“The rising of a scientific Academy is not only a cultural event, but can also be a political event if the Academy, with its creation wants to be inserted in a very precise political context and become an active interpreter.
Scientific thought can never be detached from political thought: science -very often, more often than one may think - has constituted and constitutes the motor to the political evolution of man. The well being of a population and the power of a state are the results of a scientific level achieved. The forsaken populations, poor and often faced with famine have never cultivated science; they do not have a scientific history. It is necessary to note that, although science does not have frontiers, scientists that practice it belong to a Population, to a Nation that they have contributed in developing, provoking directly or indirectly political reaction of great importance not always evident.
This occurred during the glorious Risorgimento which miraculously lead to, after centuries of servitude, the unification of Italy, a myth pursued by the Italian scientists of the 700’s that unified their scientific efforts and thoughts, demonstrating to the world that Italy was not merely a geographic area, but an active national entity.
The establishment, in 1782, of the “Italian Society” – later known as the National Academy of Sciences –affirmed the sprit of unity among the Italian scientists and created an idea that, at that time, seemed utopian and out of reach: that of reuniting “Forty” of the most distinguished scholars in physical and natural sciences in all of Italy, beyond the arbitrary frontiersthat at the time divided the Peninsula, to form a single “Italian Society” that represented, at least in the sciences, a united Italy. Therefore, Italian scientists anticipated the ideas shared, later on, by Poets and great Thinkers, on the myth of a United Italy.”

From preface in volume “Italian Scientists and the Unification of Italy. The history of the National Academy of Sciences XL” by Academy member Giuseppe Penso, Bardi editori, Rome 1978.

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