•  40
    Increased pollution, obesity rates, or the COVID-19 pandemic are only a few examples of the numerous intertwined health-environmental challenges humanity is facing. The severity of these challenges strongly suggests that research in these fields is failing to generate evidence to support decisions and actions that can help address, mitigate or adapt to them. In this article, we look into some of the underlying assumptions underpinning mainstream research in the health and in the environmental sc…Read more
  •  19
    W.D. Hamilton, one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of the twentieth century, was fascinated and puzzled by social wasps. Towards the end of his academic career, Hamilton openly admitted that: “... it was to social life that wasps were providing my touchstone puzzles” (Hamilton 1996, vi). This article deals with Hamilton’s attempts to understand social life in wasps mostly in the 1960s. First, it provides an overview of the reasons why Hamilton thought social wasps constituted a p…Read more
  •  78
    Transforming knowledge systems for life on Earth: Visions of future systems and how to get there
    with Ioan Fazey, Niko Schäpke, Anthony Hodgson, Ian Kendrick, Christopher Lyon, Glenn Page, James Patterson, Chris Riedy, Tim Strasser, Stephan Verveen, David Adams, Bruce Goldstein, Matthias Klaes, Graham Leicester, Alison Linyard, Adrienne McCurdy, Paul Ryan, Bill Sharpe, Giorgia Silvestri, Ali Yansyah Abdurrahim, David Abson, Olufemi Samson Adetunji, Paulina Aldunce, Carlos Alvarez-Pereira, Jennifer Marie Amparo, Helene Amundsen, Lakin Anderson, Lotta Andersson, Michael Asquith, Karoline Augenstein, Jack Barrie, David Bent, Julia Bentz, Arvid Bergsten, Carol Berzonsky, Olivia Bina, Kirsty Blackstock, Joanna Boehnert, Hilary Bradbury, Christine Brand, Jessica Böhme Sangmeister), Marianne Mille Bøjer, Esther Carmen, Lakshmi Charli-Joseph, Sarah Choudhury, Supot Chunhachoti-Ananta, Jessica Cockburn, John Colvin, Irena L. C. Connon, Rosalind Cornforth, Robin S. Cox, Nicholas Cradock-Henry, Laura Cramer, Almendra Cremaschi, Halvor Dannevig, Catherine T. Day, Cathel de Lima Hutchison, Anke de Vrieze, Vikas Desai, Jonathan Dolley, Dominic Duckett, Rachael Amy Durrant, Markus Egermann, Chris Fremantle, Jessica Fullwood-Thomas, Diego Galafassi, Jen Gobby, Ami Golland, Shiara Kirana González-Padrón, Irmelin Gram-Hanssen, Jakob Grandin, Sara Grenni, Jade Lauren Gunnell, Felipe Gusmao, Maike Hamann, Brian Harding, Gavin Harper, Mia Hesselgren, Dina Hestad, Cheryl Anne Heykoop, Johan Holmén, Kirsty Holstead, Claire Hoolohan, Andra Ioana Horcea-Milcu, Lummina Geertruida Horlings, Stuart Mark Howden, Rachel Angharad Howell, Sarah Insia Huque, Mirna Liz Inturias Canedo, Chidinma Yvonne Iro, Christopher D. Ives, Beatrice John, Rajiv Joshi, Sadhbh Juarez-Bourke, Dauglas Wafula Juma, Bea Cecilie Karlsen, Lea Kliem, Andreas Kläy, Petra Kuenkel, Iris Kunze, David Patrick Michael Lam, Daniel J. Lang, Alice Larkin, Ann Light, Christopher Luederitz, Tobias Luthe, Cathy Maguire, Ana Maria Mahecha-Groot, Jackie Malcolm, Fiona Marshall, Yiheyis Maru, Carly McLachlan, and P. Mmbando
    Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get…Read more
  •  107
    Where to after COVID-19? Systems thinking for a human-centred approach to pandemics
    with Maru Mormina, Bernhard Müller, Eivind Engebretsen, Henriette Löffler-Stastka, James Marcum, Mathew Mercuri, Elisabeth Paul, Holger Pfaff, Federica Russo, Joachim Sturmberg, Felix Tretter, and Wolfram Weckwerth
    peer reviewed.
