The opposite poles of a debate - lapides figurati and the Accademia dei Lincei

The essay analyses the research carried out by some members of the Accademia dei Lincei on lapides figurati, namely by Fabio Colonna on animal fossils, and by Federico Cesi and Francesco Stelluti on plant fossils; the aim is to show the role played by the Accademia dei Lincei in establishing during the second half of the seventeenth century the opposite poles of the debate on the lapides figurati, on the one hand as chronological indices of a past world and, on the other, as sudden outcome of the vis vegetativa.

PALEOSEISMOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT THE FRONT OF THE EASTERN SOUTHERN ALPS (NE Italy)

<p>In the framework of the III level Seismic Microzonation of the Pieve del Grappa municipality (Treviso, NE Italy), three paleoseismological trenches were dug, in order to investigate activity and capacity of the Crespano del Grappa backthrust.</p><p>The study area is located in the Veneto foothills, where the Plio-Quaternary external front of the Eastern Southern Alps (Castellarin and Cantelli, 2000) presently propagates with a 2-3 mm/y velocity towards the south (Serpelloni et al., 2016). The external front is composed of a series of arcuated WSW-ENE striking, S verging structures (Galadini et al, 2005). Moreover, the area is characterized by a medium-to-low seismicity with only one M>6 earthquake during the last millennium: the 1695 Asolo event, Mw 6.45 (Rovida et al., 2016).</p><p>Regarding the structural framework, the study area is located between the Bassano-Vittorio Veneto Thrust to the north and the Bassano-Cornuda Thrust to the south. The investigated tectonic structure, i.e. the Bassano-Cornuda backthrust, is a N-verging E-W striking reverse structure. Moving from east to the west, it widely crops out near the Castelcucco village, causing a hundred meters displacement in the Miocene Molasse (Braga, 1970). In particular in Crespano village the thrust is responsible of an about 10 m vertical throw in the Quaternary alluvial conglomerates of Lastego river (Parinetto, 1987). Because of the urbanization, the paleoseismological trenches were realized at the eastern (Col Canil) and western (San Vito) borders of the village. In the former case, the trench cut through thick colluvial deposits that probably buried an abandoned valley. Differently, the second and the third trenches affected wide coalescent LGM alluvial fans, which border the southern slope of Mt. Grappa.</p><p>The results testify an intense Pleistocene-Holocene deformation of the Crespano del Grappa backthrust. Particularly, active deformation evidence deals with:</p><ul><li>back-tilting of the Holocene colluvial units;</li> <li>pronounced polyphasic liquefaction episodes, locally completely altering the sedimentary structures of colluvial units;</li> <li>a wide damage zone in the proximity of the morphological scarp and associated with the peak of the induced polarization. This observation testifies that the Crespano del Grappa backthrust reached the surface and displaced topography in the past, probably at the occurrence of one or more events which generated the paleoliquefaction effects;</li> <li>the 3-4 m displacement of the LGM alluvial fan deposits.</li> </ul><p>Concerning the age of the deformation, the dating of the involved units suggests a post LGM activation, probably recent-to-historical.</p><p> </p><p>REFERENCES</p><p>Braga GP, 1970. Rendiconti Fisici dell’Accademia dei Lincei, serie 8, 48(4): 451-455.</p><p>Castellarin A. and Cantelli L., 2000. Journal of Geodynamics. DOI: 10.1016/S0264-3707(99)00036-8.</p><p>Galadini et al., 2005. Geophysical Journal International. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-246X.2005.02571.x.</p><p>Parinetto A., 1987. Aspetti morfotettonici del versante meridionale del Grappa e delle colline antistanti. Unpublished degree thesis. University of Padova, Italy.</p><p>Rovida et al., 2016. DOI: http://doi.org/10.6092/INGV.IT-CPTI15.</p><p>Serpelloni et al., 2016. Tectonophysics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tecto.2016.09.026.</p>

Lettere scientifiche e non solo tra un premio Nobel e un giovane scienziato

The book presents the correspondence, from the 1950s to the end of the following decade, between the Nobel Prize laureate, Giulio Natta, and a young Enzo Ferroni, who will be then one of the founders of "chemistry applied to restoration". Almost sixty years later, this research has made it possible to recover the memory of Ferroni as an avant-garde scientist also in the field of macromolecules and the possibility offered to him by Natta of a prestigious role as a researcher at his institute in Milan. The archives, even the scientific ones, can reserve surprises of this kind: they are prolific in technical data but also reveal traces of humanity. The volume also includes the joint publication of the two chemists and seven articles by Ferroni presented by Natta at the Accademia dei Lincei.

MATHEMATICS IS THE LANTERN: VITO VOLTERRA, LÉON WALRAS, AND IRVING FISHER ON THE MATHEMATIZATION OF ECONOMICS

The interdisciplinary project to unite the field of mathematics with the social and biological sciences marks the work of Vito Volterra, one of Italy’s most prominent mathematicians of the twentieth century. This paper explores the connections between Volterra’s 1901 inaugural address at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome and the work of two of his contemporaries, Léon Walras and Irving Fisher. All three thinkers were ardent advocates of the mathematical turn in economic thinking. This paper argues, however, that it is the previously unexplored relationship between Volterra and Fisher that sheds the most light on the way in which mechanical physics contributed to the project of mathematization within economics more generally. Furthermore, it explores the way in which mathematical inquiry postulated a new and coherent abstraction of the economy, at the same time that it gave epistemological authority to the economist.