Abstract
In this paper the importance is discussed of studying the direct influence of Guido Caselnuovo’s family environment in shaping his interests in Statistics and Probability Theory and on his thinking about education. The influences of his father Enrico, his uncle Luigi Luzzatti, and his grandmother Adele Levi Della Vida will be especially considered.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Translation: Sometimes, while she was at the blackboard, with chalk in her hand, looking at her pupils in the desks, she would stop the lesson and exclaim: “ Long live freedom!”. – All translations are provided by the author.
- 3.
Translation: As a child, there is no record of a true religious upbringing; however, as an adult, he always remained faithful to a positivist attitude.
- 4.
Translation: During the last years of the Austrian domination of Veneto, a group of young people of high intellect and modern culture had formed, who embarked on effective political and economic propaganda, with the ideal and practical intention of keeping the spirit of freedom and Italian patriotism alive and of preparing [with their example and their teaching] their fellow citizens [...] for the worthy exercise of their new duties. Among them there were Antonio Tolomei, Emilio Morpurgo, Alessandro Pascolato, Alberto Errera, and excelled a man whose fate would be to exercise a relentless work of elevation and social solidarity in Italian public life, Luigi Luzzati.
- 5.
Translation: Then, Enrico Castelnuovo joins the bunch, a happy temper of feelings and intellect. (…) During the frequent conferences in the cafes, in the walks in Piazza San Marco, in the public lessons (…), new sparks were released and then matured into bright ideas. Often, our meetings held at Caffé Brigiacco, other times, in the evening, we met at my home and there we studied, philosophized, and praised Italy.
- 6.
Translation: [in 1870] he had set out to run the newspaper la Stampa, in which he brought a contribution of serene firmness and exemplary righteousness. In that short time, harsh as they were political struggles throughout Italy, while defending more temperate men than him from violence of several opponents, supporting the reasons of freedom and civil tolerance, he was dueled with a lit soldier (…) of Garibaldi’s ranks of “I Mille” and went out gravely offended in the hand, which he carried imprinted throughout his life, as an unjust sign.
- 7.
In Italian, “Istituzioni commerciali.” The exceptional nature of those times allowed talented young people being hired for teaching, even if they did not have proper academic qualifications.
- 8.
The institute later became the first Italian university dedicated to economic studies.
- 9.
Guido began his scientific career in 1887.
- 10.
Translation: The truth is that my father, like myself, despite being involved in the teaching of such different subjects, considered teaching as a mission, a most high mission.
- 11.
Translation: Sometimes we wonder whether the time we devote to teaching would not be better spent on scientific research. Well, we answer that it is a social duty that obliges us to deal with these problems.
- 12.
Translation: Nevertheless, I hope the time is near when morality can stand on its own like a monument without armor. You see, religion is like the dictionary, always late when compared to living language.
- 13.
Translation:... noted that he was “one of the best, of the most respectable Italian authors” of novels which may be qualified as “well done,” that is, not “great works of beauty,” but pleasant and honest fables. Also, he observed that, among his books, his “romance of manners” deserve to be particularly appreciated, being a sincere mirror of his times.
- 14.
Translation: often flaunts with nineteenth-century optimism his confidence in progress of civilization and human knowledge.
- 15.
Pleasant fables.
- 16.
Translation: Throughout his life, Luzzatti always [pursued], as both a politician and scholar, a balance between solidarity and economics, and between labor and capital. Although ideologically close to liberal principles, yet Luzzatti diverged from the conviction that natural and gradual processes of selection among humans had to ignore the concept of fraternity.
- 17.
See [3].
- 18.
Translation: Italy still lacked a high school of commerce, and at the end of 1866, I launched the idea in my hometown, along with a reform of professional studies. Then, in my conversations with Frère-Orban and Léon Saymi, I was persuaded that the two best types of this useful institutions were the École Supérieure de Commerce of Antwerp and that of Mulhouse. On the spot I studied the arrangements and the organs with analytical precision. In both cities I learned the function of a teaching whose idea was not yet conceived in our country, that is, the teaching of commercial accounting. Back to Italy, I brought with myself to Venice these two scientific gifts, and I showed the political and economic value of giving the great city, just liberated, the benefit of a new school for educating major traders and that competent commercial bureaucracy in vain wished for in our country, up to that moment.
