{"news":[{"uid":4709,"title":"From Reading to Reasoning","teasertext":"Today, the Swiss delegation embarks on their journey to the international Philosophy Olympiad. Meanwhile, volunteers Ana and Armelle invite you on a journey of your own: your path to philosophy.","short":"Have you ever wanted to get into philosophy, but weren't sure where to start? Ana Abril and Armelle Martinez, alumnae and volunteers of the Philosophy Olympiad, share their thoughts on becoming a philosopher in two articles. In the first article, Armelle takes you on a brief journey through the history of philosophy.","body":"

Have you ever heard of Socrates? Before being introduced to his ideas in class, I too had no idea who he was or what he might have contributed to our society. I had vaguely come across the painting The Death of Socrates<\/i> in an art magazine, but beyond that brief encounter, we had never truly been acquainted. Yet, I was always struck by how often certain academics around me would quote him \u2014 along with other illustrious but obscure names to any untrained ear. Like many of us do in everyday life, I would pretend to understand their references, the fear of appearing ignorant outweighing any genuine desire to comprehend. <\/p>\r\n

And yet, this feeling of shame is something we have all experienced at least once \u2014 and it has existed for centuries. In fact, the man known as the founder of philosophy, Socrates himself, gave his most precious lesson when he declared: \"I know that I know nothing.\" What Socrates teaches us here is not something new, but a crucial reminder: most of our certainties are based on an illusion of understanding. More often than not, we simply pretend to understand!<\/p>\r\n

What a relief, you might say \u2014 and I understand that. Yet the desire to no longer remain ignorant about this has lived within me long enough to spark the wish to share, even if only superficially, a little story of philosophy. So, without further delay, let us set out in the footsteps of thinkers who have shaped our way of perceiving the world\u2026<\/p>\r\n

About the author:<\/strong> Armelle Martinez participated in the final of the Philosophy Olympiad in 2024 and has been active as a volunteer since. She went to school in Nyon and now studies medicine in Zurich.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

Our first step is to define our approach to the history of philosophy. Since we are in a quest of understanding, I propose to focus on what philosophers said about knowledge and how to acquire it.<\/p>\r\n

For many, \u201cwestern\u201d philosophy roughly begins with the death of Socrates in 399 BC. Plato, his disciple, was a prolific writer who used his mentor as a central figure to convey his own philosophical ideas. Socrates himself never wrote anything, but Plato gave us a clear enough picture of his method of teaching. At the start of a discussion, Socrates would take on the role of a student and ask his interlocutors to explain something they believed they understood. Then, through logical questioning, he would guide the conversation toward the essence \u2014 the true definition \u2014 of the chosen topic. But his interlocutors were often caught off guard by their own inability to explain their reasoning clearly. This phenomenon is quite familiar: while we believe we know, in truth we merely accept reality as it is, without questioning it. In other words, Socratic dialogue would invariably lead to a deeper search for meaning, for example: What is justice? What do we truly mean by knowledge?<\/i> Socrates and Plato believed that we cannot speak meaningfully about a concept without first understanding the Idea<\/i> behind it. To acquire genuine knowledge and avoid falling into the illusion of understanding, we must first define the concept \u2014 only then can we meaningfully explore its implications. This method of progressing from definitions to examples is called deductive reasoning<\/i>. Many opponents of Socrates and Plato argued that finding the true Idea of something was impossible, making the entire quest pointless. Socrates, however, insisted on quite the opposite: the journey toward knowledge is the only one that can lead us out of the shadows of illusion and into the light of true happiness.     <\/p>\r\n

Aristotle utterly disagrees with this approach and takes the opposite path: starting from observations of nature and society to discover the larger picture behind them. This inductive reasoning<\/i> can be seen as the root of scientific thinking, and by extension, one might consider Aristotle one of the first scientists. Instead of viewing our senses as a burden or a distraction from true knowledge \u2014 as Plato did \u2014 Aristotle considered them the starting point and an essential part of the journey toward understanding.<\/p>\r\n

