It is undeniable that there is a wide gap today between the scientific - or, better, scientifist - culture and the so-called culture of analogy. "Scientifist" is a term coined by the Italian philosopher Raffaello Franchini to indicate the absolute deterioration of the scientific thought, luckily confined to a cultural minority, that uses science as if it were a weapon. Opposing this is the so-called culture of analogy, which is not closely linked to standards that can be assessed instrumentally, but which is based, on the contrary, on the ideal or analogical connection between two or more elements that are represented in almost all the so-called Human Sciences. Such dichotomy derives mainly from the media misinformation that, in recent years, has celebrated the notion whatever is "scientific" deserves salvation, while whatever is not, must be thrown away. Hence, as Franchini points out, the pretension of making people "burp and copulate in a scientific way", with all the distortions deriving from this misrepresentation. The Authors of this short volume, the result of a day-long "chat", intend to present their Readers with some questions marks on the topic of Epistemology - but not exclusively. They will in fact present them with many question marks and very few exclamation marks in order to stimulate a desirable and fruitful debate on this topic.
About the Author: Marina De Chiara is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary English Literature at the University of Naples "L'Orientale". She is the author of Percorsi nell'oblio. Poetiche postcoloniali di creolizzazione (Costa & Nolan, Milan, 1997), La traccia dell'altra. Scrittura, identità e miti del femminile (Liguori, Naples, 2001), and Oltre la gabbia. Ordine coloniale e arte di confine (Meltemi, Rome, 2005). Her research fields and her many other publications focus on modern and contemporary Anglophone literature, and on Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Gender. Studies. Ciro Discepolo, is an astrologer, journalist and writer. He was born in Naples in 1948. He has been dealing with astrology since 1970. He has written over 70 books and he has published over 1,000 astrological lessons on YouTube and about 300 short Astrology Essays on Google Books. He has been holding seminars, courses and lectures in different universities and cultural centres in Italy and abroad. He particularly deals with Predictive Astrology, Aimed Solar Returns and Aimed Lunar Returns. The astrological rules #1 and #2, published in his Transits and Solar Returns but already described decades earlier in other publications of his, have been statistically demonstrated by Didier Castille - the greatest astrological statistic researcher in the world - on the entire French population, and this is probably the most convincing evidence in Astrology of the possibility to statistically demonstrate some astrological items. These rules were also demonstrated in over 40 years of studies by some researchers of Zurich University and they are the only statements of an astrologer, of every time, demonstrated by Official Science. According to many colleagues, he may be considered the greatest living expert of this area of study. He has developed extremely advanced software packages for the study of Predictive Astrology, also projecting an innovative algorithm which is particularly useful for the dating of events within one year, for individuals or groups of people. He is deeply interested in informatics. Astrologically speaking, he followed the school of André Barbault. He founded the school of the Active Astrology.