Cosmology in Evandro Agazzi’s thought

Journal title EPISTEMOLOGIA
Author/s Paolo Musso
Publishing Year 2016 Issue 2015/2 Language Italian
Pages 27 P. 247-273 File size 238 KB
DOI 10.3280/EPIS2015-002006
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The reflection about cosmology is one of the less known aspect of Agazzi’s thought. However, despite he wrote only very few times about it and some considerations have been overcome by the great scientific advancements occurred in this while, other intuitions still appear surprisingly actual and fecund, maybe even more than at the time they were conceived, as I’ll try to show in the present paper. Basing on this, I’ll also try to propose a sharp definition of the specific object of scientific cosmology and to clarify its correct relationships with philosophy of nature and metaphysics.

Keywords: Agazzi, cosmology, Big Bang, CMB, COBE, Smoot, experimental science, phisical constants, time, philosophy of nature, metaphysics, Hawking, finalism, anthropic principle, teleology.

  1. Agazzi E. (1985). La questione del realismo scientifico. In Mangione C. (a cura di), Scienza e filosofia. Saggi in onore di Ludovico Geymonat, Milano, Garzanti.
  2. Agazzi E. (1986). Considerazioni epistemologiche sul principio antropico, Nuova Secondaria, 9, pp. 34-37 (ristampa in Agazzi E. 1995, pp. 130-145).
  3. Agazzi E. (1988). Evolution and Teleology. In Mclean G.F., Meynell H. (eds.), Person and God, Lanham / New York / London, University Press of America, pp. 275-286 (trad. it. Evoluzione e teleologia, in Agazzi 1995, pp. 111-129).
  4. Agazzi E. (1991). The Universe as a Scientific and Philosophical Problem. In Agazzi E., Cordero A. (eds.), Philosophy and the Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Dordrecht / Boston / London, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 1-51 (trad. it. L’universo come problema scientifico e filosofico, in Agazzi 1995, pp. 52-110).
  5. Agazzi E. (1995). Filosofia della natura. Scienza e cosmologia, Casale Monferrato, Piemme.
  6. Agazzi E. (2011). “Intelligent design” as a scientific and a metaphysical concept. In Agazzi E., Minazzi F. (eds.), Evolutionism and religion. Proceedings of the meeting in Florence, 19-21 November 2009, Milano / Udine, Mimesis, pp. 293-314.
  7. Alpher R., Bethe H., Gamow G. (1948). The origin of chemical elements, Physical Review, 73(7), pp. 803-804.
  8. Barrow J.D., Tipler F. (eds.) (1986). The anthropic cosmological principle, Clarendon Press, Oxford; trad. it. 2002, Il principio antropico, Milano, Adelphi.
  9. Boslough J. (1992). Masters of time: cosmology at the end of innocence, Reading, John Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (trad. it. I signori del tempo, Milano, Garzanti, 1998).
  10. Burbidge E.M., Burbidge G.R., Fowler W.A., Hoyle F. (1957). Synthesis of the elements in stars, Reviews of Modern Physics, 29(4), pp. 547-650.
  11. Carter B. (1974). Large number coincidences and the anthropic principle in cosmology. In Longaire M.S. (ed.) (1974), Confrontation of cosmological theories with astronomical data, Dordrecht, Reidel, pp. 291-298.
  12. De Bernardis P. (2010). Osservare l’universo, Bologna, il Mulino.
  13. Dyson F. (1979). Disturbing the universe, New York, Harper & Row (trad. it. Turbare l’universo, Torino, Boringhieri, 1981).
  14. Einstein A. (1917). Kosmologische Betrachtungen zur die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phys.-Math. Klasse, 1, pp. 142-152 (trad. it. Considerazioni cosmologiche sulla teoria della relatività generale, in Opere scelte, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1988, pp. 361-373).
  15. Einstein A. (1920). Äther und Relativitätstheorie: Rede gehalten am 5 Mai 1920 an der Reichs-Universität zu Leiden (trad. it. L’etere e la teoria della relatività, in Opere scelte, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1988, pp. 507-516).
  16. Friedman A. (1922). Über die Krümmung des Raumes, Zeitschrift für Physik, 10(1), pp. 377-386.
  17. Guth A. (1981). The inflationary universe: a possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems, Physical Review D, 23(2), pp. 347-356.
  18. Hawking S., Mlodinow L. (2010). The grand design, USA / Canada, Bantam Books (trad. it. Il grande disegno, Milano, Mondadori, 2011).
  19. Hoyle F. (1957). The black cloud, London, William Heinemann Ltd. (trad. it. La nuvola nera, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2003).
  20. Hubble E. (1929). A relation between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 15(3), pp. 168-173.
  21. Magueijo J. (2003). Faster than the speed of light. The story of a scientific speculation, New York, Basic Books (trad it. Più veloce della luce, Milano, Rizzoli, 2003).
  22. Musso P. (1997). Filosofia del caos, Milano, FrancoAngeli.
  23. Musso P. (2004). Forme dell’epistemologia contemporanea. Tra realismo e antirealismo, Città del Vaticano, Urbaniana University Press.
  24. Musso P. (2011). La scienza e l’idea di ragione. Scienza, filosofia e religione da Galileo ai buchi neri e oltre, Milano / Udine, Mimesis.
  25. Musso P. (2014a). Why Newton’s absolute space-time is not so absolute and Einstein’s relative space-time is not so relative, Epistemologia, 37(1), pp. 152-157.
  26. Musso P. (2014b). Maths, God and the immortality of the soul. In Agazzi E. (ed.), Science, metaphysics, religion, Milano, FrancoAngeli, pp. 201-218.
  27. Musso P. (2016). Teorías del Todo e inagotabilidad de lo real, Phainómenon (in press).
  28. Penzias A., Wilson R.W. (1965). A measurement of excess antenna temperature at 4080 Mc/s, Astrophysical Journal, 142, pp. 419-421.
  29. Smoot G. (1993). Wrinkles in time, New York, William Morrow & Co. (trad. it. Nelle pieghe del tempo, Milano, Mondadori, 1994).
  30. Smoot G. et al. (1992). Structure in the COBE differential microwave radiometer first-year maps, Astrophysical Journal, Part 2 – Letters, 396(1), pp. 1-5.
  31. Tipler F. (1994). The physics of immortality: modern cosmology and the resurrection of the dead, New York, Doubleday (trad. it. La fisica dell’immortalità, Milano, Mondadori, 1995).

Paolo Musso, La cosmologia nel pensiero di Evandro Agazzi in "EPISTEMOLOGIA" 2/2015, pp 247-273, DOI: 10.3280/EPIS2015-002006