Marcello Pera

Marcello Pera has been professor of philosophy of science at the Universities of Catania and Pisa and is now teaching at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He is a senator and has served as the President of the Italian Senate from 2001 to 2006. A visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, the Linguistics and Philosophy Department at MIT, the London School of Economics, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, Pera has lectured in many universities and research centers throughout Europe and America. Pera’s numerous publications includeThe Ambiguous Frog: The Galvani-Volta Controversy on Animal Electricity(Princeton University Press, 1991) andThe Discourses of Science(University of Chicago Press, 1994). In 2005, he co-authored a book with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) entitledWithout Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam(Basic Books).