Sapere Explained

Frequency:Bimonthly
Category:Popular science magazine
Founded:1935
Country:Italy
Based:Rome
Language:Italian
Issn:0036-4681
Oclc:1020137624

Sapere (Italian: Knowledge) is a popular science magazine that has been in circulation since 1935 and is based in Rome, Italy. It is one of the earliest Italian publications in its category.

History and profile

Sapere was established by the Italian publisher Ulrico Hoepli in 1935.[1] The magazine is published by the Edizioni Dedalo on a bimonthly basis.[1] [2] Sapere came out monthly during the 1970s.[3] It is based in Rome.[4]

Sapere features articles on science, news, reviews, and contains graphic novels and photography.[2] The magazine has used extensive illustrations and photographs since its start in 1935.[5] In the 1940s its target audience was those who were interested in the interdisciplinarity of scientific knowledge and modernist culture.[6]

Contributors and content

One of the early contributors of the magazine was Guido Landra who wrote articles containing the results of his race studies.[7] Its other contributors included Enrico Fermi, Guglielmo Marconi, Adriano Buzzati-Traverso, Giulio Maccacaro and Carlo Bernardini who were scientists.[8]

Sapere covered propaganda materials in the Fascist period one of which was about Japanese identity culture.[9] The magazine featured an extract from Beaumont Newhall’s article entitled The New Abstract Vision in 1947.[6]

A group of the writers from Il manifesto joined the magazine in the mid-1970s. They were led by Giulio Alfredo Maccacaro who was made editor-in-chief of Sapere.[10] The members of the group published articles about the history and critics of science from 1978.[11] [12] Another topic of their articles was the interaction between politics and ecology which contributed to raise the level of the political-ecological awareness among Italians.[13] The group domainated the magazine until 1982.[3] In the 1980s Massimo Pigliucci was a regular contributor of Sapere.[14]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Sapere. edizioni Dedalo. 7 October 2023. it.
  2. Web site: Alessandro Frandi. Sapere, prima rivista italiana di divulgazione. almanacco.cnr.it. 7 October 2023. it.
  3. Book: Angelo Baracca. et. al.. Elisabetta Bini. Igor Londero. Nuclear Italy An International History of Italian Nuclear Policies during the Cold War. 2017. EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste. Trieste. 978-88-8303-813-6. 220. 10077/15343. http://hdl.handle.net/10077/15343. The Role of Physics Students at the University of Florence in the Early Italian Anti-nuclear Movements (1975-1987).
  4. Web site: Sapere. cric-rivisteculturali.it. 2 July 2018. it. 7 October 2023.
  5. Enrica Battifoglia. Popularised science communication modes in Italian popular science magazines (1788-2002). Journal of Science Communication. 3. 1. 2004. 10.22323/2.03010201. 11. free.
  6. Alessandro Ferraro. Marco Tamborini. Abstraction in Contemporary Visual Culture as an Interplay between Imagination, Image and Scientific Knowledge. Visual Resources. 37. 2. 2021. 10.1080/01973762.2023.2186768. 146. 258410968 .
  7. Aaron Gillette. The origins of the 'Manifesto of racial scientists'. Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 6. 3. 2001. 10.1080/13545710110084253. 308. 146603137.
  8. Web site: Sapere, i suoi primi sessant'anni. Sapere. 7 October 2023. it.
  9. Sergio Raimondo. Valentina De Fortuna. Giulia Ceccarelli. Bushido as allied: The Japanese warrior in the cultural production of Fascist Italy (1940-1943). Revista de Artes Marciales Asiáticas. July-December 2017. 12. 2. 88. 10.18002/rama.v12i2.5157. free.
  10. Fabio Lusito. «Diamo l'assalto al cielo!» («Let's assault the sky»): science communication between scientists and citizens and Lombardo Radice's television in Italy in the years of the protests. Journal of Science Communication. 19. 3. 2020. 10.22323/2.19030203. 6. 225709282. free.
  11. Elena Formia. Mediating an Ecological Awareness in Italy: Shared Visions of Sustainability Between the Environmental Movement and Radical Design Cultures (1970–1976). 2. 2017. 10.1093/jdh/epw051. Journal of Design History. 30. 197.
  12. Angelo Baracca. Silvio Bergia. Flavio Del Santo. The origins of the research on the foundations of quantum mechanics (and other critical activities) in Italy during the 1970s. 77. 10.1016/j.shpsb.2016.11.003. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 57. 2017. 1608.05197. 2017SHPMP..57...66B. 118435754.
  13. Book: Stefania Barca. Soraya Boudia. Nathalie Jas. 2014. Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World. Berghahn Books. New York; Oxford. 127. 2. Work, Bodies, Militancy The “Class Ecology” Debate in 1970s Italy. 9781782382379. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781782382379-008. 10.1515/9781782382379-008.
  14. 51. 1997. 5. 1695. Announcements. Evolution. 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1997.tb01495.x. 221729154. free.