Technology and Intellectual Labor in Primo Levi's Short Story “The Versifier”

ABSTRACT

We live in a context marked by the ubiquity of technologies, a condition that poses significant challenges to both society and science education. Although widely recognized for his testimonial literature, Primo Levi produced an extensive body of work at the intersection of science and literature that remains underexplored in Brazil and in the field of science education. In this regard, the present study identifies relationships between technology and intellectual labor in Primo Levi's short story The Versifier, with the aim of fostering critical reflections on the appropriation of artificial intelligence in educational processes. The analyses were organized into four categories: (i) the structure and poetic freedom of the chem-writer; (ii) contemporary demands of the world of work; (iii) the influence of technology on the organization and ways of life of society; and (iv) between the neutral tool and surrender to pervasive automatism. We suggest that the analyzed short story may contribute to a science education concerned with the scientific, technological, cultural, social, and human dimensions of society.

Keywords:
Primo Levi; Science Education; Technology; Intellectual Labor; The Versifier; Natural Histories

RESUMO:

Vivemos um contexto de onipresença das tecnologias, o que traz grandes desafios à sociedade e à educação em ciências. Primo Levi, reconhecido por sua literatura de testemunho, tem uma vasta obra na interface entre a ciência e a literatura que ainda é pouco explorada no Brasil e na educação científica. Nesse sentido, este trabalho identifica relações entre tecnologia e trabalho intelectual no conto “O versificador”, de Primo Levi, visando propor reflexões críticas sobre a apropriação da inteligência artificial em processos formativos. Organizamos as análises em quatro categorias: i) estrutura e liberdade poética do quimiscritor, ii) exigências contemporâneas do mundo do trabalho, iii) a influência da tecnologia na organização e nos modos de vida da sociedade; e iv) entre a ferramenta neutra e a rendição ao automatismo onipresente. Sugerimos que o conto analisado pode contribuir para uma educação científica preocupada com os aspectos científicos, tecnológicos, culturais, sociais e humanos da sociedade.

Palabras-clave:
Levi; Educación científica; Tecnología; Trabajo intelectual; Versificador; Historias naturales

RESUMEN:

Vivimos en un contexto de omnipresencia de tecnologías, lo que plantea grandes desafíos a la sociedad y a la educación científica. Primo Levi, reconocido por su literatura testimonial, posee una vasta obra sobre la interfaz entre ciencia y literatura, aún poco explorada en Brasil. En este sentido, el trabajo identifica relaciones entre tecnología y trabajo intelectual en el cuento “El Versificador”, de Primo Levi, con el objetivo de proponer reflexiones críticas sobre la apropiación de la inteligencia artificial en los procesos formativos. Organizamos los análisis en cuatro categorías: estructura y libertad poética del químico; demandas contemporáneas del mundo laboral, iii) la influencia de la tecnología en la organización y los modos de vida de la sociedad; entre la herramienta neutral y la rendición al automatismo omnipresente. Sugerimos que el cuento analizado puede contribuir a una educación científica preocupada por los aspectos científicos, tecnológicos, culturales, sociales y humanos de la sociedad.

Palavras-chave:
Primo Levi; Educação científica; Tecnologia; Trabalho intelectual; Versificador; Histórias naturais

INTRODUCTION: PRIMO LEVI, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE EDUCATION

"In my view, the computer will eventually spread like wildfire and change the face of the world, at least of the industrialized world. It is impossible to resist. And if we succeed in creating a truly intelligent machine, or one that simulates intelligence reasonably well, then we will have to be cautious." (Tullio Regge) (Levi & Regge, 2012, pp. 99-100).

We live in a context marked by the ubiquity of technologies in society. They play a hegemonic role in the structuring of financial capitalism, in the management of human interactions through social networks, in the organization of the world of work through digital platforms and remote tools, in socialization processes and the formation of consciousness during early childhood, among many other aspects. In the educational field, we have witnessed a technological avalanche no longer exclusively related to the use of technologies in teaching, but also involving the recent platformization of Basic Education and the use of artificial intelligence both in teaching and in the academic production of knowledge itself. Here lies a fundamental issue for science education: how can we conceive of intellectual labor within this scenario?

We find some possible paths in Primo Levi's literature and in a critical perspective on how human labor may be understood in contemporary capitalist society, particularly when considering the interface between art and science—an area of study and research that has become increasingly consolidated within the field of science education¹.

Primo Levi was an Italian chemist and writer of Jewish origin, and a survivor of Auschwitz. He was born in Turin on July 31, 1919, and died in the same city on April 11, 1987. He became internationally known for his book If This Is a Man (1947), first published in Brazil in 1988. It is one of the foundational works of testimonial literature, exposing the profound civilizational failures that afflicted humanity during the Holocaust. Levi's work has grown in relevance in light of contemporary contexts and events in which intolerance, prejudice, disregard for science, and a diminished commitment to democracy have increasingly shaped public life.

A considerable number of Brazilian studies have been devoted to developing educational projects that draw on the diverse contributions of Primo Levi to science education (Gasparetto et al., 2022; Leonardo Júnior, 2022; Leonardo Júnior et al., 2021; Massi et al., 2021; Palcha & Oliveira, 2014; Valero et al., 2023). Gasparetto et al. (2023) investigated the potential of Levi's work for discussing issues related to “[…] the nature of science, the pedagogical potential of narrative texts, the role of experimentation, science communication, teacher education, social context, and discussions concerning chemical concepts” (p. 1). According to Russo and colleagues (2023), reading Levi offers strategic possibilities for chemistry teaching, particularly within teacher education programs that articulate epistemological and social dimensions. Grounded in the perspective of omnilateral education, anchored in Historical-Critical Pedagogy, Leonardo Júnior and colleagues (2021) promoted initial teacher education experiences for pre-service chemistry teachers based on The Periodic Table, mobilizing the following analytical categories: the relationship between science and literature; a broadened understanding of the chemist's profession; and the possibilities for articulating literature and science in chemistry teaching. Drawing on the same work, Massi and colleagues (2022) sought to advocate for aesthetic theoretical frameworks as a means of better understanding the relationship between science and literature.

