Enrico PredazziEnrico Predazzi

A brief overview of the relations science-society: from the past to present days

The traditional missions of the University

The third mission of the Academic System (Universities and modern Research Centres)

A unique case in Italy: the Interuniversity center Agorà Scienza

Choice selection of the past activities of Agorà Scienza

The case of Active Science From Active Science to Active Research:

QM as a possible example

LAYOUT OF THE TALK

I. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: FROM THE PAST TO RECENT TIMES.

Science has been largely ignored by Society until very recently and Society has been almost totally ignored by Science until even more recently (Lucretius’ scholar watching people in the plane from his ivory tower…).

Most everybody would set the new trend at the influential 1959 Rede lecture The Two Cultures by the British physicist and novelist Charles Percy Snow.

There are, however, many earlier instances in which science was brought to the public. Somebody attributes to Plato the notion that “more science is better” but already in the nineteenth century many distinguished men of science wrote regularly in the daily Press.

The public lectures of some of them remain famous to our day; Davy’s ones, for example, are still remembered today as sparkling and (literally) explosive events by the cultured Londoner society.

I ‘am convinced that it is the duty of those scientists who have a gift for writing to make their subject intelligible to the ordinary man and woman. Without a much broader knowledge of science, democracy cannot be effective in an age when science affects all our lives continually.

John Haldane in the preface to “Science and everyday life” in 1939 wrote:

Remark the date, 1939 when WWII was about to explode. In those times the Fascist Party Agenzia Stefani in Italy was issuing the order to the Italian press to “Ignore Einstein” on the day of his birthday…

II. FROM TWO TO THREE MISSIONSOF UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH CENTERS

Until the first scientific revolution (essentially, Galileo) the traditional role of the University was the formation of the ruling class generation after generation, physicians, theologians, lawyers, notaries etc. Basically, this covered two thirds of the second millennium.Galileo’s appearance shattered this simple minded world and; after him, the University’s role became twofold:

1)Education (formation and higher teaching) 2) ResearchThe legacy that resulted is known today as the “scientific method”

Research provides the life blood to formation and higher education. Higher education, in turn, provides the turnover which makes sure that research is continuously renovated with fresh, innovative, vital blood.

This cycle has proved perfectly adequate for over three centuries i.e., not accidentally, until the start of the second scientific revolution of modern times. Needless to stress that the same considerations apply to the modern Research Centers

III. THE THIRD MISSION OF THE ACADEMY

Things have changed yet very much since Galileo’s days. A second scientific revolution has occurred even though we would be hard put to find a name to whom to attribute it or an exact moment when this has occurred.Slowly but steadily, science has become all pervasive and commanding. Everything around us is dictated now by Science

Thanks to Science, in slightly over a Century the world population has increased sevenfold and the span of the human life has nearly doubled.

In recent times (post WW2), the progressive strategic increase of the role of scientific research in the growth not only cultural but economic of a modern country and the very perception of the relevance of this new role has slowly but steadily led to the awareness that the two above mentioned missions were no longer adequate.More and more often it is felt that a third mission besides "research" and "formation and higher teaching" qualifies a modern University and Research Center. This process is broadly referred to as

"The third mission of the University”

taken to cover all that goes under the heading of "Science in Society".

the Academic System (Universities and Research Centers must provide a bridge between science and the entity which commissions research, Society .

Differently stated, it is now more and more widely recognized that the Academy should not just equip the young with the necessary knowledge and know-how to teach and make research but make them aware of the necessary ties between science and society. Differently stated:

and, most important,

the third mission should not be viewed as subordinate but complementary to the other two.

In this endeavour, the major burden rests on the scientist who was trained to speak to his peers not to the general public which is very much harder.

The scientist must learn to dialogue with the layman

Not trivial to bridge the gap between Science and Society:

Most people believe that science provides answers to all questions and that they hold forever as inscribed in the marble.

Science, on the contrary, not only does not necessarily have a clear-cut answer most of the times, but this answer is continually subjected to revision. Indeed, the main role of science is first of all that of raising continuous questions, of questioning every conclusion and continuously revise the solutions.

In this sense, we see Galileo correct Aristotle, Newton revise Galileo, Einstein replace the “instantaneous” Newtonian mechanics and so on and so forth in an endless improvement which, presumably will never end but we see it also searching and proving itself continuously and, as the case may be, correct itself.

