ABSTRACT
A scholar of the works of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg since his years at high school, Italo Calvino was aware that twentieth century scientific advances had forsaken images linked to everyday perception, that were still present in the models of classical physics. The positivistic image of science maintained that knowledge could be reduced to simple empirical and rational components, and that any imaginary dimension should be removed from it. But it was actually the implications of the second scientific revolution in the early twentieth century which reopened questions about persistent metaphysical problems: the origins and destiny of the universe, the nature of time and space, infinity and the role of chance. Cosmology, having won the battle in defence of its scientific status thanks to the evocative power of its universes, sets up closer and closer dialogues between observation and hypothesis, between experimentation and narration.