We agree with Massi and colleagues (2022) when they state that “as reality is one and indivisible, coming into contact with works of art that address the problems of this reality enriches our conception of the world” (p. 22). Nevertheless, in Brazil and elsewhere, this portion of Levi's oeuvre—situated between testimony and fiction, science and literature—remains largely unexplored. According to Maciera (2014),

[...] Levi not only promotes a kind of humanization of the objects of science, but also employs them as metaphorical lenses, since the terms he uses often refer not strictly to laboratory work or chemistry itself, but rather to actions or characters. (p. 120).

There is a clear convergence between Levi's concerns and the discussions and directions taken by critical science education over the past decades. Since the earliest efforts to systematize this field of teaching and research in both national and international contexts, there has been an increasing demand not only to consider which science should be taught, but also to reflect on the nature of that science, who produces it, what interests are involved, what its impacts on society are, how it relates to the broader population, and how science education can incorporate discussions of humanization into science teaching (Maurício & Valente, 2013; Rotta et al., 2022).

Levi's works have increasingly become the object of study within science education, converging with perspectives that view the relationship between art and science not merely as a means of elucidating scientific content, but also humanistic content (Fernandes Junior & Caluzi, 2020). They likewise resonate with reflections on the possibilities of education for creativity at the interface between art and science (Leite et al., 2025). In this regard,:

Both imagination and creativity are human capacities that have enabled humanity's survival and freedom since the beginning of its evolutionary development. This freedom is associated with the exploration of nature rather than its negation. Such capacities allowed human beings to retain the image of an animal in their minds even when it was no longer present, to become familiar with its characteristics and behavior, and thus to undertake actions that went beyond purely instinctive responses. In this sense, both the spear and the cave paintings created by early humans exemplify activities that demonstrate humanity's capacity to transcend the mechanical impulses of nature. (Leite et al., 2025, p. 3)

Primo Levi's vast intellectual production encompasses the early and foundational works of testimonial literature on fascism and Nazism, in which, over the course of forty years, he reflected on the processes of dehumanization and the experiences of extreme political violence that prevailed in concentration and extermination camps; his works of science fiction; and those devoted to the chemical elements of the periodic table. Throughout all of them, one can observe a recurring reflection on the human being as a creature capable of thinking and acting rationally and sensibly, on the fundamental importance of labor in the formation of a human being capable of understanding nature in its various manifestations, and on the fate of reason in modernity and throughout the twentieth century. Whether reflecting on the cultural and political processes engendered by fascism and Nazism, analyzing the matter present in living beings and objects, or speculating on the meaning and significance of the extreme violence that marked the twentieth century, Levi consistently emphasizes the importance of labor in the process of constructing both the human being and humanity. In 1983, following the publication of If Not Now, When? (Se non ora quando?), when asked about the fundamental themes of his works, Levi offered two important reflections: (1) the theme of the “dignity of the human being” and (2) the fundamental importance of labor in human existence: “the man who does not work is a non-man” (Levi, 2018b, p. 383).

The positive emphasis that Levi consistently places on labor addresses one of the most serious problems of modern society: the alienation of labor, which degrades the human being into a thing or an object, preventing workers from understanding themselves, social reality, and the world. For Levi, even while fully aware of the dilemmas and contradictions of labor in industrial and technological society, it is through work that human beings learn to confront matter, understand the meaning of its elements and substances, experiment with and manipulate them, and think and act rationally and sensibly. In the relationship that every form of labor establishes with matter, through rational thought and action, human beings “mature and grow” (Levi, 2018b, p. 55).

In the stories that comprise Natural Histories (Levi, 2022), and more specifically in “The Versifier,” Primo Levi writes about the complex relationship involving human beings, labor, reason, science, technique, and technology, as well as the paradoxes that progress generates within industrial society. If, on the one hand, this relationship made it possible, at the dawn of the modern age, for human beings to create “ingenious devices” and to orient themselves in the world through the power of rational thought and calculation, on the other hand, it may negate them as inventive and lucid creators, as virtuous beings. Such is the argument developed in the story under discussion, in which a poet who writes verses on demand acquires a “machine designed to compose poetry” from the multinational electronics company NATCA.

Among the various issues raised by the story—issues that may contribute to shaping the kind of education humanity requires after the tragedy of dehumanization and the destruction of reason brought about by fascism and intensified by Nazism—we highlight two. First, it is the moral and political duty of human beings to endow technique and technology with meaning, since neither possesses meaning in and of itself. As productive forces, they may be employed both for the rational and sensible development of human beings and for destruction and organized violence. Second, the fate of reason is a vital question that must be continuously examined, since, as the Spanish painter Francisco Goya suggested at the end of the eighteenth century when he titled one of his works The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, the suspension of reason gives rise to monstrosities. This “sleep” becomes concrete insofar as economic and political forces, together with technological power, render human beings incapable of thinking rationally and sensibly. In If This Is a Man?, Levi understood that the creation of a new “race” was one of the principal products of the experiments carried out by Nazism: a radical division of humanity into slaves and a “master race” (Herrenvolk). Levi argued that Nazism sought, within the “laboratory” of the concentration camps, to create a human being “in whose face and eyes not the slightest thought can be discerned”. (Levi, 1988, p. 91).