A word of caution is in order; there doesn’t seem to exist a unique definition for the Third mission of the University. Its interpretation spans over a considerable variety of issues.

Broadly speaking, we can acknowledge actions covering human resources, intellectual property, spin offs, contracts with industry, contract with public bodies, participation into policy making, involvement into social and cultural life, public understanding of science.

The HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) [PACEC 2009] gives the following list: providing informal advice on a non-commercial basis, giving public lectures for the community, provision of community-based performance arts, provision of community-based sports, provision of public exhibitions, involvement with schools projects;

here, we will summarize into a far too simple slogan: Science and Society relations.

IV. A UNIQUE CASE IN ITALY: THE PROJECT AGORA’ SCIENZA

Italy is not the best example of a country to promote science on the international panorama at least as far as public activities are concerned. Probably the best pedagogical activity is the one which is known as the Scientific Degrees Project www.progettolaureescientifiche.it which I launched almost ten years ago but is still operative.The number of Institutions in the country (public and private) devoted to outreach and to spread the scientific culture at all levels, on the other hand, adds up, probably, to several thousand.A recent count listed around 350 centers of activity in Piedmont alone (less than 1/10 of Italy population-wise).

Many are the countries in which the relation between Science and Society have become a new endeavour in recent times. Let us just mention some of them: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the UK, the USA, Belgium etc. etc.In some country (Sweden, for instance), these activities have been institutionalized .

There are many reasons why Italy has remained largely absent from the process of moderniztion in science and technology but mostly they are related to the tradition of the country and of its ruling class.

Italy’s state expenditure are just around 1% of its GDP. Italy runs 34th out of 36 OECD countries for the number of Academic degrees in the range 25-34 years, and runs 31st out of 34 for the GDP investment. On the other hand, the researchers in Italy are about 100.000, in Europe they number over 1.500.000 units (like in the USA and in China). In 2007 the world estimate was 7.2 millions or slightly over 1/1000 of the world population. In spite of the poor background, Italy’s researchers score pretty high on the world rating (8th according to some agencies).

Ample space for improvement indeed. As a unique example of this kind of best practices, let me discuss the case of Agorà Scienza.

Agorà Scienza was established in 2006 as a Centre of the University of Torino and became an Inter-university Centre in 2009. All Piedmontese Universities are today partners of the Centre: (see www.agorascienza.it for more details).

AGORÀ SCIENZA: A UNIQUE CASE IN ITALY

In the Greek society (polis), the agorà was the meeting place, the crossroad where culture and professions met. This picture suggested the name Agorà Scienza, a Centre open to multidisciplinary, international studies, to debates, to innovation and to promote scientific literacy and citizenship.

To communicate & disseminate scientific culture

To bridge the gap between science and society

To teach researchers communication skills

To innovate science teaching To develop research on Science &

Society To promote scientific citizenship

Agorà Scienza is a virtual meeting point inside the universities open to society:

INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY: Developing and testing new tools and languages for science communication in schools, among researchers etc.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING: Involving citizens and researchers in public debates about science-related issues.

NETWORKING & INTERNATIONALIZATION: Participating to international networks and projects, and encouraging joint actions for the dissemination of the scientific culture.

The Centre vision is to promote the Third Mission of the University or, specifically:

The Centre is active in four main areas: ResearchTrainingSchoolCommunicationWe will now highlight the main project(s) of each area and then go a little deeper into the most relevant one: Active Science.

Warning: Lot more activities have been carried out by Agorà Scienza during its 7 years of existence: cycles of conferences, thematic workshops, regional surveys, nationwide days of cultural activities, participation to Science weeks, Science days, Science Festivals, Museums activities etc. For space reasons we shall confine our attention in what follows on very few of them.

Many surveys and studies exist on what the citizens in a country think on this issue, very few examples exist on the symmetrical questions of what the scientists think (starting from physics). This is the first large scale study of this kind in Italy.

The Italian researchers & SocietyAside from minor scale activities, Agorà Scienza has recently embarked into a vast survey of what selected Italian communities of scientists think of the relationship between science and society and what they do about it.

