Not only on darnel we humans live.

A welcoming garden is a favourable habitat where also a young resourceful oak tree can find to grow.

 

 

 

Ironically commenting the undoubted discoveries of ‘artificial intelligence’ which are based on the possibility to describe thinking thanks to a rational manipulation achievable by computer, the physicist Roger Penrose[1] could conclude : “…Often we say that it is our ‘conscious’ mind to behave in a ‘rational’ way we can understand, while it would be the unconscious mysterious indeed.”

The Freudian unconscious infact, still remains a prerogative for those who get the ‘rational’ as a process following, i.e. ‘secondary’, that ‘primary’ process, absolutely personal, and then not repeatable nor transferable, only ‘identifiable’ by the subject : thanks to these healthy flashes of our thinking the analytical work can find the links – otherwise darkened by our conscience – in which consists the essential competence in care, i.e. the solutions neglected by a subject. In short, this is the ‘knowledge’ and the ‘science’ tout court, without which no minimum or maximum discovery is made possible : however it is hampered in every way, even by the subject himself, or herself, who is always tempted to delegate someone of the ‘community’ in which he recognize himself, or herself.

Probably was this arbitrary passage from an individual rationality, able to connect actions and facts which seem not linked to third parties, to a rationality pre-judged as ‘collective’ – i.e. submitted to  cultural imperatives unduly neglected – which distanced the apprentice Karl Gustav Jung[2] from the scientific work made by Freud, up to appreciate those ‘new’ claims asserted by Jung to the academic communities which landed to the first ‘Game Theories’[3] and to the manipulation of the individual values, essential if a ‘game’ can work.

It is the manipulation itself of the individual values, absolutely ‘soft’ in otder the subject can accept but also necessary to the predictive Theories – then not so ‘scientific’ indeed – the imperative to which only barely the subject can escape, unless you collect the ‘individual science’ which Freud named ‘unconscious’ and that is translated infact with a ‘not yet aware’.

Einstein explained, when solving the photoelectric effect which earned him the Nobel Prize in 1921, that he could be thinking thanks to any “more or less clear images which can on request be combined and reproduced”[4]. Then, what parameters preceed that mythical ubiquitous ‘random behaviour’ in the algorithms ?

Daniel Kahneman[5], one of the greatest theorists of the ‘behaviourism’ asserts that only the ‘highly accessible impressions produced by the system ‘1’ rule our judgements and preferences…” : and infact has been proved that also the ‘logically isomorphic’[6] problems highlight paths absolutely individual in solving.

We owe to Alfred Marshall[7] and to his non-Marxian criticism of the crisis occurred at the Ford phase, the identification of an unexplored path : the human skills and a ‘local share capital’ which literally made look up again those people who were still bent – politicians, economists and researchers - over a destiny menaced by Marx and due to the separation between workers and production tools.

It was, and it is, an essential correction of the prevailing Culture : as increasingly large and concentrated companies shall be necessarily side by side with agglomerating geo-localized small and medium size companies, able to modulate conveniently their own production structure in order to support their own development and of others, not only for survival.

I would like to cite the economist Giacomo Becattini[8] and his agile essay “Dal distretto industriale allo sviluppo locale” reporting an important subtitle, ‘The course and defense of an idea’: “ …In the district you produce capital”[9], understood as “possession of the knowledges and social relationships with a production relief in any specifc historic context”, and you produce ‘widespread capital’, i.e. “an environment in which the know-how is widespread and the personal knowledge allows relationships of differentiated trust.”

In short, a production district “continuously opens up, here and there, to new possibilities of access to the entrepreneurial activity…”, and specifically that “business risk…” for which the investment – path of thinking which is first of all representative, and then individual – can give value to a very likely success, because it fastens to realities already experienced by the subject.

The economist Mariana Mazzucato[10] does recognize to the State an essential governance, more today than in the past, in assuming a bigger risk that is also a long-term investment, the one to favour an entrepreneurial innovation environment, not only a technological one : through, for example, the promising ‘banks for development’.

Let us hope therefore that – only as far as any State is concerned, the Governments representing it and the Bureaucracies which are responsible for the delicate task to make credible Laws and Decrees – they can take into due account the experienced reality of an ‘unequal risk’.

 

 

                                                                                         Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio May 16, 2020

 

 

 

[1] Sir Roger Penrose (1931), is mathematician and cosmologist, Cambridge University graduate and  emeritus professor at Oxford University : he received, together with Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), with whom also they were staying in debate on different hypothesis, the Wolf Prize in 1988 for Physics. Here I cite his book “La mente nuova dell’Imperatore”, Rizzoli Editore  1992, p.520.

[2] Karl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychoanalist Freud’s student, inventor of that ‘analytical psychology’ that moved away him by Freud himself after publishing “Libido” in 1912.

J The theoretical reference remains “Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour”, by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern – 1947 ‘Princeton University Press’.

[4] “Il valore della scienza”, Henri Poincarè / translat. into Italian 1992, Ed. Dedalo Bari : from “The Value of Science”, by Henri Poincarè 1913 ‘Science Press’.

[5] “Mappe di razionalità limitata : indagine sui giudizi e le scelte intuitivi”, by Daniel Kahneman in “Critica della ragione economica. Tre saggi : Kahneman, Mc Fadden, Smith” a cura di Motterlini – Piattelli – Palmarini, Ed. “il Saggiatore” 2012, p.126.

[6] “Calcoli morali”, Lazlo Mèro - Ed. Dedalo Bari 2012, p.286 : “two problems are said logically isomorphic when their formal logical structures are exactly alike”. Lazlo Mèro is Hungarian mathematician and psychologist, his essay “Calcoli morali” received in 1999 the prize as best science book in Germany.

[7] “Industria e carattere. Saggi sul pensiero di Alfred Marshall”, by Giacomo Becattini - “Le Monnier Università” 2010. Alfred Marshall (Londra 1842 – Cambridge 1924), has been one of the most influential economist of the last century : his “Principi di Economia” (1881) and “Industria e Commercio” (1919) are still a reference in Political Economics.  

[8] Giacomo Becattini (1927-2017) has been emeritus professor of Political Economy at Florence University, member of the ‘Accademie dei Lincei’, honorary member of ‘Trinity Hall’ (one of the oldest College of Cambridge), ‘honorary’ graduate at Urbino University and president of the ‘Società Italiana degli Economisti’ : found of Alfred Marshall and of the post-war development in Italy , he published essays also on the industrial district of Prato, and its honorary citizen too.

[9] “Dal distretto industriale allo sviluppo locale. Svolgimento e difesa di una idea”, by Giacomo Becattini – Ediz. Bollati Boringhieri 2000, p.53

[10] “Lo Stato innovatore. Sfatare il mito del pubblico contro il privato”, by Mariana Mazzucato 2013 – Editori Laterza Bari.