes presented looks that way. So we have to do something different in this situation. And there's also important things that we should take care of, that we should not have confidence on the fact that if we need technology, science will go on. We know that in the past, things were not this way. The Romans had taken the technological science from Greece, but they had taken the technology, sorry, the Romans had taken from technology, the technology from Greece, but they had not taken science from Greece. Science, during the Roman time, time had disappeared. And also we have to remember that later on, the Christians killed Patia, and they did not care at all of the consequences of long term killing the mathematicians. On the other hand, they were happy of the disappearance of some knowledge that was considered useful and dangerous. And also we must be careful that before we have this kind of possibility of disappearing of science. Maybe not disappearing of science in all the countries, but we may have disappearance of the science in some countries. And therefore the future of science in Italy is something that is something for which we have to fight. It's not something that we have taken to grant. We have to remember that Italy has had a very strong decline of technological. And what happened in Italy? We have a very systematic deindustrialization, I mean the Christian deindustrialization in Italy. And we remember, I mean, usually from the 60s, there had been the killing of Mattei. There was a people that did Marotta, that did a factory for producing penicillin in Italy that was arrested, not for putting the factory, but it was something that was stopped in this. The Benedetti, when the Benedetti died, the whole electronics that was developed by the Benedetti industry, just not the Benedetti. Okay. Olivetti, Olivetti, sorry, Olivetti. The Olivetti things, when Olivetti died, I mean, the first microcomputer, microchips for computer were produced in Italy. And therefore we have all the type of disappearance and the selling of big part of our pharmaceuticals to outside and taken the farm outside. So Italy had a very strong decrease of technological capabilities. And it's possible that also without an industry of this type, if we don't do a strong investment, also science is going to disappear to Italy and we will come at something very near to the third world. And now you will see that we have, in Italy, we have a slow decay of public school. We have a strong disinvestment of the government in what you can call cultural goods. For example, the restoration of the colosseum that is very important was paid by private funds because the state did not put money to restore the colosseum. And the money that was given for cinema, from state for quality cinema is decreasing. And the thing that is decreasing from 20 years or more than a part of the truth is that cinema in Italy was a very important cultural asset. Of course it's still a cultural asset, but it's not so much cultivated by state. And we see that we have a low decrease of all cultural activities in Italy and sometimes also in other forms. Now the things that we need that we have to defend the culture in Italy versus the world, also we have to avoid to lose our ability to transmit the culture to the new iteration. And that is something that is very important and very important that culture and science are not two things that are separated but a two phase of the same coin. And also it's quite important that we defend science not only for those practical aspects but also for the cultural value. I mean, I remember very well a very important man, Robert Wilson that was one of the founding of Accelerator in the United States. And he was planning, was one of the planning to be the big Accelerator of Milab at the Batarian Illinois that was an extremely important step for physics. And it went to the Senate and an American Senate asked him which are the applications of the construction of the Accelerator. Now, he had a two choice. Start to discuss whether we can do this with Accelerator. Accelerator may be useful for construct material and so on. We study the protons and the protons are important because everything is done by protons or things like that. And he gave an answer which was very, I think it's a wonderful answer and says that no, this Accelerator is not useful for industry. It's not useful for defend the country. It's not useful for doing new arms and so on. This was a question that was asked but the value of this Accelerator is in the love for culture. It is like painting, like sculpture, like poetry, like all those activities that we Americans are like as in a patriotic way. We are proud of this activity in a good patriotic mood. It does not need to defend our country but it is such that it is worthwhile to defend our country. So it's clearly that this is some kind of defense of science and defense on culture and something that we have to say because in this period not only we have problems with science and with culture. And if we need to present science as culture we have to make the population as far as we can understand what is the science, how science is done. I think that we realize especially during the COVID how you arrive consensus because one of the things that I see many, many times of people saying well there is one paper that says something but one paper is not it's part of science but it's not the response of science. The response of science where the scientists are convinced that the paper is right they reproduce the paper they discuss the paper with points, the corrector with points. So science is a collective endeavor it's not one paper. So presenting one paper that is something that we do not understand. People do not understand and therefore we need to present science and our science culture a connected one with the other. We have to present which has been the story of science and culture and how consensus which important things of science is formed how does this formation or consensus is a really democratic way between the people that understand scientists. We have to explain in a way that does not appear to my magic what do scientists which have the things that we understand and that is very difficult especially for scientists like the one like physics where you get a lot of mathematics but we always say that science cannot be understood who has not studied mathematics but the same things