The Angelo Secchi collection between science and religion

Angelo Secchi SJ (1818-1878)

Slow times of the archives have nothing to do with the speed of our times. Highly complex societies, like ours, demonstrate a growing interest in acceleration, unlike the society of the ancien régime that praised the art of prudence, which presupposed a slow and active perception of time. The speedingup, while generating shock and stress, is often seen as a value (thus a necessary issue) in the decisionmaking processes, in the establishment of the diagnosis, in obtaining results, in the movements, etc.

The archivespossibilities to exist in our time are slim considering that the archives require a long time to achieve results. Over the past decade, the almost nonexistent requirement for material on Angelo Secchi would seem to confirm this hypothesis.


For this reason we want to draw a Angelo Secchiproject,  as search program that allows us to select the information to address some problems, namely describing them more adequately. For example, considering the debate Science/Religion” – sometimes confused as Faith/Science“- not as a simple opposition between alternatives where the truth could dwell, but as functional positions within the same social system. Any historiographical operation, also the one intended for the production of the socalled history of science, could not be achieved if detached from a theory of society, as documentation is always contextualized documentation, that is produced by a society in a given age. Often the problem is that the description of the society and therefore also the historiography that the same produces focuses on categories that come from the classic European tradition, generated and suited to the enlightenment. Being made in times of reduced complexity, these categories do not respond to the needs and the urgencies of a social system as ours, which is enormously specialized and differentiated.






f2765315f4250227d46f0854ab4cfc5fTo see the Secchi Project

The translation of this post, from italian to english,  has been made by Vanessa Terzo.

2 risposte a "The Angelo Secchi collection between science and religion"

  1. Il “Progetto Secchi” dimostra ancora una volta il patrimonio dei fondi archivistici dell’APUG. Lo studio della imponente corrispondenza del P. Secchi – nello specifico – aprirà scenari di straordinaria importanza per la storia della scienza dell’800. Vi seguirò con interesse!



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