Now, let\u2019s take a big leap forward in time to 17th-century France. Descartes, a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, famously stated a simple sentence \u2014 just three words, in fact \u2014 that have been as widely discussed and analyzed as carpe diem<\/i> in \u201cDead Poets Society\u201d: Cogito ergo sum \u2014 I think, therefore I am<\/i>. This statement might sound natural to us now, almost self-evident, but the path to reach it was far from easy. Descartes underwent a process of radical doubt, deliberately questioning everything he believed to be true, stripping away every assumption in search of something absolutely certain. Could he trust his senses? No \u2014 they had deceived him before (and here again, we see how Aristotle would disagree \u2014 the debate remains open\u2026). Could he trust the existence of the world around him? Even that could be an illusion. But there was one thing he could not doubt: the very act of thinking itself. Even if he doubted everything else, the fact that he was thinking was proof that he existed. This self-awareness became, for Descartes, the unshakable foundation upon which all knowledge must be built.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/p>\r\n

Armelle (on the left) discussing with participants at the Philosophy Olympiad.<\/p>\r\n

David Hume, a highly influential empiricist, unlike Descartes, searched the foundation of knowledge by asking himself: how do we acquire it? In contrast to rationalists like Descartes, Hume firmly believed that all knowledge originates from experience \u2014 specifically, from what we perceive through our senses. For him, the mind at birth is like a blank sheet of paper, a tabula rasa<\/i>, gradually inscribed with impressions, memories, and associations as we interact with the world around us. According to Hume, even the most complex ideas are, at their core, composed of simpler sensory impressions that we have experienced firsthand. Through our lives, we are repeatedly exposed to the world and we begin seeing patterns which then build expectations and ultimately what we call knowledge. But Hume also issued a warning: just because we associate two things together repeatedly does not mean they are logically or necessarily connected. This skepticism led him to question concepts like causality, which we often take for granted. Do we truly know that one event causes another \u2014 or do we merely expect it, because it has always appeared that way in our past experience? In this way, Hume not only grounded knowledge in perception, but like its predecessor Socrates, challenged the certainty of what we believe we know.<\/p>\r\n

Hume\u2019s radical empiricism shook the foundations of philosophy \u2014 and few were more affected than Immanuel Kant, who famously admitted that Hume\u2019s skepticism \u201cawoke [him] from [his] dogmatic slumber.\u201d While Kant agreed that knowledge begins with experience, he argued it doesn\u2019t end there. In his \u201cCritique of Pure Reason\u201d, he sought to bridge rationalism and empiricism by showing that knowledge arises from the interaction between sensory data (a posteriori<\/i> - on that he agreed with Hume) and the mind\u2019s innate structures (a priori<\/i> - Plato and Socrates\u2019 side of the story ) \u2014 such as space, time, and causality. We don\u2019t just absorb reality; we actively shape it. For Kant, this means that while we can never access things as they are in themselves (das Ding an sich<\/i>), we can understand the world as it appears to us, filtered through the structures of human perception.<\/p>\r\n

