Science

Leopardi’s interest for science was by no means passing: this is testified to both by “scholastic” works such as the Dissertazioni fisiche and Storia dell’Astronomia, and his careful reading of scientific authors, both foreign and Italian, as well as – particularly worthy of note – the ample space he dedicates to Galileo in the Crestomazia on prose.

Yet he never believed that science could make man happy, and often satirically denounced “scientific” progressivism: for example in the Operetta Dialogo di Federico Ruysch e delle sue mummie or in his late work Palinodia.

In the Zibaldone he expresses many thoughts on science in connection with literature:

Probably scientific academies have helped science, contrarily to what is the case for literature [144-5] – science tends to render the world uniform and promote indifference [382] – it is born of experience, which is an enemy of nature [447] – contrarily to letters, the sciences if “reduced to art” prosper [1356] – establishing the confines of things science deprives us of the pleasure of the infinite, contrarily to ignorance and youth [1464-5] – with respect to literature the sciences provoke a more ephemeral glory [1531-3]; this because with time they perfect themselves, literature instead corrupts itself [1708] – science suffocates the voice of nature, making us aware of its smallness [1550-1] – scientific discoveries are communicated to one and all, also to he who is ignorant [1583, 1767-8] – science can never substitute experience (for example in medicine, music, literature, philosophy, and politics) [1586-8] – “The love and esteem a man of letters bears literature, or a scientist science, are most times inversely proportionate to the  love and esteem the man of letters or scientist has for himself” [4285] – “In the last century the sciences linked themselves to letters ... in ours they have swallowed them” [4504].