A Materialist Perspective on the Relationship Between Manual Labor and Intellectual Labor in Levi

“The Greeks used to say of an uncultivated person: 'He can neither write nor swim.' Today, one should add: 'Nor use a computer.” (Levi & Regge, 2012, p. 97).

In this section, we compile passages from Levi's writings that relate to his formative trajectory as a chemist within a context of Nazi persecution. On this basis, we propose an interpretation informed by a materialist perspective, distinguishing between manual labor and intellectual labor and reflecting on the relationships among science, technology, and society through the theoretical contributions of Alfred Sohn-Rethel (2001).

As a person of Jewish origin who experienced Nazi persecution in some of its most profound forms, Levi chose to pursue a degree in chemistry partly because he was willing to confront the matter from which human beings are constituted, but largely because he sought in the natural sciences a field of knowledge less susceptible to fascist prejudice and persecution. Fascism, as a mass movement guided by ideology and passive subordination, shapes—and demands the shaping of—a human being devoid of independent thought. In his time, when “conspiracy was applauded,” he heard from his Italian teacher that “literary subjects possessed formative value, whereas scientific subjects possessed merely informative value”:

[...] my hair stood on end. This confirmed my suspicion that there was a conspiracy. You, young Fascist, young Crocean, you young people raised in this Italy, must not approach the sources of scientific knowledge because they are dangerous. I never read Croce on these matters, but apparently he regarded them as pseudosciences, technical subjects, useful for life but not for understanding the world.. (Levi & Regge, 2012, p. 43-44).

His university experience was nonetheless liberating, even though his diploma bore the annotation: “Of Jewish race.”:

For me, there was a complication, as I have already recounted in my books: the racial laws. The liberation I experienced at the university coincided with the trauma of being told: be careful, you are not like the others; in fact, you are worth less than they are; you are greedy, you are a stranger, you are unclean, you are dangerous, you are treacherous. Unconsciously, I reacted by intensifying my dedication to study. (Levi & Regge, 2012, p. 50-51).

Despite this situation, Levi admired the language of the chemistry program he attended: it was clear, precise, and “essential.” At the same time, he regarded it as a rewarding obligation to spend several hours a day in the laboratory, a space of socialization that fascinated him because of the hands-on work carried out there. Levi recognized and valued the need to enrich the human logos, the human capacity to reflect, speculate, and raise questions about reality—hence his interest in the two cultures, the scientific and the literary. For him, thinking was not only one of the greatest capacities available to human beings, but also the only way to prevent the reproduction of obscure and anti-civilizational ideologies. Unlike matter—which, although dynamic and constantly in motion, does not construct meaning about the world—human beings occupy a privileged position, but also bear the responsibility of diagnosing the reality in which they are situated, making use of their entire rational, cognitive, sensory, and cultural apparatus. According to Levi, “to discern or create a symmetry, to ‘put something in its proper place,’ is a mental adventure common to both the poet and the scientist” (Levi & Regge, 2012, pp. 38-39).

The scientific field thus presented itself as an opportunity to engage with concrete reality, far removed from the prejudices and passions that afflict—and often haunt—human subjectivity. To explore the complexity of matter, to experiment with it, to classify it, and to construct meaning where there had previously been only movements and (ir)regularities was not merely a form of professional fulfillment, but also of personal fulfillment. Levi admired the labor of the chemist and the skills developed in the laboratory, which appeared to be strictly technical, instrumental, and fragmented, operating through a “cold” relationship with phenomena, yet which also depended upon, demanded, and fostered the formation of the human being throughout that very process.:

Another virtue developed by the profession of chemistry is patience—the ability not to be in a hurry. Today, chemistry has changed completely; it has become fast chemistry. Today, the analysis of a mineral is no longer performed manually. It is carried out by machines and takes only a few minutes, whereas in the past it took weeks. Naturally, having to spend an entire week analyzing a mineral was inconvenient, but it made it possible to cultivate other virtues, namely perseverance, the ability not to become discouraged, and diligent application. [...] In the past, separating proteins was very demanding work. Of course, from a practical point of view, an analysis performed by a machine is more convenient. But manual analysis, like manual labor itself, has formative value; it is too closely connected to our origins as mammals to be disregarded. In the end, we must know how to use our hands, our eyes, and our nose. (Levi & Regge, 2012, p. 94-95).

A certain conception of positive human experience in relation to reality is thus affirmed: that of a “living” human being, a being who thinks and feels, who not only produces the meaning of things but also creates himself in the process. In understanding the world, he comes to understand himself more fully and, in doing so, becomes self-producing, takes hold of the reins of his own life, and does not remain subject to information and impositions originating from external forces. On the other hand, his experiences with natural science classes were not entirely positive during his education. According to Levi, they were grounded in a traditional model of teaching, based on a propedeutic conception of science that was strictly theoretical and offered little room for reflection, lacking any connection to its sociohistorical construction or even to practical activities through which the transformation of matter could be experienced. Ultimately, this constituted another way—more subtle, yet profoundly consequential—of obstructing thought:

As for my Natural Sciences teacher, for her Chemistry was a school textbook and nothing more. It was pages in a book. She had never touched a crystal or a solution in her life. It was knowledge passed on from teacher to teacher, without a single practical test. There were experiments in class, but they were always the same. My teachers were capable people, but they were entirely devoid of scientific training, despite having received some instruction. (Levi & Regge, 2012, p. 46).