Philosophy, as all the examples above show, is beautiful. It is beautiful precisely because it offers no consensus on a single story. It is a discipline of contradictions, of dialogue, and ultimately a return to the foundations of all sciences: logic and intuition. At its core, philosophy forces you to think for yourself. This article might have given you a glimpse of the history of philosophy, but to truly understand it, you have to engage with it yourself. You have to become a philosopher. Fortunately, the title isn\u2019t hard to earn \u2014 you simply need to think for yourself. This is exactly what is expected of you at the Philosophy Olympiad. Now, that may sound easier said than done. So, let me challenge you to read second part next month where we tackle a classic activity of the Philosophy Olympiad: a so-called thought experiment<\/i>. <\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>","datetime":1747225980,"datetimeend":0,"newstype":1,"newstypetext":null,"links":"","subjects":["Sapere"],"image":["https:\/\/science.olympiad.ch\/fileadmin\/_processed_\/1\/d\/csm_David_-_The_Death_of_Socrates_ea4203cfaa.jpg"],"link":"https:\/\/philosophy.olympiad.ch\/it\/news\/news\/from-reading-to-reasoning","category":[{"uid":1,"title":"Filosofia"},{"uid":5,"title":"Startseite"}]},{"uid":4721,"title":"Sostenere le Olimpiadi della robotica","teasertext":"Ispiriamo i giovani a codificare, costruire e lavorare in una squadra. Sostenete i giovani talenti svizzeri della robotica nel loro viaggio olimpico verso la finale svizzera del World Robot Olympiad.","short":"","body":"","datetime":1746880380,"datetimeend":0,"newstype":1,"newstypetext":null,"links":"https:\/\/wemakeit.com\/projects\/robot-olympiad?locale=it","subjects":["Pari opportunit\u00e0"],"image":["https:\/\/science.olympiad.ch\/fileadmin\/_processed_\/0\/4\/csm_00000090_d4ada8d974.jpg"],"link":"https:\/\/science.olympiad.ch\/it\/news\/news\/olympiade-fuer-tueftlerinnen","category":[{"uid":12,"title":"Robotica"},{"uid":5,"title":"Startseite"}]},{"uid":4705,"title":"\u201cThe best quality you can have to become a researcher is to be resistant to frustration\u201d","teasertext":"David Cimasoni, senior lecturer at the University of Geneva, shares what it means to be a researcher in an interview by Science Olympiad volunteers Yuta Mikhalkin and Tanish Patil.","short":"\u201cWhen I was in high school, my math teacher mentioned different sizes of the infinite, and \r\nI thought to myself that I really want to understand this one day.\u201d A few years later, David \r\nCimasoni did not only understand that, but just a couple of weeks into his master\u2019s thesis, he \r\nsolved a problem in a way his advisor had believed impossible. Still unsure about a career in \r\nresearch, he decided to give it a try \u2014 and it paid off. Now a senior lecturer at the University \r\nof Geneva, his research primarily focuses on knot theory and mathematical physics. In an \r\ninterview by Science Olympiad volunteers Yuta Mikhalkin and Tanish Patil, he shares what it \r\nmeans to be a researcher.","body":"

\u201cKnot theory is very intuitive and therefore pleasant to explain. You have a rope, you tie its ends together and you study the different knots it can be shaped into: some are trivial, some are equivalent to each other\u201d \u2014 David Cimasoni explains, meaning that some knots can be untied or transformed into other knots. \u201cIn the end, once you formalize it, it comes down to a topological question that involves something called an invariant \u2014 in other words, a mathematical object assigned to each knot that doesn\u2019t change when the knot is being deformed. This way, you can prove that two knots aren\u2019t equivalent to each other if you show that their invariants aren\u2019t equal. One fun fact is that defining these invariants can involve techniques from virtually any branch of mathematics.\"<\/p>\r\n

Knot theory is very intuitive and therefore pleasant to explain. You have a rope, you tie its ends together and you study the different knots it can be shaped into.<\/p>\r\n

As the name suggests, mathematical physics is the branch that studies mathematical models behind physical laws and phenomena. One model that David Cimasoni is currently working on is called the dimer model. According to the model, if you have a graph and a set of edges that doesn\u2019t have common vertices yet covers all of them, it\u2019s called a \u201cperfect matching\u201d. You need to find those perfect matchings and ways to count them: for example, if a graph can be embedded in a plane, there is an efficient way of counting them. For more general graphs, one can apply tools from knot theory, which particularly catches David Cimasoni\u2019s interest.<\/p>\r\n

About the author: <\/strong>Yuta Mikhalkin volunteers for Physics in the Science Olympiad media team after participating herself. She studies mathematics in the University of Geneva. <\/p>\r\n