(…)
The school had an extraordinary effect; it attracted top class professors and disciples to Venice, who later became major traders or diplomats abroad.
- 19.
Translation: Dear Luigi, today, opening the Marzocco, I saw some of those verses written by you for my wedding, 50 years ago.
- 20.
The foundation “Asilo Mariuccia” was established in 1901 by Ersilia Bronzini Majno in memory of her daughter Maria with the goal of “addestrare all’emancipazione le fanciulle pericolanti” (help young women in danger to become emancipated).
- 21.
Translation: Heartbeat is born but then it becomes idea, the thought fecundates it, but the hearth builds it.
- 22.
Translation: Because of the fecundity of his thought, of the grandiloquence of the sentence, Luzzatti looked like a man of the seventeenth century to some of us (…) his critics did not realize that his broad style that seemed rhetorical was nothing but poetic, that style that the poet of 63 [when he wrote the verses for the wedding] did not drop in 908, at the door of Palazzo Braschi, when he raised to the head of the Government. In fact, his cabinet telegraphed to a prefect who asked him for instructions regarding striking workers: “receive them with flashing smiles of threats”; and to another prefect who was to take vexatious measures: “distribute discontent with equanimity”; and to a finance superintendent who denounced the collective insubordination of his employees: “punish them with my forgiveness ”.
- 23.
Translation: Guido and Elbina wrote to me that they had been very pleased to witness the Christian-Buddhist debate between you and prof. Formichi.
- 24.
Translation: is the book where I tried to condense the highest ideals of which is capable my soul.
- 25.
Tanslation: In the writings placed at the end of his volume, Luzzatti boasts of having kept faith in scientific idealism since 1876. And it is a fact that he has always opposed materialism and determinism and has always affirmed freedom, moral values, religiosity.
All this has remained very vague in his mind; and it is impossible to establish on which arguments he bases freedom, what religion he professes, or what is his philosophical system. Rather than elaborating his ideas philosophically, he just asserts them, looking forward the philosophy which will justify them one day: “When times (that we will not see) will be ripe, it is legitimate to hope that an admirable master of natural and philosophical sciences will arise, capable of bringing together the spiritual and natural world in a luminous synthesis.” But it would be unfair to deny him the merit of having given proof of healthy instinct and good tendencies in times of crude naturalism, raging in the economic and political fields, no less than in the literary and philosophical ones.
- 26.
- 27.
Bonomelli wrote: You are an Israelite, I am a Bishop.
- 28.
Translation: I was born an Israelite and I proudly return there every time I am reproached for being one, and that being one exposes me to danger. There is a dignity to bear the weight of persecution, and it would be coward to remove it. But out of this, my education, my aspirations point to a broad Christianity, as can be seen from my writings.
- 29.
Translation: The State, offering to administer popular savings even for old people’s pensions, has the probability of gathering many customers and being able to implement insurance laws with less waste, and this calls for the help of large numbers to avoid failing the test.
- 30.
Translation: In vulgar minds, social security has distant prospects, whose useful effects mature later, of course, than for other forms of security with immediate effects; and in the economy a sign of civilization and the elevation of the popular classes is their greater aptitude for choosing the most elaborate types of social security. Saving Banks are understood better and before Mutual Aid, Mutual Aid for sickness before Mutual Aid seniority, and rational forms of insurance are appreciated with greater difficulty, because they cannot provide the possibility of immediate experience; an act of reasoning and an act of faith are necessary, both of which are difficult in simple and suspicious souls. The new German and Italian security plans are shaped, in quality and manner, according to these intrinsic difficulties; both of them aim at forcing workers to accept subtler and more elaborate pension schemes, multiplying their useful effects with the aid of the State. Compelle intrare!.
- 31.
The letter, written on March 12, 1900.
- 32.
Translation: Our correspondence has now become much less frequent: For some time I interrupted my research on Group Theory and dedicated myself to Differential Geometry. Moreover, most of my day is occupied with business having nothing to do with mathematics. In Germany there is a whole system of laws protecting workers: in Italy such commitment began much later, and, above all, it relies on individual initiatives. My highest ambition is to contribute with all my strength to the development and improvement of this work, and, to tell the truth, I would also sacrifice abstract studies for it if this sacrifice were necessary.