we could say for science poetry which could not be understood for those which do not know Chinese. Indeed if you look to Chinese poetry this is something that cannot be translated because it's a mixture of literature and painting. I mean no one care or maybe someone care of the original manuscript of L'Opavdi on L'Infinito but no one thinks that reading the original manuscript of L'Opavdi you get a better understanding of L'Opavdi poetry. Now on the other end the original manuscript the unique manuscript of a Chinese poetry is what counts in many cases when you produce the poetry you will produce the characters the writing of the author because the writing of the author is a picture, it's a painting and therefore it is something that you cannot really appreciate if you don't know where the Chinese I have a Chinese poetry in Italian you lose some of the original value but you get some that you can appreciate Chinese therefore in the same way you could be able to have an appreciation of mathematics or mathematics things also if you are not a mathematician therefore I have to add something that is more difficult not more difficult something for which it's not so easy to find a solution that I believe that the difficulties that there are with science with some portion part of the society but it depends on the country have a more deep origin and this deep origin they have to understand well in order to control them now we all understand that we are in a period of pessimism on the future I mean the future is not seen as something we have a crisis of various nations we have an economic crisis we have a climate crisis we have the end the crisis due to the end of resources I mean we are using we are not using renewable resources and non-renewable resources and near to the end we have an increase of pollution and we have also in certain countries an increase of inequalities not always we have in our country the precariate I mean the fact that young people do not have a permanent job which was completely different we have an increase of unemployment we have a lot of wars that have not stopped after the second war something like 50 million 100 million people died of war after the second one I am not checked this number but I think they are all correct and now you see once upon a time everybody was thinking that the future would be better than the present however that is not anymore true people will have a strong fear that the future may be worse than the present and now the trust in the progress the trust in what Lopati was calling the magnificent and progressive I mean the idea that we are going always towards a better situation is no more valid many people fear that future generation will be worse than the present generation I think that this is a sociological fact I don't say that these kind of fears are founded, some of them are well founded climate change and so on I think that if we something that we move if we use science we can stop however at once upon a time science had the merit of the progress because everybody says electric light and so on due to science and so on and now science in some sense have the habit of the fact that there is a decline I mean I don't say that the decline is due to science or there is a real decline but there is a perceived decline and in some sense science in the same way that was responsible for the growth for the further situation was better is considered in some sense maybe something that is not said in an explicit way but the things that makes part of the mood and I mean science sometimes is considered to be a better teacher which is considered humanity in the wrong direction and this perception is not easy we cannot go in the street and say we are a good teacher not a bad teacher we have to do something else and there is you see with all the elections Trump and many other elections there is a big dissatisfaction in the public which shows up in both people that vote against everybody that carries humanity in this present position in this presence of crisis and the scientists do not escape to this negative procedure now it's clear that it's not easy what we should do we have ourselves we stay in a very difficult situation and first all I think one of the things that is important is very important that scientists are honest honest with themselves I mean they are usually honest when they speak of scientific things but they must be honest also in realizing all these types of aspects and try to speak with the people and also there should be a more important effort to teach science in the school this is very important to teach science in the school because science is if you teach learn something in the school you learn all the life but the way that unfortunately science is teaching in the school nowadays is not an optimal one it's something which science is presented as an accomplished factor but what is in science is not so much a accomplished factor but it's a trajectory you will see science has been produced is the act of doing science that is important in the same way of the metaphor by Feynman at the beginning therefore you have to explain if you want to explain how science is done you have to have the children to do science by themselves to do discoveries by themselves and that can be done that can be done also from the from the school from the kindergarten kindergarten elementary school and so on and this was a lesson of the method of Maria Montessori the great Italian educator whose face was put on the bank note of 1000 livres but the method had been partially forgotten and what is important that the teacher should prepare for the pupils for the children some very well prepared settings some well prepared environment and once they should be stimulated to do this the child should explore what they have to see the experiment they have to do with their face we will give them all the time they need because if you discover something by yourself this is 1000 times more valuable than someone else teaches you so we have to what we have to do is to change drastically the way that science is taught I mean no practical, no school maybe a few one in school also for high school scientific school it's organized in the way that people can do experiments in the school we have seen the experiment done by the teacher but they do the experiment by themselves therefore we have to do we have to do a very strong effort we have to do a very strong