Science, before being formulas, tools, and publications, is a stubborn way of being in the world. It is the attempt to understand what our place is in something much larger than ourselves: a living, unstable, deep, ancient planet that breathes, transforms, and precedes us. Science is also a profoundly human activity.
It is made of people, emotions, ambitions, dreams, careers. And that’s how I like to tell it: made of dirty hands, nights in the lab, rough seas, tools that don’t work, sudden insights, fear, wonder, failures, and comebacks. Creative stubbornness and a pinch of obsession.
And for this reason, I not only do science, I tell it. I recount abysses, volcanoes, microbes, hydrogen, oceans, and expeditions because there, in extreme places, the questions become more bare. What is life? Where does it begin? How far can it go? How little does it need to endure? How truly separated are we from the Earth we inhabit?
I tell because knowledge, if it stays confined among specialists, loses part of its strength. And because every expedition, every sample, every microbe found where it seemed impossible to live reminds us of a simple and dizzying thing: we are not the center of the world, but a tiny, fragile, and temporary part of it. Donato Giovannelli
Sunday at 9.30 a.m. breakfast. Coffee, tea, all the good things needed to start the day well: biscotti made with organic flours baked in a wood-fired oven, local yogurt and cheeses, garden fruit jams, and whatever the awakening and the season inspire (for example, chiffon).
At 12.30 p.m. light lunch, greetings, and toasts. In between, chats, questions, nice ideas. As much as you want.