These passages raise important questions regarding the category of the specialist and the notion of the scientist as an absolute authority on knowledge—an intellectual whose expertise is so profound that it places him on a distinct plane in relation to other people. Levi challenges the untouchable status often attributed to science and to the scientist through the tension between theoretical and practical work, intellectual labor and material labor—dichotomies that are often understood in a reductionist manner, even though both constitute essential dimensions of scientific practice and contribute to the formation of the human being as a thinking animal:

The specialization of the hand signifies the tool, and the tool signifies a specifically human activity: the transformative action of human beings upon nature, production. [...] Human beings were the only [animals] capable of leaving their mark upon nature, not only by relocating plants and animals, but also by modifying the appearance and climate of their environment, and even plants and animals themselves, to such an extent that the consequences of their activity could disappear only with the complete extinction of the Earth. [...] Yet, alongside the hand, the head developed step by step. (Engels, 2020, p. 53-54).

In this sense, beyond its contemporary function as a means of survival for the working class, human labor has always occupied a central place in the most critical sociological analyses. For Engels, labor is far more than a source of wealth; it is also—and above all—“the basic and fundamental condition of all human life. And to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labor created man himself” (Engels, 2013, p. 13). Karl Marx reinforces this understanding insofar as “by acting upon external nature and changing it through this movement, he simultaneously changes his own nature. He develops the powers slumbering within it and subjects the play of its forces to his own control” (Marx, 2013, p. 32).

In a time marked by the intense development of science and technology—whose benefits and burdens fall directly or indirectly upon society as a whole—it becomes necessary to mobilize critical theories capable of penetrating appearances, propaganda, and hegemonic ideologies that serve the interests of capital, while also contributing to overcoming the profound crises (social, environmental, cultural, ethical, civilizational, among others) that this system generates or, more fundamentally, upon which it depends.

The Soviet epistemologist Pavel Vasilyevich Kopnin helps us understand that “thought is the reflection of reality in the form of abstractions” (Kopnin, 1978, p. 121) and that it is a “fiction created by idealism” (p. 126) to believe that objective thought exists prior to and independently of humanity. In addition to asserting that “what a machine does is, naturally, not thought” (p. 134), Kopnin insists on the notion of “automatic thought”—a particularly relevant concept for the contemporary social context.

To deepen the discussion of the dichotomy between manual labor and intellectual labor, we draw upon the reflections of the German philosopher Alfred Sohn-Rethel (2001).

According to Della Torre (2024), Sohn-Rethel demonstrates “[…] how abstract thought derives from the commodity form, and how the development of money and science proceeds in parallel.” According to Sohn-Rethel (2001), “the division between intellectual labor and manual labor is found in all societies based on class division and economic exploitation” (p. 13, our translation), and the complexity of the relations established under capitalism makes it difficult to comprehend the totality that conditions our ways of life. Consequently, a theory capable of thoroughly examining this process and reflecting on the conditions for its possible overcoming becomes necessary. In formulating his contributions, Sohn-Rethel advances reflections in this direction.:

What are the social and economic implications of a technology that tends to absorb the worker's human labor? Does this technology reduce or increase the distance between intellectual labor and manual labor? Does it promote or hinder the socialist revolution? What relationship exists between the balance of capital's gains and losses and the balance between human beings and nature? From a class perspective, can technology be considered neutral? And what about science? (Sohn-Rethel, 2001, p. 11, tradução nossa).

According to Barros (2023), Sohn-Rethel was already questioning the supposed neutrality of science, “albeit through a different route.”:

He perceived that the process of abstraction does not take place from the inside outward—or, more precisely, from consciousness to reality—but rather from reality to consciousness. The abstract arises from the forms of sociability organized through the development of the market, and it is within these forms that the individuation of private consciousness takes place. Consciousness, born of this process, becomes, in fact, the empirical realization of the abstraction of labor. [...] Historical development is therefore marked by the separation between subjective activity and objective conditions. (Barros, 2023).

In Primo Levi, there is no postmodern conception of the world that dismisses the very idea of progress by associating it exclusively with violence and destruction. Rather, there is a realistic and lucid understanding of the paradoxes and contradictions of progress in the twentieth century. Reason, science, technique, and technology must contribute to the ongoing—and continually renewed—effort undertaken by every generation to develop rational and sensible social action in relation to the various forms of violence potentially intrinsic to both human beings and nature. Thus, it can be argued that at the foundation of Levi's understanding of reason and science lies their contribution to the formation of economic and political subjects, lucid individuals and responsible citizens capable of participating in the construction of humanity: a human community able to recognize and contain violence and irrationality, a community of free and equal human beings. If scientists and technocrats fail to contribute to the effort of humanizing both human beings and society, the destiny of humanity will be one of precarious existence, manifested through economic and political shocks and tensions that generate suffering and destruction.

In several of the reflections that Primo Levi developed on human dignity—including those found in the stories of Natural Histories—the social construction of the human being who does not think emerges as a problem within postwar democratic society.

Natural Histories and The Versifier

According to Marco Belpoliti (2015), the writing of The Truce—in which Levi recounts his liberation from Auschwitz and the complex journey back to Italy—took place simultaneously with the composition of the stories that would later form Natural Histories (Levi, 2022), published in 1966. The concurrent development of such distinct themes reveals the author's broad and insatiable curiosity, as well as his desire to understand the meaning and significance of things and beings, of the phenomena and materials that constitute nature, and of human action within culture and society. Later that same year, when asked about the reasons that had led him to write the imaginative and fictional Natural Histories after publishing two books devoted to the tragic reality of fascism and Nazism, Levi stated that

There is an intimate connection between my previous work and this latest book. In both, there is the human being reduced to slavery by a thing: the ‘Nazi thing,’ and the ‘thing,’ that is, the machine. The sleep of reason always produces monsters.” (Levi, 1997, as cited in Belpoliti, 2015, p. 211, our translation).