  •  83
    Inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) approaches represent promising ways to address complex global challenges, such as climate change. Importantly, arts–sciences collaborations as a form of inter and transdisciplinarity have been widely recognized as potential catalysts for scientific development and social change towards sustainability. However, little attention has been paid to the process of reasoning among the participants in such collaborations. How do participants in arts–science collaborati…Read more
  •  64
    Participatory and collaborative approaches in sustainability science and public health research contribute to co-producing evidence that can support interventions by involving diverse societal actors that range from individual citizens to entire communities. However, existing philosophical accounts of evidence are not adequate to deal with the kind of evidence generated and used in such approaches. In this paper, we present an account of evidence as clues for action through participatory and col…Read more
  •  1601
    Diversity regained: Precautionary approaches to COVID-19 as a phenomenon of the total environment
    with Marco P. Vianna Franco, Orsolya Molnár, Christian Dorninger, Alice Laciny, Marco Treven, Jacob Weger, Eduardo da Motta E. Albuquerque, Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, Luis-Alejandro Villanueva Hernandez, Manuel Jakab, Christine Marizzi, Lumila Paula Menéndez, Luana Poliseli, and Hernán Bobadilla Rodríguez
    Science of the Total Environment 825 154029. 2022.
    As COVID-19 emerged as a phenomenon of the total environment, and despite the intertwined and complex relationships that make humanity an organic part of the Bio- and Geospheres, the majority of our responses to it have been corrective in character, with few or no consideration for unintended consequences which bring about further vulnerability to unanticipated global events. Tackling COVID-19 entails a systemic and precautionary approach to human-nature relations, which we frame as regaining di…Read more
  •  108
    COVID-19 heralds a new epistemology of science for the public good
    with Manfred D. Laubichler, Peter Schlosser, Jürgen Renn, Federica Russo, Gerald Steiner, Eva Schernhammer, and Carlo Jaeger
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (2): 1-6. 2021.
    COVID-19 has revealed that science needs to learn how to better deal with the irreducible uncertainty that comes with global systemic risks as well as with the social responsibility of science towards the public good. Further developing the epistemological principles of new theories and experimental practices, alternative investigative pathways and communication, and diverse voices can be an important contribution of history and philosophy of science and of science studies to ongoing transformat…Read more
  •  303
    Transforming knowledge systems for life on Earth: Visions of future systems and how to get there
    with Ioan Fazey, Niko Schäpke, Anthony Hodgson, Ian Kendrick, Christopher Lyon, Glenn Page, James Patterson, Chris Riedy, Tim Strasser, Stephan Verveen, David Adams, Bruce Goldstein, Matthias Klaes, Graham Leicester, Alison Linyard, Adrienne McCurdy, Paul Ryan, Bill Sharpe, Giorgia Silvestri, Ali Yansyah Abdurrahim, David Abson, Olufemi Samson Adetunji, Paulina Aldunce, Carlos Alvarez-Pereira, Jennifer Marie Amparo, Helene Amundsen, Lakin Anderson, Lotta Andersson, Michael Asquith, Karoline Augenstein, Jack Barrie, David Bent, Julia Bentz, Arvid Bergsten, Carol Berzonsky, Olivia Bina, Kirsty Blackstock, Joanna Boehnert, Hilary Bradbury, Christine Brand, Jessica Böhme, Marianne Mille Bøjer, Esther Carmen, Lakshmi Charli-Joseph, Sarah Choudhury, Supot Chunhachoti-Ananta, Jessica Cockburn, John Colvin, Irena L. C. Connon, and Rosalind Cornforth
    Energy Research and Social Science 70. 2020.
    Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get…Read more
  •  55
    “How complex and even perverse the real world can be”: W.D. Hamilton's early work on social wasps
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 64 41-52. 2017.
  • Organismi esemplari
    Humana Mente 2 (6). 2008.
  •  86
    Leo Pardi was the initiator of ethological research in Italy. During more than 50 years of active scientific career, he gave groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of social life in insects, especially in Polistes wasps, an important model organism in sociobiology. In the 1940s, Pardi showed that Polistes societies are organized in a linear social hierarchy that relies on reproductive dominance and on the physiological and developmental mechanisms that regulate it, i.e. on the status …Read more
  •  103
    La matematizzazione dei plena. Un esempio di analisi fenomenologica
    Annali Del Dipartimento di Filosofia 12 119-144. 2006.
    Plena are the characteristic properties of material thing, of the thing we perceive in our daily experience. According to Husserl, the attempt to explain their features into the language of Physics is the core of the modern science of nature. Colours and smells are not directly reducible to geometrical forms and algebraic functions. In order to explain natural processes using mathematical terms, scientists need to find out how it is possible to measure them. Galileo claims that the world is made…Read more
  •  68
    La critica delle "idee astratte" in "La democrazia in America" di Alexis de Tocqueville
    Iride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 23 (1): 141-154. 2010.
  •  67
    The main theme of this paper will be the elimination of the sensible features of our experience from the philosophical account of what it means to know something. The textual source on which we will focus our attention is Benedetto Croce’s Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale. Besides an epistemological dimension, what is sensible in our experience has also an ontological connotation. According to Croce, neither of them can be the basis of our knowledge. What we mean whe…Read more
  • L'eterno Flusso Eracliteo - Emanuele Coppola (review)
    Humana Mente 3 (8). 2009.