Farewell to Piero Angela, the relentless protester of pseudo-science
What is the legacy of Piero Angela. Federico Guiglia's Notebook
The time of his story lasted seventy years, "like the Kingdom of Elizabeth", Piero Angela said of himself with a sense of humor and history. Now that he has passed away at the age of 93, we already regret the discretion with which he entered our homes with Quark, Superquark and other lucky Rai programs, almost asking for permission. It was not, however, a lordship that was the result only of the Turin and rigorous education received in the family. Gracefully, this gentleman of the small screen actually conveyed the greatest ingredient for serious and attractive dissemination: the critical spirit.
That duty to narrate difficult things in an easy way - because knowledge must be the heritage of all - without renouncing doubts and asking the questions of the common person every time. Trying, in this way, to give answers, when possible, or new stimuli to deepen, compare, contest.
Yes, Piero Angela was a relentless protester of the virus of lies, which can lurk in fake or fake news - the so-called fake news - as well as in pseudo-science or fanaticism of positions by party taken. He fought in style to expose everything that clouds minds and dries up hearts.
From medicine to literature, from physics to space, from history to mathematics, to nutrition, there is no field that he has not attended, investigating with the strength of humility and awareness typical of the traveler who seeks and searches beyond all borders. Not, therefore, the story for the sake of appearance, but the pleasure of informing, entertaining and instructing. Generations of Italians have drunk at the source of his competence, which was also to resort to those who knew more than him and us to explain the incomprehensible, communicate the beautiful, warn against prejudices. So much sowing, and his son Alberto first follows in his father's footsteps.
"Italy is grateful to him," wrote the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, interpreting the general sentiment. But what does this great and beloved Italian leave? It leaves an example of credibility in the age of hoaxes and the method of science and conscience with which it is lived by telling, and also telling our lives.