The chemist, the writer of testimony, and the author of science fiction and fantastic-realist stories all shared the same inexhaustible curiosity: a careful observation of things and of their effects upon nature and culture. All of these facets expressed the need to understand the potentialities inherent in the materiality of things, both the creative potential that enables human beings to act rationally and sensibly and the will to power that transforms human beings into slaves of the thing, producing vices and generating violence and brutality. In Levi's response, there is another element of fundamental importance for the destiny of humanity: the phrase “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” employed by Goya in the series Los Caprichos, serves as a permanent warning about the ever-renewed forms of irrationalism, brutality, and violence throughout history. Thus, in the writer who was composing the book that completed the tragic experience he had endured in the concentration camp, while simultaneously writing short stories about the “thing,” the machine that dominates its creator, there is always the same fundamental element: the daily exercise of human and critical reason, of a science that liberates human beings from indeterminacy and from nameless suffering caused by the force that resides within things.

In the stories that comprise Natural Histories, published under the pseudonym Damiano Malabaila, Levi employs “[…] the resources of the fantastic to imagine the aporetic and extreme consequences of human rationality, which, through a disturbing combination of scientific audacity and ethical unscrupulousness, is capable of producing ‘unimaginable’ results” (Basevi, 2015, p. 229). In Levi's work, scientific language is not merely a stylistic device, but rather the expression of the lived reality of a writer who was also a chemist and who therefore interpreted reality from that perspective (Menezes, 2019). In this regard, we understand that his work transforms literature into a “[…] device through which it becomes possible to carry out a critique of the forces that constitute the present” (Hilário, 2013, p. 201).

Science fiction as a genre also occupies an important place within the literature of science education, both because of the reflections it offers on possible didactic transpositions and because of the sociocultural reflections capable of generating formative processes. According to Piassi and Pietrocola (2009), most authors acknowledge the difficulty of establishing a precise definition of science fiction. Nevertheless, they conceive it “[…] not as a genre that bears any relation whatsoever to science, but rather as one that employs a scientific form of rationality to produce conjectures about reality” (p. 528). Thus, “it is not merely a matter of astonishment or estrangement before the unusual, as occurs in horror or fantasy stories, but rather an estrangement that compels one to think of the unusual as a plausible and logical conjecture, applicable to the world beyond fiction” (Piassi & Pietrocola, 2009, p. 528). It is from this perspective that we approach Primo Levi's fictional stories—also referred to as fantabiological narratives.

With specific regard to the short story examined in the present article, a search conducted on the SciELO platform using the terms “versificador” and “versificatore” yielded only two articles in the Brazilian context. According to Menezes (2019), the literary metaphors found in Natural Histories present “[…] languages and techniques as carefully constructed allegories in the service of power, domination, and the destruction of the other” (p. 2). Pereira and Paula (2022), in turn, conducted a detailed analysis of The Versifier, highlighting “[…] issues related to authorship, meaning, and the function of poetry when the fictional hypothesis is entertained that a verse-producing automaton might replace the creative activity of human poets” (p. 12). According to these authors,

Unlike the formal hybridity of his testimonial works, Levi’s genre is relatively easy to define: these are short science fiction narratives that explore the fantastic, the nonsensical, and the uncanny, exposing the disorientation of modern human beings in a world increasingly dominated by technology and bureaucracy. (Pereira & Paula, 2022).

It may be said that Primo Levi's life was marked by a constant effort of thought to confront the complexity of the matter that exists within things and beings, to dare to think (Sapere Aude—the most essential principle of human reason, understood by Immanuel Kant as empirical, experimental, logical, historical, and critical), to decompose matter in order to observe and reflect upon its immanent elements, to experiment, and to name what previously existed as an indeterminate and incomprehensible thing. The human labor present throughout Levi's life and work may be understood as the virtuous labor described by Galileo Galilei in The Assayer: labor that can be undertaken by every human being (as Heraclitus stated, “Thinking is common to all”), labor born from the human desire to understand the universe, enabling human beings to understand themselves, and growing through the power of human reason to question the forms and movements of the stars and to reveal the forces that drive them. It is possible to exist and live without such motivations; however, without reason, human beings wander aimlessly within a “dark labyrinth” (Galilei, 1999).

Having made these considerations, the present study presents itself as an attempt to explore another “gray zone” within Levi's writings and his fantascienza (science fiction) stories, particularly The Versifier. In this story, Levi exposes several problems related to the value of science in modernity: on the one hand, instrumental rationality and “inverted science,” which diminish human potential and transfer value and virtue to technology and machines; on the other hand, the human being who creates science, confronts matter in order to understand it, and seeks to create new, more conscious, rational, and sensible ways of being in the world.

METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS

This qualitative study seeks to understand the complexity of the phenomena under investigation within selected contexts (Santana et al., 2023). Taking Primo Levi’s short story as its primary source material, the analysis is organized according to the theoretical frameworks adopted in this study. Qualitative research addresses dynamic and socially constructed variables that shape the development of the investigation in different ways:

It is not a matter of assembling a puzzle whose final form is known in advance. Rather, one is constructing a picture that gradually takes shape as its pieces are collected and examined. The process of data analysis is like a funnel: things are open at the beginning (or at the top) and become progressively more focused and specific toward the end. The qualitative researcher plans to use part of the study to determine which questions are most important. They do not assume that enough is already known to identify the important questions before conducting the investigation.” (Bogdan & Biklen, 1994, p. 50).