David Cimasoni's area of research is not just of interest to mathematicians though; he mentions that knot theory, for instance, is of interest to molecular biologists for the insights it provides into how DNA molecules behave and interact with each other, and how enzymes act on entangled molecules. He has personally collaborated with a physicist who was studying light signals and how they could become knotted, providing insights into the mathematical aspect of the research. He comments that the intersection of mathematics and other topics is not just about the 'what', but the 'why': \u201cA very good friend of mine works at Google now, and he's really trying to understand why the algorithms that drive AI work. Parameters can be tuned in order to improve the performance of machine learning models, but understanding the mathematics behind these decisions - visualizing what the geometric model is doing geometrically, as a sort of gradient descent on a manifold that finds good choices of local minima \u2014 is an important question too.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Stay tuned! More conversations with researchers are coming soon. Subscribe to the newsletter<\/a> or follow on Instagram<\/a> or Linkedin<\/a> so that you don't miss anything.<\/p>\r\n

When people think about doing research, one common impression is that finding topics must be difficult. David Cimasoni explains that it\u2019s actually not as difficult as it seems \u2014 most research ideas come from reading other people\u2019s works, where open questions are almost always waiting to be explored. Although, occasionally, someone else might publish the same idea while you\u2019re still working on it, which happened to David Cimasoni not long ago. Even though he still managed to publish his own paper on the topic, it made him realize how deeply we rely on external recognition for a sense of accomplishment.<\/p>\r\n

Another aspect of research is that you\u2019re working on a topic without really knowing in what direction to go or if there\u2019s even an answer to your question. Or worse, the whole theory you spent so much time developing might just fall apart all of a sudden. No one\u2019s really there to check that what you\u2019re doing is right \u2014 you\u2019re fully left on your own. \u201cOne year ago, a colleague and I published this paper, and about two months ago we noticed that there\u2019s actually a mistake in it, and no one had seen it! So we had to write an email to the editor asking to block it and all. Fortunately, the mistake is now corrected and the main results of the article still hold true.\u201d <\/p>\r\n

One year ago, a colleague and I published this paper, and about two months ago we noticed that there\u2019s actually a mistake in it, and no one had seen it! So we had to write an email to the editor asking to block it and all. Fortunately, the mistake is now corrected and the main results of the article still hold true.<\/p>\r\n

And what about teaching, the \u201cburden\u201d of a job in research? David Cimasoni primarily teaches undergraduate courses \u2014 often considered the least desirable \u2014 but he views this as a stimulating and meaningful part of his career. Whenever he hits a dead end in his research, which inevitably happens to everyone in the field, he finds reassurance in teaching, knowing it will always be valuable to someone out there: indeed, with an emphasis on clarity and structure, his lectures are particularly fascinating, and his well-written and precise lecture notes, even for courses he no longer teaches, are used and loved by many. And, contrary to what some might think, teaching is not nearly as boring as it seems. \u201cIt\u2019s extremely easy to communicate art \u2014 you can just look at it or listen to it \u2014 but communicating math is not the same: it\u2019s quite challenging and extremely interesting.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

When David Cimasoni was a student, and he once read, in a journal at EPFL, an interview with EPFL Professor Manuel Ojanguren. One thing he read in that interview struck him, and he still thinks about it today. \u201cThe question was: what is the main quality that one should have as a researcher? I thought he would obviously say you need to be smart. Instead, he said in French something like: Il faut avoir une tr\u00e8s grande r\u00e9sistance \u00e0 la frustration. You must be immensely resistant to frustration. And at the time, I just didn\u2019t understand what he meant.\u201d <\/p>\r\n

The question was: what is the main quality that one should have as a researcher? I thought he would obviously say you need to be smart. Instead, he said in French something like: Il faut avoir une tr\u00e8s grande r\u00e9sistance \u00e0 la frustration. You must be immensely resistant to frustration. And at the time, I just didn\u2019t understand what he meant.<\/p>\r\n