RESEARCH

Another important research contribution of

Agorà Scienza has been a study about

Come cambia la comunicazione della

scienza. Nuovi media e terza missione

dell’Università

(How the communication of science

changes. New media and the third

mission of the university.)

which has just appeared (December 2012)

as a book (in Italian) published by Il Mulino

under the supervision of Andrea De Bortoli

and Sergio Scamuzzi.

One of the pillars of Agorà Scienza is that the problem of communication between science and society will never be solved unless the new generations of researchers are trained into paying the greatest attention to these problems. This has led to the School for graduate PhD students and young researchers calledSCS (Science, Communication, Society)

TRAINING

The themes of the past six editions have been:

SCS2007 Science makes news, science makes opinionSCS2008 Is science a universal good? Scientific knowledge as a public good SCS2009 Science at times of crisis. Challenges of

research and the role of communicationSCS2010 Research and society: communication

effectiveness of a large event SCS2011 Science for the future. Innovation,

sustainability, uncertainty.SCS2012 Science, Communication, Society

The forthcoming edition will be September 2013

SCS 2013 Science and Democracy

Check the Agorà Scienza site for updated information

and from basically all scientific areas.

The participants’ subdivision is quite balanced from both the various Regions of Italy with a natural relative prevalence from the host region with (about 40% of the total)

Few comments:

The participation to the school has been a national (and not a regional) affair and has involved a broad spectrum of scientific areas implying an obvious very interesting cut of cross-disciplinarity.The assessment of the school from the participants has been quite successful.

It is our contention that similar experiments could be attempted on a supernational basis by the European Commission.

Communicating science plays a key role in determining cultural development in the knowledge society and in engaging citizens in the political decision-making process.Agorà Scienza has been among the promoters and organisers of the 2010 edition of ESOF in Turin (www.topesof2010.org). Agorà Scienza currently coordinates also the “Researchers’ Night” in Piedmont and has organized the cycle “The Century of Science” on the 150th Anniversary of the unification of the country

COMMUNICATION

We shall confine ourselves to a brief coverage of these events

BUT Agorà Scienza has been so far involved in a series of events like: The University: a bridge between Science and Society (a workshop held at the opening of the activities of the Centre), Communicating Physics (a biennial event organized by the Italian physics community), FEST (an event of Science games and conferences organized by the SISSA school in Trieste), PCST (recently held in Florence), the Journées Hubert Curien (held in Nancy in September 2012) and many more.

The Century of Science

Organized jointly with the Academy of Sciences of Torino, this has been a series of very high level series of ten lectures for the cultivated public held on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Unity of Italy in the spring 2011.

These lectures have been amply advertised and have been followed by a large and qualified public.

http://www.agorascienza.it/en/communication/secoloscienza

ESOF2010

This is the largest single event organized by Agorà Scienza jointly with the Compagnia di San Paolo and Centroscienza

(see www.topesof2010.org)

within the series of the biennial ESOF events (Euro Science Open Forum) organized since 2004 by the European organization Euroscience

Held in July 2010 under the slogan Passion for Science, ESOF 2010 attracted to Torino around 5000 scientists and science lovers (over half of them females and over half of them “young” i.e. below 35 years old) from close to 80 countries. Over 300 conferences, sessions and meetings with more than 700 speakers, over 75.000 visitors to the outreach program over 25.000 “virtual” visitors thank to the webesof program that allowed all conferences in streaming (available at www.topesof2010.org).

The European Researcher’s Night

Promoted and funded by the EU within the 7th PF, the European Researcher’s Night is a clever innovation which dates back to 2006 is, usually, held the last Friday of the month of September;

Agorà Scienza has taken part in it since the beginning but, in particular, has organized the last two editions and is organizing the present one.

For details, see http://www.nottedeiricercatori.it/piemonte

Since its first edition in 2006, the European Researcher’s Night in Piedmont has increased substantially: the number of cities involved (from 4 to 8), i) the number of activities (from about 40 altogether to over 100), ii) the number of researcher’s involved (from about 100 to over 500) and, most of all iii) the number of participants (from about 5.000 to around 15.000); iv) the commitment of the local Institutions has remained quite substantial.

The locations: Alessandria, Asti, Biella, Cuneo, Novara, Torino, Verbania, Vercelli.