- 33.
Translation: Session of May 17, 1920 (vol. 8). The Dean [Fano] reads a letter from comm. Marco Besso who announces that the Foundation bearing his name allocated £ 5000 per year for three consecutive years to establish the teaching of Higher Mathematical Statistics and Actuarial Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences and gives floor to prof. Castelnuovo who deserves the credit for this initiative. Professor. Castelnuovo reports on the practices carried out with the meritorious comm. Besso who welcomed the proposal with great enthusiasm and obtained from the Board of Directors of his Foundation the allocation of the necessary funds for the institution, of the two aforementioned courses, at least provisionally for now.
- 34.
A private insurance company based at Trieste.
- 35.
The Italian Society against Accidents.
- 36.
The Commercial Bank, founded in Milan in 1894.
- 37.
- 38.
Translation: For me Statistics was a science admirably suited to the spirit of the century, often censored with the mark of positivism, because, applying the logical process of natural method to moral sciences, it candidly proclaimed that it wanted to substitute patient analysis to sterile hypotheses, the inexorable reason of numbers to mystical and dubious intuitions. And while this science, with all its elaborate and rigorous methods, aimed at enclosing the domain of countries and peoples’ conditions in the orbit of numbers too, it suggested not to forget that also numbers had their sophisms and that it was necessary to correct and direct them with the genius of progress, love, and freedom. Goethe, who, with his prodigious ingenuity had known how to fly in the most sublime fields of poetry and art, expressed a truth when he said: It is affirmed that numbers rule the world; however, it is certain that numbers show how the world is governed.
- 39.
Translation: Session of November 10, 1923 (vol. 9). Actuarial Mathematics (…) must be cultivated in a scientific environment, especially in Rome, for the benefit of State Administrations and Insurance Institutes.
- 40.
Translation: …of the Venetian pedagogist we have a description that, if read properly, would have made it clear what would have been the damage of anti-Semitic propaganda: “Adele Levi had grown up in an environment open to the most beautiful and attractive ideas of Homeland and Freedom. Jewish, but from one of those families, such as the Nathans, the Rossellis, the Luzzatis, etc., which Italy looks to with gratitude. Jewish, but whose religion is confused with the cult of Italy.”
- 41.
Translation: Do you see, children, this glass contains a liquid, as clear as pure water? And truly, this liquid is water; but it is not strictly pure; a small quantity of lime was dissolved within it, which cannot be seen, because it is perfectly dissolved in it. Now observe: I put this small tube between my lips, and I blow lightly into the liquid. You see how cloudy it gets; let it rest for a while; now it is clear again; but on the bottom, a white powder is deposited, that was not there before. Did my breath have the virtue of collecting the lime that was previously melted and making it fall down? No, children, a different air came out of my lips from the one I breathed, before beginning this experience. This air is a mixture of two other airs, let’s say gas, with a more appropriate Italian term; I had actually breathed one of those gases, because it is a component of the air around us; the other is not, it is a compound of two different gases, one of which is also a component of the air mixture. This compound gas, which came out of my chest, is called carbonic acid. I had inhaled nitrogen mixed with oxygen and exhaled nitrogen mixed with carbonic acid. The carbonic acid combined with the lime that was dissolved in the water and made a compound which is that dust that fell to the bottom. That dust is pulverized marble. So you see, children, that the air that comes out of our mouth is not the same as that that enters it; if you want to ascertain it, instead of the small pipe, use a bellows like the one used for stoves, and since it restores the air it receives, you will not see the liquid become cloudy, you will not see the white powder arranging itself on the bottom of the glass.
- 42.
The image has been downloaded from the Internet at the url: https://vivalascuola.studenti.it/3-esperimenti-scientifici-da-fare-con-i-bambini-249181.html.
- 43.
Which, for Castelnuovo, is simply: “the fruit of unconscious experiences or even imagined experiences.”
- 44.
