LIBRI DI ROBERTO VIGNERA

Darwin e Heisenberg: due grandi figure che hanno giocato un ruolo fondamentale nell’introdurre la casualità e l’indeterminazione nel linguaggio teorico e sperimentale della scienza. Questi due saggi vogliono essere un’occasione per superare alcuni ricorrenti fraintendimenti che rischiano di dissolvere le più affascinanti tensioni epistemologiche sorte tra le scienze biologiche, le scienze fisiche e le scienze sociali nelle trascrizioni caricaturali dei principi di casualità e indeterminazione.

Considered one of the most extraordinary statements of modern physics, theHeisenberg Uncertainty Principle has had a great seductive power on scholarsof different disciplines. Its popularity, especially in the field of the social sciences,has been all the more striking as it related to a real transfiguration of itsimplications. In particular, its connection and conformity to the dictates ofcognitive relativism and to the simple interaction between observing and observedsystems.

The theme of identity as a source of representations of self and social relations is at the center of the contemporary sociological debate on dilemmas of modernization and has often been considered as the analytical framework within which such unresolved issues could be caught in their most emblematic profiling. Some of these controversial issues will be taken into account in the present essay through a comparison between the social sciences and the biomolecular sciences perspectives, both increasingly involved in the clarification of the most common misconceptions regarding the immutability of this set of signs and its progressive dissolution.

Since the earliest phases of its institutionalization, the sociology of health and medicine has played an increasingly central role within the more general context of sociological thinking. Its prospects are further heightened in the context of the current debate on the interactions between the social sciences and fields of knowledge like cognitive science, behavioral genetics, neurosciences, which are becoming more and more closely engaged with the study of Human Social Behavior. This mediation role, however, finds it difficult to manifest itself due to the various theoretical and epistemological inclinations that sociology has relied on to solidify its own identity and stand apart from the formal criteria used in other scholarly contexts.

Since the earliest phases of its institutionalization, the sociology of health and medicine has played an increasingly central role within the more general context of sociological thinking. Its prospects are further heightened in the context of the current debate on the interactions between the social sciences and fields of knowledge like cognitive science, behavioral genetics, neurosciences, which are becoming more and more closely engaged with the study of Human Social Behavior. This mediation role, however, finds it difficult to manifest itself due to the various theoretical and epistemological inclinations that sociology has relied on to solidify its own identity and stand apart from the formal criteria used in other scholarly contexts.

Biologi, sociologi, filosofi della scienza, medici e giuristi cercano alcuni punti di mediazione, ma anche di divergenza, tra le diverse letture possibili di un confronto sulle radici genetiche del comportamento, sulla struttura innata dei processi mentali, sulle facoltà comunicative e di apprendimento, così rilevanti per modellare le interazioni sociali. Neodarwinismo e Scienze sociali si confrontano nel testo nell’auspicio di produrre chiarezza intorno alla possibilità di costruire un dialogo tra diversi saperi, unanimamente ritenuto condizione essenziale del progresso scientifico.

Over the past years, techniques and practices employed to evaluate randomised controlled trials in the areas of biomedical and healthcare systems have come to play an increasingly important role in guiding and rationalizing clinical practice. Hailed as a pedagogical innovation and a new paradigm in medical education, assumptions, key features and perspectives of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) have nevertheless generated considerable controversy. Some of these controversial imagines concerning EBM and clinical epidemiology as factors of rationalization of medical practice and clinical decision-making, are shown here from the point of view of social science inquiry; special attention is given to Kahneman & Tversky, and the very well known critical review of rational choice theory.