We live surrounded by technology that we do not know. We know how to make it work, but not what the science behind it is. How to get to scientific knowledge? “We have come to make the revolution, to tear down walls and build bridges”, said Salvador Macip, doctor and writer and curator of the Empíric festival of literature and science that opened yesterday at the ALBA Synchrotro in Cerdanyola del Vallès. Until the 20th, many activities will be held in various places in the town.
Macip claimed the need to be well informed, not only with informative essays, but also with literature such as that of the new winner of the Proa award, Martí Domínguez, who throughout his literary career has used science as the engine of his fiction, such as this Mater arriving next week. Next to him, the Valencian writer remembered the problem of choosing between science and letters in high school. And from one thing to another he explained how, already a biologist, he won a scholarship in Paris to study moths at the Museum of Natural History, but since there were no moths, he began to write about the naturalist Buffon, in whom he found an alter ego and It helped him to cross the barrier and make his debut as a novelist with Les confidències del comte de Buffon (3i4, 1997). From the magazine Mètode, of the University of Valencia, he has been trying for years to bring science to society, not just looking at the academic navel, in collaboration with other injured scientists such as Macip himself.
Synchrotron director Caterina Biscari recalled that she decided to study physics because a philosophy professor taught her to ask questions. Biscari also explained what a first-rate institution like the one he directs is for: to do science on materials that are close to us, such as batteries, but it was also important to study the first drugs against covid, or even study art: stained glass windows modernists or the yellow color of Van Gogh. “We are an instrument to advance knowledge and improve society,” she said. “Knowledge is one”, said Macip. If light is observed in the synchrotron to investigate the reality it hides, literature also shows how we are.
Later, the writer Belén Gopegui and the scientist and writer Carme Torras talked with the journalist Mariola Dinarès about the promises and dangers of networks, as reflected in their novels –Stay this day and this night with me (Random House Literature, 2017) and Enxarxats ( Males Herbes, 2017), respectively–.
In the parliaments, the mayor Carlos Cordón had highlighted the complicity between administrations to promote the synchrotron and the future expansion, but also the festival, which he predicted future editions. The general director of Research of the Generalitat, Joan Gómez, was clear that "the Empíric is a great find", and went to the Latin and Greek roots of the words science and literature to demonstrate that one without the other is not understood and are needed.
Catalan version, here