The venues in Torino - Piazza Castello, various Museums (Regional Museum of Natural Sciences, Università di Torino Museums, Children Museum, Planetario, etc.), Officine Grandi Riparazioni, restaurant in city centre)

Let us just list for the 2012 edition:

The main type of activities: games, meetings and conferences, exhibitions, laboratories and interactive experiences, theatre and plays, talk-show, live musical performances, debates and informal exchange with researchers, audio and video broadcast and

Organisation of interactive activities and games

“Rally of science” for 90 children Organisation of entertainment activities on

the stage Show “The Magic of Chemistry” Scientific thalk-show Organisation of “Caffè Scienza” event and

selection of speakers (20 Science Coffees) Organisation of “Pizza with the Prof” event

and special activities: 48 participants Hundreds of participants to the Researchers’

Tram

The 2012 Night ranked second in Italy (out of 8 italian participants). This led the EC to grant Torino and Piedmont the right to organize The Researcher’s Night for the eighth consecutive year!

Stay tuned: the organization of the 2013 Night is in full swing (thanks, once again, to the direct efforts of Andrea De Bortoli) under the heading Faces to acknowledge the vital role of the researchers

Check the site www.agorascienza.it to keep updated on the developments of the 2013 edition of THE RESEARCHER’S NIGHT

Probably the largest effort of Agorà Scienza has been devoted to fostering innovative pedagogical projects in science for (high school) students and teachers and in promoting the interaction between the school and the research world. Aside from conferences, cycles of talks and nationwide days of specific activities (Stem Cells, Nanotechnologies) the main endeavors have been: Active Science and The Scientific Summer Academy which we will now briefly review.

SCHOOL

The case of the Scientific Summer Academy (SSA)

A very elitist action involving small groups (about 50 units) of highly selected high school students whose application must be certified by their teachers. The selection is rigorously confined to the combined grades of the last two years. Usually only one student (the best) is selected per class (often per school given the large number of applications).

The SSA begins immediately at the end of regular classes and lasts one entire week (in 2013 will begin on June the 17).

High level and qualified young researchers provide master classes in the morning (one per day from Monday to Friday included) on the research they and their groups are carrying on.

In the afternoon the students are divided in small groups (maximum 4 units) and are transferred to selected University labs where the researchers involve them directly in their researches.

Thursday afternoon the students, divided in few groups, elaborate their considerations on their experience and these are presented Friday afternoon to the entire class and to the researchers that have followed them during the week.

Extraordinary is the appreciation-gratificationof the students that has accompanied the three SSA held so far.

Perhaps the main point of success is the feeling the students have of being directly part of an experience that they view as a part of their future.

The SSA is probably the ideal tool to commit the brightest student to science.

www.scienzattiva.eu

Active Science is probably the most engaging project run by Agorà Scienza and certainly the one with the highest flexibility and the highest potential. It is a project of Public Engagement with Science dedicated to the school which has already been awarded two prestigious international recognitions: 1) a prize by a group of European Universities, see engageawards@oii.ox.ac.uk 2) a prize by the European Stencil network (http://www.stencil-science.eu)

THE CASE OF ACTIVE SCIENCE

Active Science is by now a widely tested action since it has arrived to its fourth complete edition. It is based on very innovative tools for science communication and scientific citizenship since:1)it relies almost entirely on the use of the Web and 2)It is founded on the processes of deliberative democracy.

The major bonuses are: A) as applied to the school system1)The use of the web makes the project adaptable to a large number of students and their teachers; 2)offers the opportunity of a continuous dialogue among the participants: students, teachers and researchers. It privileges the role of Universities as centres of the most advanced scientific knowledge; 3)explores and uses the methods of deliberative democracy;B) Perhaps even more potentially important, as applied to disseminating research4) The project is adaptable to a large spectrum of international research realities (see below)

Original TargetHigh school students and teachers.

The four editions that have so far occurred have involved close to 6000 students altogether. The original local-scale approach (Piemonte Region) of the first two editions, has been expanded in 2011 to involve other Italian regions (Lombardia, Emilia Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sicilia).

In the year 2012-2013, thanks to the sponsorship of the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR): the project has been expanded to the entire country involving 86 classes from 14 Regions, about 70 teachers, 30 experts and a body of around 2000 students from all over Italy.More than 200 questions have been posed by the classes to the experts just in this session.

