Prof. Riccardo Mancini

This work possesses its own undeniable specificity: it stems from continuous discussion with students and is developed by seeking to explore theoretical-operational issues in depth.

This connotation places on the ridge of research the relationship that exists between the sampling of techniques that Didactics makes available to those who "practice" education and the various declinations of Aconian "meaning" that Pedagogy offers.

That pedagogy is a science that studies the educational fact/event through educational methods, tools and principles is universal law, as is the certainty that every model referable to it calibrates and shapes its action according to the theory and context in which it is embedded.

A scientific circularity that implies, however, the need for particular and peculiar visions, but never having the retension and possibility to translate into generally understood paradigms.

Thus, a reflection that seeks to investigate the dark labyrinth of "olisms," tracing their unity of meaning and scientific recognition from taking on board the most recent discoveries in the physical-mathematical field, appears to be due.

In the legitimization of holistic pedagogy we are faced with a theory, the quantum theory, which although present, albeit in an unspoken manner, within pedagogical reflections for more than a century, has never been posited as a guarantor of scientificity and educational validity, whether it be because of its inclusive artificiality, or because of the hypothetical disciplinary remoteness that finds its interconnections only in psychometric niches.

A holistic perspective that fulfills the continuous social and individual stresses and demands the creation of a "total man" cannot fail to find support in that pedagogical anthropology, which today more than ever is compelled to dialogue with all the sciences, and in particular with physics and mathematics.

The speeches that give an articulation to the discourse, developed in the following pages, are reflections on the major themes of contemporary pedagogy that Riccardo Mancini has discussed with students in Psychology courses.

There is no need to retrieve a logical thread that underlies every argument anyway, because it is in the philosophy that the author privileges, a philosophy that has strong interdisciplinary components that tie in, in a broad sense, with the sciences of education, beginning of course with psychology.

Thus all references to human needs and requirements that pedagogy, moreover, is obliged to represent and direct to

solution, could be of interest to related disciplines, from experimental to social pedagogy, from psychoanalysis to neuroscience where the argument addresses the chapters of mind and soul.

The right way to interpret this text is to situate it within a development of thought and deepening

of some of the themes that were born within the volume "Holistic Pedagogy and the Unity of Knowledge."

A principle of continuity that tends to link and legitimize concepts derived from holistic pedagogy with those that commonly sketch the pages of classical pedagogical literature.