The search for the meaning and significance of reason, science, technique, and technology in Primo Levi's work is deeply connected to the processes of dehumanization and the tragedies produced by fascism and Nazism. Thus, on the one hand, we seek to conduct a study concerned with understanding the historical development of these phenomena, their determining conditions, and their social consequences. On the other hand, we aim to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Levi's observations and analyses, developed between 1945 and 1987, a period marked by continuous reflection on the various human tragedies that fascism and Nazism inflicted upon human beings, individuals, social groups, and entire peoples.

Although all the stories in Natural Histories are fictional creations centered on ethical dilemmas related to technological advancement in society, we chose to analyze The Versifier because of its strong connection to contemporary controversies surrounding the advancement of artificial intelligence in human creative activities, particularly in the sphere of intellectual labor.

In this story, the Versifier is a machine that produces verses from a set of keywords entered into its program—a remarkably contemporary and visionary premise for a story written in the 1960s. The plot develops around the implications of this machine for the intellectual work of an overburdened poet. Initially introduced as an auxiliary tool, the machine gradually assumes an increasingly prominent role in intellectual production, while the human being progressively loses the capacity to be virtuous, creative, self-aware, and responsible both for oneself and for the destiny of society. Whether through a conception of life reduced to function and utility, or through the effects of a life dulled by consumerism and hedonism—phenomena already visible in the United States during the 1960s—Levi understood that the commercial poet's way of life ultimately consisted in not thinking for himself. In the arguments of Mr. Simpson, the same character whom Levi portrayed as a “seller of illusions” (Levi, 2016b, p. 637), we can observe the force of technical and instrumental reason: a form of reason oriented toward winning, gaining, obtaining, and possessing; one that seeks to align means and ends with perfect efficiency and is capable of calculating the relationship between costs and benefits with precision, yet is unable to comprehend moral and ethical questions, the value and direction of social action in reality, or even its impacts upon nature, culture, and society.

This study is devoted to understanding the historical dimensions of the elements present in the story, as well as their determining conditions and unfolding consequences. We adopt a dialectical perspective, a mode of thought that relinquishes any claim to apparent categorical superiority and seeks instead to understand the phenomenon from the standpoint of its particular expression within a complex whole, respecting what the object itself reveals (Adorno, 1998). In this sense, the construction of data through the study of the material was guided by the identification of contributions that the fictional narrative may offer to a reflection on contemporary society, such that,

Although some characters, institutions, and events do not belong to the present context, this does not mean that they are confined to oblivion. On the contrary, they remain present in some way within each of us, in our actions and in our production of knowledge, for we are inevitably engaged with and proceed from what has previously been produced. (Pimentel, 2001, pp. 191-192).

The construction of the analytical categories sought to respect both the meanings of the story as a whole and the particularities expressed in the relationship between technoscience and society. Accordingly, we carried out a process of data construction that converges with the procedures commonly associated with categorization in qualitative research: a comprehensive reading of the material in order to identify its main components, taking into account the characters and the narrative developed; the identification of units of meaning, highlighting passages that express the central themes and tensions of the story; and, finally, the reorganization and interpretation of these units of meaning, which were grouped into four analytical categories:

1. The Structure and Poetic Freedom of the Chemist-Writer: In this category, we identify the characters, narrative structure, and central theme of the story, namely, a poet who finds in the Versifier a means of alleviating the burden of his intellectual labor;

2. Contemporary Demands of the World of Work: This category addresses some of the dilemmas surrounding the category of labor in contemporary society;

3. The Influence of Technology on the Organization and Ways of Life of Society: Here, we highlight the inversion of roles between a tool that gradually becomes humanized throughout the narrative and a worker who progressively undergoes a process of dehumanization;

4. Between the Neutral Tool and Surrender to Omnipresent Automatism: In this category, we reflect on how the continuous insertion and appropriation (both conscious and unconscious) of technology alters our perception of what is considered “normal” and calls for critical perspectives on its appropriation within education.

RESULTADOS E ANÁLISES

“Nature loves to hide.”

(Heraclitus)

With regard to (i) the Structure and Poetic Freedom of the Chemist-Writer, the story contains an initial section entitled “Characters,” in which the five participants in the plot are introduced. The poet, the story's main character, sells his intellectual labor by producing texts for clients with the assistance of his secretary (the second character). Mr. Simpson, a traveling salesman who also appears in other stories, sells the poet a machine capable of producing verses—the Versifier. Finally, there is Giovanni, Mr. Simpson's assistant, whose role is limited to helping transport and activate the machine before promptly returning to the office.

More generally, regardless of literary genre, Levi's works convey the sense that “[…] the offense and annihilation of the human being cannot be fully expressed through language” (Moraes, 2013, p. 92), a narrative effort that continues a philosophical tradition of attempting to articulate what cannot be articulated, what resists expression (Duarte, 2008). Within this context, the imaginative and fictional text becomes meaningful, for it allows not only the re-elaboration of what already exists in the world, but also an opening toward other possibilities of life, worldhood, and existence.

In the second section, entitled “Prologue,” the reader encounters the central theme of the story for the first time. The poet and the secretary are engaged in an ordinary conversation about the Versifier—which has not yet been introduced to the reader. During their exchange, the secretary informs the poet that he has several texts to produce, and the conversation continues:

POET: Nothing much; we'll finish everything before the afternoon is over. Have you turned on the Versifier?

SECRETARY: Yes, it's already warmed up. (A faint humming sound.) We can begin immediately.

POET: If it weren't for it... And to think you were against it! Do you remember, two years ago, all that effort, all that exhausting work? (Levi, 2005, p. 37).

