ABSTRACT
I would have liked to start this writing about my friend Sergio Parrinello by recalling the first occasion we met. I tried again and again to remember it, but I could not find it in my memory. I called and asked him. He did not remember. He consulted with Giuli, the same result. We concluded that we must have been friends forever. The difference in our characters is so great that no conflict is possible, and mutual knowledge entails deep reciprocal respect. I am sure that each one of us would like to possess some characteristics of the other one. At the same time, we are amazingly similar in intellectual, moral and political visions. And, most of all, we are united by a common taste for the new, the unexplored, the starting of new initiatives, the change. Let me recall here how this affinity brought us, coming from different academic disciplines, to work together on several occasions towards concrete goals, This story started in the late 1960s in Poland, on a bus carrying Italian guests invited by the Polish Academy of Sciences. The important personalities in that Italian group were the economist Siro Lombardini and the system and control scientist Antonio Ruberti. They were often walking or sitting together, held at a respectful distance by the rest of us, all at an early stage of our university careers. Two members of that group, the researcher in economics, Sergio, and that in mathematical system theory, me, had together found some well-defined common points between these disciplines, from a methodological and application point of view. We were excited by our discovery, rather unorthodox in the Italian academic world of those days, and hesitant on how to proceed in submitting these ideas to Lombardini and Ruberti. We wanted to seize that unique occasion and we did, during an unexpectedly long bus halt in Krakow, a place still emanating its great cultural heritage. The result was good, the next days our scientific discussions were extended to our great bosses. Sergio and I promptly took the occasion to engage them to sponsor a common research group that we had in mind to promote, on system science and economics. This we did soon afterwards, in Italy. We started by obtaining the adherence, on Sergio’s side of P. C Nicola from the State University of Milan and of B. Sitzia,
from the University of Pisa and on my side of S. De Julio, a pupil of Ruberti at the University of Rome and of F. Brioschi, from the Polytechnic of Milan. The Gruppo di Economia e Sistemistica (GES – Association for Economics and System Theory) was then founded, gathering more than 100 researchers from various Italian institutions, including the research section of the prestigious Bank of Italy, where B. Sitzia had moved in the meantime. So many episodes of that adventurous enterprise, which lasted for more than ten years, come to my mind and may now look like a fantasy of mine, shared only by Sergio. But a concrete object, physically proving the contrary, is available: the book Teoria dei Sistemi ed Economia (System Theory and Economics) published in 1976 by Il Mulino, authored by 23 contributors and edited by A. Ruberti and S. Lombardini. Their preface does indeed put the conceptual foundations for those system theory-oriented studies which are now common in economics publications. This book corresponds to the Proceedings of the First Meeting of GES, held in 1974 at the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences (ICMS) in Udine, and followed by second and third meetings, in 1975 and 1976. Udine, the capital of the Friuli Italian region, was actually the birthplace of these initiatives, not only because of my position at ICMS, but also because Sergio’s roots lay there. He had spent the important years of his early youth in that city and seemed to have absorbed there some aspects of his character which are well known in Italy as typical of the Friuli people: work-oriented, rather silent yet attentive to the meaning of each word and stubborn. In some way, GES and ICMS in Udine favoured the birth of the Centre for Advanced Economic Studies (better known as ‘the Trieste School’). This is also recalled by Adriano Birolo in his Introduction in this book, where he mentions that the first Conference of the Trieste School was held at ICMS in Udine in 1980. Actually, the quick local organisational start of the School was mainly due to the joint endeavour of Sergio and myself. For the later ten years we worked together as members of the Administrative Board of that School. We now smile when remembering some stormy meetings of that Board. On those occasions, I often wondered whether the disputes among changing coalitions of the Board’s members were due to theoretical differences among various economic thoughts, or differences on strategies about the practical conduct of the School. I am now rather convinced by the first hypothesis, since it explains why only the two members of that Board, Gianpaolo De Ferra and I, who were aliens to the various, sometimes different interpretations of the thought of great founders of the science of economics, could settle those disputes among well-known, distinguished economists. According to his Friuli character, Sergio tended to keep rather silent during those discussions, taking time to think things over, and later expressing his opinions in writing or speaking with me, his friend. His ideas were as intellectually and morally uncompromising as he is. This habit of his also manifested itself a few years later in a rather strange episode in the antechamber of the newly appointed Minister for State Participation
in Economics, Siro Lombardini. He had asked Sergio Parrinello, Sergio De Julio and myself to become his personal advisers. This great academic personality was a newcomer to Italian political life and was actually empowered to appoint only three persons in the whole Ministry, until then directed by Ministers quite different from him, who were endowed with real political and economic hardcore power. In that antechamber, while waiting for the Minister, the three of us were surprised to be surrounded by persons with an air of those engaged in dodgy deals. Being aware of the important role that the two Sergios and myself would play in the Ministry, not knowing which type of person Siro was, but probably familiar with his predecessor, they advanced proposals that we should embark on some joint venture together, one of which I remember concerned the state railways. They hinted that we would all share the profit. The three of us were looking at each other, surprised. When alone with Sergio De Julio and me, Sergio Parrinello broke his silence, telling us that it would be impossible for him to take the job. The uncompromising Sergio. Personally, I consider that episode an antecedent of the current death of honest intellectual personalities interested in participating in the compromise-dominated (or worse) current active Italian political life, where in any case no Minister with high qualities such as those of Siro Lombardini would be appointed. The meeting of Sergio with Antonio Ruberti on that Polish bus established a relationship of great reciprocal esteem. It is a duty to recall the gratitude that every Italian person of culture owes to Antonio Ruberti for his extraordinary work as Professor of Control and System Science, as Rector of Rome la Sapienza University, as Minister for Scientific Research and Education, and as European Commissioner for Science. I wish to recall a rather unknown detail in his wide activities which proves his deep, exceptional appreciation for Sergio as a person and for his rigorous approach to economics: some years later, in 1978, Ruberti offered Sergio a newly created Chair of Economics in that Department of System and Control Science which was one of the first of Ruberti’s creations and which he considered his living creature, normally reserved for his own pupils. I do not mention here the countless occasions which found Sergio, Giuli and me together, including on long mountain treks, but I wish to conclude by visualising his various types of smile. Actually, his rather reserved character is complemented by an almost constant smile. But there are silent smiles with rather closed lips, which he reserves for persons and situations with which his strict moral and intellectual attitudes do not agree, and in this case Sergio keeps silent, takes time for reflection, and then expresses his rather radical opinion to friends while showing his ironical, cutting smile with lips half open. There is the nodding smile when he agrees, and Sergio’s lips are all open, and there is also his happy smile, which becomes an open laugh of juvenile joy. I hope Giuli will let me know with which kind of smile Sergio will greet this note.