effort to change the way that science is taught to involve the children in this kind of activities in other countries there's a wonderful movement in the past that was done by many other people in France and that is something that is very important there are other types of initiatives to construct a museum where people can meet themselves Rome is the city which is the only big capital of Europe I guess it doesn't have a museum of science so we have to do a lot of things and that comes also to the responsibility of scientists it's scary that part of the things is the responsibility of the politicians due to the fact that some decisions should be politically even but if the scientists themselves do not push for a change in teaching of science do not push for every museum in science do not push from a presentation of science to the public in such a way that the people in the public can follow in a clear way and they do not push for no magic presentation of science it's clearly if this is not done by scientists it will certainly no one else will do so I think that as scientists we have a huge responsibility not only to go on with science to do what we should do in various fields of science and to move science in the direction of doing something useful for example something that is good for contrasting the climate change or without neglecting the course of basic science because many times the discovery comes from in a completely expected way but we have to move in this direction and if things do not happen we cannot say that is not our fault ok thank you thank you again professor Parisi for a wonderful talk it was nice to see a full hold today and we had more than 700 people connected online both on zoom and youtube and facebook so thank you again for helping us disseminating science especially with younger physicists that will hopefully build a future community of great scientists so now it is time for some questions so please feel free to ask questions again both here in the room through zoom the Q&A session will be moderated by professor Dabalkar and by professor Matteo Marcilli for the questions on zoom so I leave the floor to Q&A thank you thank you for this wonderful talk Giorgio and we have time for a few questions yes yes hello Carla Pacheca Lupe Sissa you are in a location in which politicians made strategic investments for placing international institutions in an area which was a border between two different systems do you think that scientists and science institutions are still up to the task and which barrier can we break today well to break barrier in science a barrier from different fields is something difficult and of course any type of effort is welcome for example well in academia where I belong we have two different classes and we have a lot of discussion among people, scientists and humanists what I was told that you know that the institute of Veneto there is really interdisciplinary discussion on everything so barrier maybe go down but one has to do an effort because he likes destroying walls if you find a wall and you don't destroy it separates always people from one side to the other side it is one question over there so Andrea Gambasi Sissa so you trace back the mistrust in science to the scientists presenting science as an ultimate truth so like you said the problem is what about instead when the scientists go in TV shows in I would say quite depressing way on scientific teams on the TV shows these also create mistrust sometimes what is the basic engine of science becomes the basic engine of mistrust in science because they don't know to whom they should believe in a sense of behavior this type of discussion television and being somewhat a disaster and I think that it's not only before to the scientists which have their responsibility but also the people that are organizing the program because clearly if they put together two scientists the audience will be smaller and if we put the scientists we start to acquire high they are more interested and I think they considered something that was extremely well done in a very bad way all these things because if you have to have two people two saints the natural things will become one hour in advance discuss about who is yourself clear one to the other your opinion and after that you understand what the other is saying is you can go on and having a discussion I mean I had the experience for example personally I had the experience with Bassetti Bassetti was we had the discussion because Bassetti was saying that all the decreases in England were due to vaccination I want to say no the beginning of the decreasing was not due to vaccination because they were not vaccinated at the time and the second part was very important was useful to vaccination we have not been able to understand each other in front of the public because when you stay in front of the public you speak for having the public understand what you say and I think that all these discussions will be not present if we had the time to change to see look and compute the derivative here of discover the slope and so on and discuss on the numbers but if you don't have discussion before it's clear that also you have to understand that scientists I am not easy people I mean they start to fight one with the other one in congress and if the the survey conferences or 727 or with all discussion between former Einstein will be on prime time on the televisions it's clear that people had a good scientist and they were not on prime time on the television time to discuss and take some time to form consensus and the point that in this case you had to show people the television before consensus was formed and that was a disaster plus a certain attitude to play as a prima donna ok maybe we can take one question now from from Matteo there is a question from Matteo Seclich he asks what do you think about the numerological evaluation of scientific merit we are facing more and more such as the importance given to the research index and the likes do you think it has led to a commodification of science well I think that numerology is one of the 10 different instruments that can be used to evaluate I mean past all numerology does not make sense if you do not apply in a restricted field when you apply in a restricted field it may give some importance sorry I have to look sorry what say that the numerology gives you some information I mean if you know that a given