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"The interplay between nature, science, and art in antiquity and the early modern period differs significantly from late modern expectations. In this book scholars from ancient studies as well as early modern studies, art history, literary criticism, philosophy, and the history of science, explore that interplay in several influential ancient texts and their reception in the Renaissance. The Natural History of Pliny, De Architectura of Vitruvius, De Rerum Natura of Lucretius, Automata of Hero, and Timaios of Plato among other texts reveal how fields of inquiry now considered distinct were originally understood as closely interrelated. In our choice of texts, we focus on materialistic theories of nature, knowledge, and art that remain underappreciated in ancient and early modern studies even today"--

Science is facing a fundamental turning point of its history. Never as in this historical moment it appears giant and powerful, but at the same time it shows high fragility: the concentration of information control power in the hands of few commercial groups, the iniquity of a system that benefits developed countries, the restriction of academic autonomy by political and economic power, the precariousness of working conditions of young researchers, the increase in the number of cases of scientific fraud and misconduct, the questioning of its authority by a portion of the public. Can openness be understood as a system capable of strengthening science and treating the diseases that afflict it?

Questa tesi punta a ricostruire il pensiero politico di Bell tra il secondo dopoguerra e la metà degli anni Settanta. In tale arco cronologico, la riflessione politica di Bell si profila, per usare una formula di Jean-François Lyotard, come una «grande narrazione» del capitalismo. Nel complesso, cioè, l'opera di Bell appare come una storia sociologica del capitalismo, che nella fine delle ideologie registra l'apogeo del fordismo e, in seguito, ne mette in luce le trasformazioni in senso post-industriale, indagando le ricadute che tali mutamenti implicano sul piano dei rapporti di potere e della legittimazione del sistema. Nell'ottica di Bell, pertanto, il capitalismo non costituisce soltanto un sistema economico, ma la forma specifica attraverso cui si dispiega la società nel suo complesso, attivando una serie di rapporti di potere mediante i quali gli individui vengono coordinati e subordinati. Una siffatta concezione del capitalismo agisce immediatamente la questione del potere e solleva un interrogativo a esso connesso: «che cosa tiene insieme una società?». Una domanda che attraversa la traiettoria intellettuale di Bell e, sia pure declinata mediante una terminologia sociologica, riflette in realtà l'ambizione delle scienze sociali di farsi teoria politica. Esse si presentano quindi come teoria politica della modernità, nella misura in cui distinguono il potere sociale dal potere politico e, al tempo stesso, instaurano tra i due poli una tensione dialettica produttiva. Mettendo a fuoco la concettualizzazione del potere nell'opera di Bell si analizzeranno le mutazioni nel rapporto tra Stato e società negli Stati Uniti durante la Golden Age del capitalismo. In particolare, si metterà in luce nella grande narrazione di Bell l'ascesa e il declino di un ordine istituzionale che, alla metà degli anni Settanta, appare percorso da molteplici tensioni politiche e sociali che preannunciano l'avvento dell'età globale e il bisogno di una nuova "scala" di governo. ; This dissertations deals with Daniel Bell's political thought between the post-war era and the Seventies. During these years, Bell's political reflection appears to be, to say it in the words of Jean-François Lyotard, a «grand narrative» of capitalism. Overall, Bell's work is a sociological history of capitalism. It points out the height of fordism by assuming the end of ideology, and then sheds light on the post-industrial transformations, looking at the effects produced on power relations and the legitimacy of the socio-political system. In Bell's view, capitalism is not only an economic system, but a complex social system which places individuals in the power structure by means of subordination and coordination. «What holds a society together?» is the question that go trough the whole trajectory of his reflection. It looks a sociological question, but actually it is a political question, because the order of society depends on the legitimacy of obligation relationships. The link between politics and sociology marks Bell's thought and shows how social sciences are assumed to be the political theory of modernity: they analyze the political side of social relations as well as the social element inherent to the workings of political institutions. In other words, I look at the way in which Bell, «the sociologist of capitalism» as «The Economist» put it, distinguishes between social power and political power and then makes them interact. Focusing on Bell's view of power I analyze the transformations occurred in the relationship between State and society in the US during the so-called Golden Age of Capitalism. Particularly, drawing the trajectory of this «grand narrative» of capitalism up to mid-seventies, I highlight that Bell recognizes the coming of a global age, full of political and social strains, and the need of a new institutional scale to cope with them.

This thesis investigates presumptive effects of the political participation on the economic growth through social capital accumulation. In the second section, by using an endogenous growth model, we examine the issue with a comparison of two economic systems; decentralized and centralized economy in the latter of which the representative household internalizes all externalities in social, productive and private sector, in contrast to the decentralized economy. In the third section, we approach the same point by adopting an efficient bargaining model in which we assume that average level of the political participation is a contributor to the labour union's bargaining strength. Upon this approach, we develop a comparative analysis by solving the representative household optimization problem in two different scenarios, with and without efficient wage hypothesis. We demonstrate that there exists an effect of the political participation resulting in a positive stationary growth rate in all models. Moreover, we found the average level of political participation to be correlated with the bargained wage rate and the bargained employment rate under the ef- ficient wage hypothesis.