Translation: The main purpose that a teacher must pursue is not to give young people an indigestible and ephemeral erudition, but to harmoniously educate all the various attitudes of intelligence, awakening the dormant, and disciplining the exuberant. He will devote the greatest attention to the noblest of all faculties, the “creative fantasy,” resulting from a happy agreement of intuition [(which is just “the fruit of unconscious experiences or even imagined experiences”)] with the spirit of observation. Will lack time to extend culture? What does it matter? The only notions that the mind knows how to keep are those that it is capable of receiving, or those (I dare say) that it is able of getting itself.
Preparing the ground is the essential thing. Nature is full of fruitful seeds. If the soil is rich, the most wonderful flowers will bloom soon.
- 45.
Translation: In the intellectual field, the qualities that best distinguish the elevated man from mediocrity are creative imagination; spirit of observation, which provides the elements to every work of art or science; logical abilities, which, by holding back the impulses of thought, give the work correct proportions and cohesion.
Without imagination there is neither scientist nor artist. But even the engineer, the merchant, the politician cannot lack imagination when they do not accept following the precepts of their predecessors, renouncing any audacious initiative.
- 46.
Translation: Any great work of art or science, Homer’s poems, as well as modern cosmological, physical, or biological theories, when commented by a broad spirit, may awaken or discipline the divine fantasy.
- 47.
“spirito largo”.
- 48.
Translation: We should therefore demand from the teacher, even more than a deep and specialized knowledge of a narrow field, a broad vision of the sciences which have the greatest affinity with their own and of the applications to which it gives rise.
- 49.
Translation: The study of artistic masterpieces will also help to perfect a quality to which I attribute a great value: the spirit of observation. In this, the professor of literary or artistic subjects will be able to help his colleagues in natural sciences and physics, to whom this noble aim is particularly entrusted.
(…)
the spirit of observation is sharpened by physics, which, when taught in an appropriate way, gives at the same time an exquisite education of both senses and mind. The humblest phenomenon, which escaped our attention a thousand times, is fixed by the shrewd observer, who associates it with a thousand facts which apparently have no relation with it, and which are nevertheless expressions of a single grandiose law, valid in the whole universe. What intellectual gymnastics can stand up in comparison with this one, that continually alternates the use of deductive and inductive procedures, and at each step requires the intervention of technical skills to control the most daring conceptions of thought with experiment?
(…)
In educating the mind to sharpen the logical qualities, physics will find a precious ally in mathematics, provided that mathematics gets out of that superb isolation in which we, wrongly, wanted to lock it up.
- 50.
Translation: Letters and sciences, when combined together, educate the various faculties of the spirit in the most harmonious way; while if one teaching too much prevails over the others, culture becomes one-sided and restricted.
- 51.
Translation: A lively campaign is now being fought against scientific specialism, which I believe to be right and suitable. I only have some concerns about the terms of it; in fact, I recognize that, if one does not want to renounce the contribution of average talents in scientific investigation, it is necessary to allow them to cultivate a limited field, leaving to the top talents the thrill of dominating a wider horizon. But where I find fatal specialism, without restriction, is in teaching, and especially in school teaching. The general culture it aims at providing must not resemble a wild and mountainous territory, whose sunlit peaks are separated by deep and unexplored chasms. Rather, it should be an already civilized domain, whose provinces are connected by bridges and roads. The finest details of a doctrine are not those which interest a young man who yearns to extend his knowledge. His curiosity is often drawn to those lofty and eternal questions, which are ill-suited to the artificial divisions of our books. Or, if his attitudes lead him to concrete questions, he will rebel against the excessively abstract spirit of our courses and will not understand the interest of a theory until he has seen some practical consequence. Inattentive or passive listener, while the teacher struggles to dissect a chapter of the program with excessive minutiae, the disciple becomes animated with spiritual life, when unexpected relationships or unexpected implications are revealed to his intellect.
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Acknowledgements
I like to acknowledge the help of Sergio Camiz in the revision of my English and the competent support of Carlo Urbani in searching the archives of Istituto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Venice.
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Rogora, E. (2023). Guido Castelnuovo and His Family. In: Bini, G. (eds) Algebraic Geometry between Tradition and Future. INdAM 2021. Springer INdAM Series, vol 53. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8281-1_13
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