paper in a given field it has been quoted one hundred times ten times in the first approximation tells you that the paper has been quoted one hundred times is as likely to add more impact on the field unless people have forgotten to put the first paper but I mean it gives some information when you have to make a judgment is some kind of information that must be complemented to other things now numerology is something that may be also to a different place where it could be used one place if you have to consider the old department the average the average activity on the department is numerology is the first way to get the result of course numerology should never be used if you want to therefore if you want to evaluate the department of 30 people you can do the numerology you may do mistakes in one direction mistakes in the other direction the mistakes do cancels if you have to evaluate someone for a position you should not do you may look to numerology just to see how this guy reflects with other scientists but you should not use in a serious way numerology so numerology for something to get what to say in Italian the ability the ability to I mean the statement that you have to become full professor of numerology should have should be not used or used in much much less way that is now and also if you want to pull someone and you should not use numerology is some pass way to discuss to see people that in case that you do not have time to look to everything can be used but of course it should not be used on individuals or at minimum there is one question or that hello this is Audia from ICTP the value of science is strongly connected to communication I mean the way we communicate science the Italian experience has clearly given shown two big failures I don't know whether this is from the science or from the society view point I mean we've seen that the example of Lacula earthquake was a science communication issue there was a big failure in this and then recently we've seen also the pandemics and is there anything that we should really rethink in the way we natural scientists can really talk to the society and is there any way to rethink new curricula between natural and social sciences by which we could help society evolve at the same speed where science is evolving so to avoid that the future will be a bad one for society as science keeps evolving I mean the future for science will be always better right while for society it seems like we still well I think that something that something that we have seen also in the pandemics is an impact that the scientists sometimes are not good to communicate and they communicate badly so I think that there should be some there should be some professional figure that also scientists but more more inclined to do communications in order to in order to communicate in a better way because I mean I notice a few times I notice people doing the conference and so on and then I take notice sometimes they use a technical word that everybody will understand in a different way and that is a mess because people that they even do not understand for example mistakes that's done by often very mathematician and also by physicists is to use the word the discreet in the sense to something that's done by finite number or element or a separable number or element I refuse to speak with in a conference with laymen people with a discreet value they do not understand what you mean they understand discreet in the common sense therefore it's a big effort to communicate to people and this is a mess with the patient period of COVID in Germany Drosten has spent a lot of time doing every week and our video wonderful done explained the situation this video has been seen millions of times and that was a good way to communicate but to do good communication it takes time it takes effort okay Matteo maybe one last question from if there is one no there is no question on the chart okay anybody else any okay maybe I will ask one question you made two important points about science namely the importance of community to arrive at a consensus which is very important to science and also the decline in the prestige of science and there is a related also in certain academic circles it has become fashionable to say that science is just a social construct so even though you have a community of scientists it is no different from a community in some cult somehow trying to deprive science of its objectivity so do you want to comment upon this trend towards interpreting science as a construction well if I hope that understood well your question the point is that you should do some I mean science is evolving so the type of division in science that were valid half a century ago are changing with time and we have some different kind of specific enterprises that are in the middle between mathematics and physics or between physics and biology informatics and physics and so on and so on for example all problem of learning is something that related to neural network of a neural network what it is something that was born in biology because of the paper it was studied by physics by the paper that mentioned it went to informatics and so on artificial intelligence is something that is in the middle and it is something that requires a lot of different kind of contributions to have one to have something I think that it is nice to have some reflection of different ways of teaching things to aggregate things in some way we could say that the science is something like a jacket which is done by only one piece of tissue and when you have a course at university you cut a piece of the jacket but that jacket has its own unity so to try to preserve this unity of science is something that will be very important and also to put different selection different way to cover science OK so if there are no further questions I would like to thank both on behalf of CISA and ICTP Georgia Stefan I just want to make one quick announcement so in the afternoon we have the Dirac medal ceremony and the two of the Dirac medalists Prof. Pierre Ramon and Prof. André Nouveau they are sitting in the first row and Miguel Virassaro and the third Dirac medalist for the year 2020 was our former director Miguel Virassaro who unfortunately is not with us but there will be a ceremony in the afternoon and also in memoriam session to honour the memory of Miguel Virassaro in the Boudinich Hall so thank you very much for coming