La recente riedizione di Trust and Power - l'opera di Luhmann che propone, in lingua inglese, due lavori del sociologo tedesco sulla fiducia e sul potere nella società complessa – testimonia il vivo interesse, nella conoscenza sociologica, per temi come quelli della comunicazione, della complessità sociale e delle sue semplificazioni sistemiche. Luhmann definisce la fiducia come un investimento a rischio, funzionale a connettere la limitata conoscenza e la parziale ignoranza delle riduzioni di complessità ambientale effettuate dai contesti comunicativi di cui è formata la società complessa, estrapolando elementi informativi dall'evidenza disponibile. Il nesso che lega la fiducia al rischio consente di distinguere la prima dalle situazioni di interazione sociale elementare nelle quali entra in gioco la familiarità. Al progredire delle forme di differenziazione funzionale, la fiducia acquisisce la tipica connotazione riflessiva dei sistemi funzionalmente differenziati per svilupparsi nella fiducia nei sistemi esperti. Il potere costituisce un medium di comunicazione simbolicamente generalizzato, strumento ausiliario al linguaggio e motivazionale nel facilitare l'accettazione di riduzioni della complessità ambientale effettuate da altri. La stabilizzazione del potere attraverso le forme giuridiche è una delle condizioni di possibilità della specificazione del codice binario in termini universalistici e dell'instaurarsi dei meccanismi riflessivi, per mezzo dei quali viene aumentata la tecnicizzazione del potere, ottenendone ripercussioni nella configurazione del sistema politico. Mediante il potere si delinea, allora, la relazione tra diritto e politica nella società complessa. È da rilevare come in Luhmann non venga sollevata alcuna domanda né sulla legittimità dei contesti comunicativi qui esaminati né su una loro eventuale predominanza, argomenti che renderebbero i sistemi sociali condizionati ed esposti ad influenze ambientali, sottoponendoli a livelli di complessità esterna di ardua gestione. ; The recent re-edition of Trust and Power - the work of Luhmann that offers, in English, two works by the German sociologist on trust and power in the complex society - testifies the lively interest, in sociological knowledge, for topics such as communication, of social complexity and its systemic simplifications. Luhmann defines trust as an investment at risk, functional to connect the limited knowledge and partial ignorance of the reduction of environmental complexity carried out by the communicative contexts of which, according to systemic theory, the complex society is formed, extrapolating information elements from the available evidence. The link that binds trust to risk makes it possible to distinguish the former from situations of elementary social interaction in which, mainly, familiarity comes into play. As functional forms of differentiation progress, trust acquires the typical reflexive connotation of functionally differentiated systems to develop in trust in expert systems. Power constitutes a symbolically generalized medium of communication, an instrument that is auxiliary to language and motivational in facilitating the acceptance of reductions in environmental complexity carried out by others. The stabilization of power through juridical forms is one of the conditions of possibility of the specification of the binary code in universalistic terms and of the establishment of the reflexive mechanisms of functionally differentiated social systems, through which the technicalization of power is increased, obtaining reflections in the configuration of the political system. By means of power, then, that relationship between law and politics, in complex society, is outlined. It should be noted that in Luhmann no question is raised on the legitimacy of the communicative contexts examined here or on their possible dominance, topics that would make the social systems conditioned and exposed to environmental influences, subjecting them to levels of external complexity of difficult management.

The thesis is about the representation of the rebel crowds in the Italian literature in the 19th century. We consider the contributions of social sciences, from Le Bon to the lombrosian school of Scipio Sighele and Pasquale Rossi, as well as Freud, until some more contemporary sociologists, like Reich, Ortega y Gasset, Canetti, Allport, Turner etc; but the research focuses on the novels and the short stories, which are conceived in Italie, when the fight for the national unity tries, without success, to transform the political revolution in a national revolution, according to the expression of Nievo. Manzoni standardizes de model of the representation of the rebel crowds, which will be followed by Nievo, with some important variations. Therefore, the influence of Zola adds to the Manzoni's one. It will dominate, on the one hand, the idea of a rational crowd, that is a potential revolutionary subject (the , scapigliati, Valera, De Amicis, etc), on the other hand the one of the pessimism and of the predetermined destiny of the masses (Verga). Finally, Gabriele D'Annunzio, in his novels and short stories, fluctuates between the fascination for the savage side of the crowds and his aristocratic contempt. ; La thèse porte sur la représentation de la foule « rebelle » dans la littérature italienne du XIXème siècle. Tout en considérant les contributions des sciences sociales, de Le Bon a l'école lombrosienne de Scipio Sighele et Pasquale Rossi, passant par Freud, jusqu'aux sociologues plus contemporains, comme Reich, Ortega y Gasset, Canetti, Allport, Turner etc, la recherche se concentre sur le roman et la nouvelle, qui voient le jour dans une Italie qui, luttant pour son unité nationale, n'arrive pas a transformer la révolution politique en révolution nationale, selon la formule de Nievo. Manzoni fixe le modèle de représentation des foules rebelles, qui sera suivi par Nievo avec des variations importantes. Ensuite, l'influence de Zola s'ajoutera a celle de Manzoni et dominera, d'une part, l'idée que la foule est ...