Objectives

Increase the scientific offer in the high school with innovative pedagogical toolsUse the web for new formative teaching methodsEncourage active participation, scientific citizenship and dialogue with researchTrain teachers to use new methods of teachingRaise the awareness of scientific topics among young people and promote scienceAlso: a handy and flexible tool

Active Science is articulated in five steps

1)The class signs in the project launched by the school system:2)Recognition and verification of prior knowledge: summary of what the students know about the topic before the project starts3)Information and dialogue: group work and dialogue with our experts to build a scientific knowledge about the topic chosen4)Development of future scenarios: group work and dialogue with experts in order to hypothesize future scenarios5)Final live events: deliberation, preparation, handing of the final document to researchers and authorities.

Web

The web site www.scienzattiva.eu is the virtual space where the various steps of the project develop. An open space where the students talk, discuss, generate knowledge and share future perspectives. In this framework, the web offers huge opportunities and tools already tested and close to the experience of young people.The web site of Active Science combines the features of a social network with those of collaborative work software, all open source.

Topics that have been covered so far

EnergyAir pollutionClimate ChangeWaterStem CellsNanosciencesEnvironment and sustainability (for the coming year)

A large very useful repository to be continuously updated and revised which we plan to make available to the public

Results and evaluation

The deliberative methods of the project have various effects: learning, awareness, informed opinion, recommendations. Its effectiveness, monitored by social scientists, reflects in the change of opinion from the debate that develops during the whole process as a proxy variable for cognitive learning and awareness. A questionnaire is administered at the beginning and at the end of the project where the students indicate their solutions to a number of questions. This allows one to see for each question how many of them did change opinion and preference intensity. The students, after the event, are asked to self-evaluate the deliberative process on the basis of a series of statements.

In the four editions so far carried out, this change has been considerable; all changes considered (opinion and intensity) it is on the average between 30% and 48%.

Active Science is innovative because it stimulates the participation of a large scale of people through the use of the Web and promotes creativity and critical thinking of young people.

It is sustainable because is almost entirely built on the web through an open source platform developed specifically. This aspect makes the design easily and economically exportable for use by other organizations. The web allows the involvement of a large number of participants while maintaining high the interaction between them.Active Science is the ideal tool to fulfil practically the third mission of the university

Even more relevant, Active Science can easily be adapted to become an action of Active Research as we will soon illustrate

FROM ACTIVE SCIENCE TO ACTIVE RESEARCH

The basic idea to extend Active Science is to promote directly research thanks to the new highly flexible and performant platform Agorà Scienza is about to open (May-June 2013)

i) Imagine a network of European Institutions collaborating on a specific research activity where part of the endowment is foreseen to go in an effective dissemination (to make an example, Quantum Mechanics and its applications);

ii) Imagine that the dissemination proceeds along the lines described above for Active Science. How?

The counterpart of the classe are the collaborating Institutions,The counterpart of the teachers are the group leaderswithin each InstitutionThe counterpart of the students are the researchersThe counterpart of the experts are those high profile members of the collaboration particularly learned in the specific themes selectedThe counterpart of the scientific topics are the specific themes chosen every year by the collaboration itself

In the example of QM, the first two themes chosen for next year could be, for instance 1) Experimental verification of QM and 2) Quantum computers (any other choice could obviously do)

During the year, the collaboration members interact with the experts (“raise questions”) and the experts give their answers

Imagine, finally, that in the spring next year, the collaboration meets (for instance at a Symposium) and discusses the various steps of the interactions that have occurred. A paper could then be produced to give a large band vision of the chosen themes to be dutifully publicized and made available and internationally known to all those interested in the subject.

Next year a new set of large interest themes will be selected.

Needless to say, proper adjustements could be suggested and made (the project, for instance does not need to have the time limits appropriate for the school.

The only really relevant point is that Agorà Scienza has already available the platform most appropriate to run the process

Agorà Scienza has a big goal for the

future: i) the implementation of the

third mission in Italy and abroad for a

better future of mankind through the

dissemination of science,

ii) the extension and the control of the

scientific culture and

iii) the dialogue between research and

society through the promotion of

Science and Research and the

interaction

Science <—> Society.

CONCLUSION

Agorà Scienzavia Po 18, 10123 TorinoPhone: +39 0116702738Fax: +39 0116702746agorascienza@unito.itwww.agorascienza.it

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