Methodological Studies Center of Turin

The Methodological Studies Center It was officially established in Turin in January 1948 with the aim of conducting research on the relationships between logic, science, technique and language, and in a short time it became the main center of dissemination of epistemology, in particular of neopticism, albeit within one General critical and radical critical rethinking perspective and multicultural opening of the techniques.

The engineer Prospero Nuvoli was called to the Presidency of the Center. The promoters of the center were Nicola Abbagnano, Eugenio Frola, Ludovico Geymonat, Prospero Nuvoli, Enrico Persico and Enrico Buzzati Traverso who in the summer of 1945 had started a series of informal meetings between mathematicians, biologists, philosophers and logical to exchange Ideas on general and methods of methods, concerning the sciences and disciplines that each of them cultivated, from mathematical analysis to the history of philosophy, to mathematical logic and theoretical physics. Later other eminent scholars, including the philosopher Norberto Bobbio and the mathematician Piero Buzano, participated in those meetings that are still remembered as the origin of the center today.

In the winter of 1946 at Palazzo Carignano a long series of public conversations inaugurated by the philosopher Ludovico Geymonat, and in 1947 was published by De Silva Il Book Logical foundations of science which collected the texts of those conversations. In the preface, the curators, while admitting that they had not achieved a perfect identity of views between them, believed they had achieved something they felt basically agreed: the way of interpreting the propositions of science and the value to be attributed to this propositions. Later those public conversations continued at the cultural union and the faculty of economics and trade of the University of Turin and took part in numerous scholars including Picone, Ceccato, De Finetti, Severi, Spirito, Magni, Gasparri, Zaccagnini, of Fenzio, Dienes of the University of Leicester, Gonsesh of the Polytechnic of Zurich, and Curry of Pennsylvania State College (today Pennsylvania State University). In a second book entitled Essays of criticism of the sciences A series of other interventions were collected while the preparation of a third volume was taking care of the numerous financial contributions of private individuals, entities and companies.

In December 1952 the first congress of methodological studies was held (17-20 December), to which more than two hundred Italian and foreign scholars took. At the opening ceremony in the Aula Magna of the University of Turin, the mayor of Turin, lawyer Amedeo Peyron and the rector of the University of Turin, Professor Mario Allara, welcomed congress players. Professor Bruno Leoni, then president of the Center of Methodological Studies, pronounced an inaugural speech by clarifying the purpose of the Center: «… we only aim for the critical revision of the disciplines already established, and of which each of us deals in a professional way, coll ‘ intent to improve our work tools, and to reach, if possible, to the creation of new conceptual tools, in particular through the analysis of the language that we use and the shaking of the fictitious problems that arise, in our disciplines, with an improper use or insufficiently defined of the language itself ».
We then followed short interventions of the Gonseth professors of the Polytechnic of Zurich, Speiser of the University of Basel, Destouches of the University of Paris and Romanell of the University of Texas.
For the sections dedicated to the general methodology, methodology of social and legal sciences, methodology of the organization of work and human relations, sixty -six relationships of Italian scholars were kept among which Abbagnano, Bobbio, De Finetti, Gawronski, Geymonat, Mazzantini, Pellizzi , Rossi-Landi, Uberto Scarpelli, Viano. The philosopher Nicola Abbagnano began his intervention saying: ” If you ask what is the origin of the need that methodological studies try to satisfy, it can be replied that it must be recognized in the principle of conceptual verifiability. That is, it is admitted that, in any field of research, a principle can be recognized as valid only if and to the extent that it causes, orientates and guidance step by step, leading to results that can be controlled ».

• Nicola Abberway Norbero Bobbio, Ludovico Gymovico And Alii, Acts of the Congress of Methodological Studies , Ramella, Turin (Taylor-Turin), 1954
• Silvio Paolini Merlo, Historical and philosophical final balance on the “Center of Methodological Studies” of Turin (1940-1979) , “Notebooks of the Center for Studies on Contemporary Fiiosophy of the National Research Council of Genoa”, 7, Pantography, Genoa, 1998
• Livia Jardi, Clara S. Roero, The legacy of the Methodological Studies Center on Torinese mathematics , in “Notebooks of History of the University of Turin”, edited by A. D’Orsi, II-III, 1997-98, n. 2, pp. 289-355
• Silvio Paolini Merlo, New perspectives on the “Methodological Studies Center” of Turin , in “Bulletin of the Italian Philosophical Society”, n. 182 – May/August 2004, pp. 47-61
• Norberto Bobbio, On the Methodological Studies Center , in S. Paolini Merlo (edited by), An unpublished by Norberto Bobbio on the center of methodological studies of Turin , “Lxxi, n.1, 2016, pp. 113-129
• Center of methodological studies, Proceedings of the Presidency (1947-48 / 1978-79) , edited by S. Paolini Merlo, Celid, Turin, 2017