WHAT IS THE EMCSC

The "Ettore Majorana" Centre for Scientific Culture is neither an Academy nor a University like those familiar to everybody.

In order to understand what happened at Erice from 1963 on, we must go back some 900 years. When, 900 years ago, the first University was founded in Bologna, the impulse came from a need that even nowadays has not died down. Quite the contrary. To learn directly from those who invent and discover new things the basis of those inventions and discoveries, this was what prompted a group of educated men to found the first University. In those days, medical and jurisprudential Science were at the centre of interest and in order to become acquainted with the latest news one had to wait until books were written. Time required: ten years. Nowadays, books are printed in a week. Why then should we go on wanting to hear the latest news from those who invent and discover?

True, the time to produce a volume has been reduced but knowledge has expanded at an overwhelming rate. What man has learned from Galilei to today is more than what had been understood in the course of the ten thousand years which separate us from the dawn of civilization. What has become of the institution we call University? Little by little it has had to absorb the enormous expansion of knowledge in every field. Thus, after being the driving force of new knowledge, it has become the seat of propaedeutic formation. To lead the young towards the threshold of new knowledge, to enable them to understand what goes on in the most advanced sectors of the disciplines that compound human knowledge: this is the task of today's University. Nor is this to be sneezed at. But what about inventions and discoveries? Who makes them? And how? How are they arrived at?

When opening a University textbook, the undergraduate almost always gets the impression that the subject concerned is a closed chapter. He is not likely to find openings for the discussion and understanding of problems still extant in this field. And yet, problems awaiting solution exist in every field.

The expansion of human knowledge has shifted University teaching to a terrain that is completely different from the original one. Nine hundred years ago, an educated person was in a position to be thoroughly acquainted with a number of disciplines. Nowadays, for example, if we say physics an extremely vast field of knowledge is implied. There is molecular physics, atomic physics, nuclear and subnuclear physics, to mention only a few of the largest chapters of the Physical Sciences. But even if we limit ourselves to subnuclear physics we find that there are at least ten specializations.

In mathematics, there are hundreds of sectors, each of them of wide range and great interest. Nor are things different if we shift our attention from so-called pure to applied Science. To say medicine is to call with a single name some thousand sectors. What happens to a young student wishing to find out what is new in the field that fascinates him? A University can at best have a couple of first rate stars and these cannot encompass every field of human knowledge. Specialists working at the frontiers of a certain sector are not all together in a single place: to meet them, one would have to go round the whole world and have the privilege of listening to their lectures, an impossible undertaking.

At Erice, those who come in order to follow a certain School - the oldest is the one on subnuclear physics - are called "students" but actually they are young people who have successfully completed their University studies and who come to Erice in order to learn what the new problems are. This applies to all sectors which it would be too long to enumerate here. Suffice it to say that there are over one hundred Schools.

However, what is distinctive for Erice is the spirit animating all participants: students no less than teachers. The prime objective is to learn. Neither diplomas nor any kind of qualification are awarded. Exactly like nine hundred years ago. The student listens to the lecture and after the lunch break comes the most amusing part: the discussion session. Here the student may address any kind of question to the teacher, even the most trivial one. There will be no punishment. It is in everybody's interest to come to know the thoughts of young brains exposed to what is new in Science about which they may have imagined all sorts of details but not easily those that pop up in the teacher's mind. Once a problem is presented, there is a variety of ways in which it is approached. Here lies the interest of the discussion sessions. When a group of scientists comes together to discuss a highly topical scientific problem, absolutely anything can happen. Once the scientific director of the Zurich IBM came to one of the Erice Schools. On coming back to Zurich, he resigned his post in order to devote himself to a problem that had occurred to him while following the Course at Erice. This idea led him to discover high temperature superconductivity: for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. We are talking about Alex Müller. This is an example of how new ideas can be created at Erice.

In the course of these past thirty years, fifty thousand scientists of a hundred nations have participated in the post-university activities carried on in the spirit of Science without Secrets and without Frontiers. A scientific community that has endeavoured to break down ideological, political, and racial barriers not invented by Science but by its worst enemies. The existence of a scientific community as vast as that of Erice is tangible proof that the new role of Science is already a reality. To engage in research means to discover the fundamental laws of Nature. The applications of great scientific discoveries have always escaped the control of Science. This is why technological development has almost constantly taken a direction in contrast with the values inspiring Science: love for the creation, respect for life and human dignity. "Both Science and Faith are gifts of God" says John Paul II. No Pope has ever had the courage to put Science and Faith on pedestals of equal dignity. The new role of Science is born from this truth.

Antonino Zichichi