We encounter an everyday situation in which the poet and the secretary speak naturally about the efficiency and speed that the Versifier brings to their work. This conversation takes place in the reader's narrative present, whereas the story itself unfolds as a recollection of events that occurred two years earlier and that ultimately lead to the dialogue presented above. At first glance, this narrative strategy may disrupt the reader's critical expectations or even generate a degree of frustration, since the outcome of the story appears to be established in advance: the incorporation and celebration of technology.

The episode also reveals a style of writing that evokes dramatic literature. A narrator provides context for the interactions, each line of dialogue is identified by the name of the character who speaks it, and parenthetical stage directions are used to indicate qualities and intensities of communication within the scene. The third section, entitled “The Versifier,” then shifts the action to a point two years earlier:

POET (speaking to himself, weary and pressed for time): Ah! It never ends. What a burden! Never a moment of genuine inspiration. (Levi, 2005, p. 37).

This passage expresses a line of thought that permeates the entire story and the plot that unfolds thereafter: (ii) the contemporary demands of the world of work, which also weigh upon intellectual labor. Although, in Western capitalism, labor often presents itself as a form of profound alienation, demanding ever more from both the bodies and minds of workers, it nevertheless retains a dimension through which workers constitute themselves and through which human culture is realized in its transformative relationship with nature. It is in the materialization of both his work as a poet and of himself as a human being that the protagonist struggles to balance the free exercise of creativity with an exhausting profession that demands specific themes and prescribed formats. It is a form of creation that is autonomous, yet not entirely free:

POET: Enough! Throw it all away. I've had enough of this dirty work. I'm a poet—a prize-winning poet—not a hack. I'm no minstrel. To hell with the marquis, the funeral ode, the victory ode, the lament, and Sigismund. I'm not a versifier. (Levi, 2005, p. 38).

Feeling deeply exhausted by the harsh demands of work, the poet laments the fact that he himself is not a versifier—a programmed and automated machine. What emerges here is an inversion of the relationship between human beings and technology: those qualities that might distinguish human beings from the rigidity of machines—creativity, emotions, affections, and self-awareness—appear not as strengths, but as burdens, sources of regret, and signs of human inadequacy when compared to the cold and constant productivity offered by technology.

The poet is then questioned by his secretary about his intention to purchase the machine: “One cannot afford to be left behind; it is perfectly understandable. We must keep up with the times. I do not like it either, I assure you, but at a certain point it becomes necessary to make a decision” (Levi, 2005, p. 39). The poet's response reveals the predominance of a view that naturalizes scientific and technological progress: a continuous advance of science and technique that cannot be questioned, that always moves forward—toward the future and toward what is presumed to be better.

In the story, we observe a focus on the immediate relationship between human beings and technology, displacing technological artifacts from the broader structures of power in which they are embedded and treating the machine as merely another instrument to be employed and manipulated for a particular purpose. Such a perspective is consistent with that of Kopnin (1978):

[…] the correct approach is not to ask whether a machine thinks, nor to seek what distinguishes machine thought from human thought, but rather to pose the question of how the machine assists human beings in thinking, and how it replaces human beings and their actions within the process of thought. (p. 135)

[…] Without the conditions provided by a developed civilization, and by mature science and technology, thought is furnished with instruments that directly assist human beings in thinking and in reflecting upon the object. (p. 137).

Kopnin (1978), even when outlining the differences between the primitive human stone axe and the modern complex electronic computer, ultimately shifts the focus toward their affinities, since “both are instruments of human labor; in every case, human beings use the physical and mechanical properties of objects as instruments of their activity” (p. 137). Western society appears to have reached a point at which everything can be questioned under the scrutiny of reason—or of multiple forms of reason—except for the unstoppable force of progress, to which humanity is expected to adapt. This is a theme developed by Walter Benjamin and his readers, since “[...] if the idea of progress is unsustainable, it is mainly because it is inseparable from the idea of chronological time as the matrix of a meaningful process” (Kracauer, 1995 apud Machado, 2010, p. 7).

In a sense, the prophetic character of Kopnin’s materialist and dialectical perspective seems particularly adequate to contexts of non-digital technologies; however, it requires substantial updating in light of the recent rise of generative AIs, whose complexities and contradictions already appear in The Versifier, even if in a prototypical and analogical form.

Beyond the discussion of a more intrinsic relationship between intellectual labor and material labor, we also observe in the story (iii) the influence of technology on the organization and ways of life of society across different historical periods. Depending on the historical conjuncture, technological progress—which could serve as a mediator of a more emancipatory relationship between human beings and their work—ends up producing a relationship of subordination of human beings to technoscience, both objectively and subjectively.

The poet’s intellectual formation does not prevent him from recognizing the significant potential of acquiring the Versifier as a way of making his productive process more efficient, particularly for more mechanical tasks. “It is an instrument of labor like any other, such as the telephone or the mimeograph. In our work the human factor is, and will always be, indispensable, but we have competitors, and therefore we must entrust machines with the most thankless and exhausting tasks” (Levi, 2005, p. 39). Here, the reader encounters a mistaken perspective of technological neutrality, devoid of political or ideological dimensions, in which its positive or negative reception would depend solely on the way it is used by those who operate the process (Santos & Carvalho, 2020). In this case, it is from the secretary’s perspective—generally associated with technical, organizational, and administrative labor—that reservations emerge regarding the non-neutrality of the machine and, consequently, strong criticism of its acquisition:

SECRETARY (hesitant, increasingly moved): Master… I… I have worked with you for fifteen years… forgive me for saying this, but… in your place I would not do this. I am not speaking for myself, you know: but a poet, an artist like you… how can you resign yourself to bringing home a machine… modern, I agree, but still a machine… how could it possibly have your taste, your sensibility… […]

SECRETARY (deeply moved): […] I know my craft. We shall see whether that other thing, that… that object, will be able to do the same! (Levi, 2005, pp. 39-40).