But today, the words hold much more meaning to him. In his words: \u201cAs a student, the exercises you are confronted with are often approachable in the sense that you are guaranteed to have solutions for them, and rarely are they open-ended even in the sense where you don\u2019t know what your final answer is expected to be - and in any case, you know there will be an answer. During your master\u2019s, questions you tackle become more open, but you\u2019re still supervised by someone with expertise who has a good idea of how to solve it and who can ensure it gets done. In actual research, once you\u2019re doing your PhD or after it, it\u2019s much more difficult to know whether you\u2019re going in the right direction!\"<\/p>\r\n

In actual research, once you\u2019re doing your PhD or after it, it\u2019s much more difficult to know whether you\u2019re going in the right direction!  <\/p>\r\n

So it\u2019s not so much about being smart. It becomes a question of being tenacious, of not letting go, and of having the psychological ability to think to yourself \"I can overcome this.\" Many times in his career, David Cimasoni saw people who were extremely smart, but unable to come to terms with the particularities of doing long-term problems. Conversely, he remarks that there are countless examples of people not considered prodigious by any means but who were able to reach the peaks of mathematics through perseverance and hard work, the most famous example of which is June Huh, the 2022 recipient of the Fields Medal (the most prestigious award in mathematics) who was famously rejected from almost every university he applied to for his PhD and did not obtain one until the age of 31, but proved to be a late bloomer and an outstanding mathematician.<\/p>\r\n

In general, mathematics is currently at a crossroads: applied mathematics has become better and better funded, with recent advancements in artificial intelligence bringing in big external interest. Meanwhile, pure mathematics, which is often more abstract in nature and less readily connected to real-world applications, can find itself left behind at times. David Cimasoni points out that students who are concerned about studying pure mathematics should not worry that they are missing the pipeline towards research jobs at firms like Google and Amazon. Of course, a degree in a more applied topic provides a more direct route, but David Cimasoni course, a degree in a more applied topic provides a more direct route, but David Cimasoni remarks that he has a lot of colleagues that made the move from research into industry. \"I have a friend, for example, who used to work in symplectic geometry and is now at Google. People hiring at these firms are smart enough to know that if someone has a Phd in pure mathematics, most probably they won't know everything about machine learning but they can pick it up very quickly.\" David Cimasoni\u2019s concluding advice to any young budding mathematician is simple but meaningful: \u201cWork hard, do what you love, and never stop trying!\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Work hard, do what you love, and never stop trying!<\/p>","datetime":1746634140,"datetimeend":0,"newstype":1,"newstypetext":null,"links":"","subjects":["Sapere","Suggerimenti"],"image":["https:\/\/science.olympiad.ch\/fileadmin\/_processed_\/2\/c\/csm_IMG-20250502-WA0007_ce113478b3.jpg"],"link":"https:\/\/mathematical.olympiad.ch\/it\/notizie\/news\/the-best-quality-you-can-have-to-become-a-researcher-is-to-be-resistant-to-frustration","category":[{"uid":10,"title":"Matematica"},{"uid":11,"title":"Fisica"},{"uid":5,"title":"Startseite"},{"uid":4,"title":"Associazione"}]},{"uid":4695,"title":"Junge Talente \u00fcberzeugen die Jury der Wirtschafts-Olympiade","teasertext":"Am 2. Mai fand in St. Gallen das Finale der Schweizer Wirtschafts-Olympiade statt. Zw\u00f6lf Mittelsch\u00fcler*innen trafen sich im Hauptsitz des Partners Raiffeisen Schweiz und stellten ihr VWL-Wissen und ihr unternehmerisches Denken unter Beweis. F\u00fcnf von ihnen wurden mit Goldmedaillen ausgezeichnet.","short":"Am 2. Mai fand in St. Gallen das Finale der Schweizer Wirtschafts-Olympiade statt. Zw\u00f6lf Mittelsch\u00fcler*innen trafen sich im Hauptsitz des Partners Raiffeisen Schweiz und stellten ihr VWL-Wissen und ihr unternehmerisches Denken unter Beweis. F\u00fcnf von ihnen wurden mit Goldmedaillen ausgezeichnet und werden die Schweiz an der Internationalen Wirtschafts-Olympiade in Aserbaidschan vertreten:","body":"