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Pere Renom

“We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision […] We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer.”
Oration on the Dignity of Man – Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

A brief philosophical cutting

In 1758 Carl Linnaeus published the 10th edition of his Sistema Naturae, a monumental work in which he classified most of living organisms known at the time, by the introduction of various hierarchical categories (basically kingdom, class, order, family, genus and species) and the Latin binomial nomenclature. Based on anatomical similarities Linnaeus had the brilliant idea of include our own species in the same category as monkeys, a category that called primates, and named us with the known Homo sapiens, the wise man. With this work he let the ground prepared for Charles Darwin who some decades later develop the transcendental theory of the origin of species.

Homo sapiens is since then our scientific name, if we analyze it scientifically we will discover some very interesting details. Homo is the term used by the Romans to designated the humans and shares the root with the word humus, the most superficial and fertile soil. The origin of this association of words goes back to the Indo-European peoples and their religious distinction between the immortal gods of celestial origin, and mortal humans, of earthly origin. On the other hand, sapiens derives from scire, i.e.  knowledge, from which also derives scientia, science.

Somehow Homo sapiens is an earthly animal, fallible and endowed with science, which is an appropriate name to our true nature. Therefore, we should not lose the innate desire to learn and discover, through observation and trial and error in order to become wise. We should keep all life long our scientific essence, in a broad sense, also humanistic, like in the Renaissance was done by Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola or Galileo.

Home videos

I have been working as a reporter on the popular science show Quèquicom for TV3, in Spain, for the last years. Quèquicom, translated as “What-who-how”, is a Catalan show about the science behind the everyday things in life, but with a twist. All sorts of analogies are allowed and encouraged to communicate the basic principles that explain the science behind the various health, environmental or technical issues that we encounter through our daily lives. Here you have two reels. To see the entire reports click here.

Last posts published

Squeeze volcanoes

published on 2.12.2021

Spend the winter at home

published on 29.11.2021

DART project: a mission like a movie

published on 25.11.2021

Autumn and climate change

published on 22.11.2021

The salty sea

published on 18.11.2021

Give the body to science

published on 17.11.2021

Does the volcano eruption go off?

published on 10.11.2021

The warming of the oceans

published on 4.11.2021