First of all, this essay would have not ever seen the light without the close collaboration with Ian Gibbins, who could be easily regarded my co-author, who has been my main guide for the organisation of this essay.
With the foundation of the Centre of Neuroscience (CNS) at Flinders University formalised in 1978, I have participated with seminars in my own field of experimental research, but I also gave seminars extending to the nature of knowledge in general and specifically scientific knowledge. In those talks I proposed to build a general map to navigate between the different streams of knowledge. I am grateful to my colleagues of at Flinders for ongoing constructive feedback to my seminars. This essay includes many sections based on those seminars.
Similarly, I am indebted to many neuroscience colleagues in Australia for stimulating discussions. Lengthy conversations and a rich correspondence with Chris Pantelis, a psychiatrist and researcher in Melbourne, have helped to refine many of the concepts expressed in this essay.
I gave talks at the Psychiatry Ground Rounds at Flinders on the idea of superimposed neural circuits and to the cognitive scientists/philosophers at Adelaide universities on several of the issues covered in this essay. In the mid 2000s, I was involved in attempts to establish a virtual South Australian Neuroscience Institute between the three South Australian Universities (SANI). This led to numerous public meetings linking diverse life worlds including art, science, religion, psychology, education, entertainment, law, and sport to modern neuroscience.
During my yearly trips to Europe, I had the opportunity to give seminars in different institutions, including my alma mater Institution in Turin as guest of Aldo Fasolo (deceased 2015) and Davide Lovisolo who organised over many years several seminar series to expose their students to my ideas. I gave seminars to the Philosophers of Milano University and to the researchers of the SISSA (Scuola Internazionale di Studi Scientifici Avanzati) in Trieste with the support of Daniele Amati, a well-known theoretical physicist turned head of a multi-disciplinary institute. I have been a guest for several years in the northern summer of a group of intellectuals, mostly psychologists and psychoanalysts, in Lecco on the shores of the Lake Maggiore, north of Milano, where we held days of impassioned discussions up on the mountain ranges at the house of Mario Pigazzini, their prime inspiration.
Well before that, in the 1990s, I was also often guest of friends in the city of l’Aquila, capital of Abruzzi, with Luciano Onori (deceased in 2022), a close colleague gastroenterologist with whom we were also involved in political and philosophical discussions, and Guido Visconti, a physicist of the Gran Sasso National Research Institute.
I am also deeply indebted to Sonia Piloto in Turin for helping with initial drafts in Italian. She passed away peacefully in 2021.
Ian Gibbins and Luke Wiklendt have reviewed constructively much of my initial drafts.
Peter Arnold in Sydney has done a most careful revision of my English.
My original science supervisor, Giorgio Gabella, has enabled my writing to be humbler than my personality would have allowed.
Finally, I acknowledge the crucial role of my family in supporting my acute curiosity and endless quest for deeper knowledge, even when it took me away from a family life. Our son Andre, daughter-in-law Kat, and our three grandchildren Harry, Orlando and Heidi, all different, unique individuals who have been present in my thoughts no matter how far from everyday life. Daniela’s love and patience as my dear wife, friend and lover has been essential to everything I did in my long life. I am forever indebted.