It all begins with a question—or rather, five. Five questions that have always fascinated and unsettled us: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What’s out there? And… why?
If we truly wish to find answers, we must go back to the origin of everything: the Big Bang.
Freely written while listening to a talk by Tommaso Ghidini,
Head of the Mechanical Department at the European Space Agency
Copyright: ESA
There is an invisible force that has moved human beings since the dawn of time. It is not survival. It is not instinct. It is something more subtle, yet more powerful: wonder.
Wonder is the first step toward discovery. It is the awe that grips us in the face of the incomprehensible, the sublime, the unknown.
It’s the feeling that has pushed humans to ask who they are, where they come from, and where they are going.
And perhaps it’s precisely to answer these questions that we began to create—to explore the skies and draw on cave walls; to launch probes into space and paint dreams on canvas.
Everything began with the Big Bang, an event that didn’t happen in time and space, but rather created time and space. Since that primordial moment, the universe has expanded, evolved, transformed. And within this expansion, billions of years later, stars were born, planets formed, life emerged—and finally, humankind appeared.
We arrived late—just two and a half million years ago. Yet in a very short time, we’ve left a huge mark. Why?
Because humans are the only living beings capable of dreaming the future and building it. And that dream takes many forms: in science, in philosophy, in art.
Art as a Journey into the Unknown
Art, like science, is born of wonder. But while science seeks answers, art often presents us with new questions. It forces us to look at the world from different perspectives, to suspend judgment, to feel rather than understand.
Artists are explorers of the human spirit. They are like those pioneers who first dared to take flight, not knowing where they would land. Like griffins teaching their young to fly by launching them into the void, artists trust in the air and in the vertigo of risk.
It takes courage to be an artist. It requires an inner fire, a burning urgency.
It’s the same force that guided space missions like Rosetta, which chased a comet for twelve years to land on it and photograph it up close—for the first time in history.
And to discover that the comet contained some of the basic building blocks of life
says Tommaso Ghidini.
And yet—what is that comet, if not a perfect symbol of art? A mysterious object arriving from afar, crossing the darkness and leaving behind a luminous trail. Like a work of art: it escapes complete understanding, but it touches us, transforms us, moves us.
Vision: What Makes Us Human
Behind every great achievement—whether it’s a fresco in the Sistine Chapel or a rover on Mars—there is a vision. Something that does not yet exist, but could exist, if we have the courage to believe in it.
This is the divine spark of humanity: the ability to imagine the invisible.
When John F. Kennedy declared that man would set foot on the Moon—not because it was easy, but because it was hard—he was affirming the deep value of vision. A shared vision is contagious. And when a dream is big enough to ignite many hearts, it becomes possible.
Artists are visionaries by nature. They are the ones who see before others do, and who often pay the price of solitude, misunderstanding, and failure. But if not for them, the world would be grayer, flatter, blinder.
The Art of Vision
Leonardo da Vinci is the epitome of a visionary mind capable of transforming dream into design.
He watched birds in flight and imagined flying machines; he drew ideal cities while urban chaos still reigned. But he didn’t stop at fantasy—he experimented, calculated, built. In an era unprepared for his ideas, Leonardo dared to think and try them.
His strength lay not only in genius, but in the courage to believe in a different future. For him, vision wasn’t utopia—it was responsibility. Art and science became concrete tools to chase the impossible.
Breaking Boundaries
With Picasso, art changed its face. With Cubism, together with Braque, he shattered traditional perspective, offering the world a new way of seeing reality. It was the 20th century, but that gesture had the power of a revolution: to look from multiple viewpoints, to break boundaries, to dare what was not yet understood.
Picasso didn’t seek approval—he sought to understand and help others understand. Innovation, for him, was an expressive urgency. And as with every true avant-garde, his challenge became a language, his dream a sign.
A still-living lesson: to innovate, we must break rules and create new ways of seeing.
Art as an Evocation of the Invisible
Thanks to Kandinsky, art ceased to describe the visible and began to evoke the invisible.
The first painter to liberate art from recognizable forms, Kandinsky listened to the sounds of colors and translated their vibrations onto canvas.
His was a revolutionary vision: art as a spiritual experience, a bridge between inner worlds. In a time when the image dominated reality, he dared abstraction, pure emotion, visual music.
It was the courage to break rules to follow a deeper truth. For Kandinsky, each artwork was a dream drawn with the force of intuition—an act of faith in art’s power to speak directly to the heart.
We Were Born to Fly
Happiness lies not in the outcome, but in the direction we choose—in the energy we put into the attempt.
When we create, when we pursue an idea, when we dare, we rise. Even if we fall—even if we fail—we have flown.
We are creatures of possibility. And it is in wonder, in dreaming, and in vision that we find our true nature.
We were born to look upward.
To explore the universe beyond us—and the even more mysterious one within.