“That other thing” is a highly emblematic expression in this context. In general, it is common to refer to machinery as “that” or “that thing,” attributing to it a thing-like status, that of an object distinct from the subject. However, when advanced technology leaves its position of passivity—of mere reproduction, of executing orders through strictly defined commands—and begins to occupy a position of meaning production and invention, a subtle but important shift takes place: from inert object, technology moves into another category, that of the producing object. The expression “that other thing” carries within it the secretary’s recognition of an epistemological transformation, in which technology begins to be acknowledged as an agent in the world. The term “that” reflects this recognition of active agency; however, the term “thing” expresses a negative characterization that acknowledges the movement of technological reality, while still maintaining a strong suspicion toward this recognition—thus giving the passage a tone of humor and irony.

In this context, we may interpret that if, for Marx, alienation occurred in the relationship between the worker and the product, in the sense that “[…] the greater the product, the more diminished the worker becomes” (Horkheimer, 2002, p. 112), then regarding technology, insofar as its use becomes more intensified in the productive sphere, it seems that “[…] the machine has expelled the machinist; it is running blindly in space” (p. 133).

The entire work of Primo Levi addresses issues such as comprehension; the human capacity to think and to endow matter with meaning and significance; human dignity and its absence; violence and injustice; the meaning and significance of fascism and Nazism; and the concentration and extermination camps. In 1955, Primo Levi wrote the important article Deportati. Anniversario, in which he reflected on: (1) the sadness he felt in observing that, ten years after the liberation of Auschwitz, silence prevailed and the risk of forgetting the extermination camps remained high; (2) the imperative need to reflect on what the world would have been like had Nazism been victorious in the Second World War—that is, the spread across “entire continents” of the total power of domination and exploitation, with human beings reduced to slavery and extermination of unproductive workers and “inferior races”; and (3) technology and “inverted science,” the most important problem raised in the article:

We are the children of that Europe where Auschwitz is located: we live in the century in which science was inverted and gave birth to racial codes and gas chambers. Who can say that they are immune to infection? (Levi, 1997 apud Belpoliti, 2015, p. 211, translation ours).

“The ‘inverted science’ does not educate human beings so that they may know and understand themselves, become humanized, and establish rational and sensible social relations. Rather, it is a manifestation of the will to power that seeks to understand in order to dominate, exploit, subjugate, control, and determine what is or is not productive, effective, efficient, and profitable. For Levi, ‘inverted science’ is incapable of addressing the fundamental question of meaning in the course of human action in the world: what is the value that drives human action and toward what end, if human action is rational and sensible (just, correct, moral), and whether we are able to understand who we are (and therefore where we come from) and where we are going, whether we are contributing to the construction of a human community emancipated from fears and necessities. ‘Inverted science’ may generate power manifested in various techniques and multiple technologies capable of enhancing the capacities of human action in the world (and beyond it, in the realm of the universe that is within our technological reach), but it is not capable of thinking and contributing to the resolution of the question of meaning, morality, and human emancipation.

We find in Levi’s work different passages that refer to the status of technology in its relationship with human beings and the world. The author is known for his non-dichotomous position on the subject, acknowledging the empowering leaps of technology in human history, but never engaging in an uncritical, utilitarian, and unproblematic endorsement. In the book La Ricerca delle Radici, when analyzing Roger Vercel’s book L’avventura tecnologica, Levi notes that

This is a current topic, yet strangely little explored: the human adventure in the world of technology. Perhaps today’s human beings consider adventure, the Conradian “testing of oneself,” to be superfluous? If so, it would be an alarming sign. This book shows, however, that adventure is still present, and not at its antipodes; that human beings can prove themselves courageous and ingenious even in peaceful undertakings; that the human-machine relationship is not necessarily alienating and, in fact, may enrich or integrate the old human-nature relationship (Levi, 2018a, p. 111, translation ours).

On the other hand, Levi also does not endorse a vehement rejection of technology, as is suggested in the essay Thirty Hours on the Castoro Sei, from The Other’s Craft: “the history of technology shows how, in the face of new problems, scientific culture and precision are necessary, but insufficient” (Levi, 2016a, p. 92).

From this reflection arises the final analytical category, which considers the subtle—but profound—transition between (iv) the neutral tool and surrender to ubiquitous automatism. The aim is to identify, in the short story, possibilities for reflecting on how the continuous insertion and appropriation (both conscious and unconscious) of technology alters our perception of “normality,” leaving potentially irreversible traces on our understanding of what it means to be a human being.

At first, when presenting the machine, Mr. Simpson warns that the Versifier “is not a poet,” since it “has less freedom: it has less imagination, let us say. But it is sufficient for routine work” (Levi, 2005, pp. 33-34). The machine’s operation is described as highly intuitive, and Mr. Simpson reassures the poet by saying that “all new machines give that impression. […] Look, you just have to insert the ‘instructions’ here: there are only four lines. The first for the subject, the second for the registers, the third for the metrical form, the fourth (which is optional) for the temporal determination. The rest is done by it: it is wonderful!” (Levi, 2005, p. 43).

POET: And if I damage it?

SIMPSON: Don’t worry. It is very resistant, foolproof, as the American brochure says: “proof against fools”… (embarrassed: he realizes the gaffe) no offense, you understand me. There is even a locking mechanism in case of misuse. (Levi, 2005, p. 42).

It is in laughter in the face of an anguishing situation that humanity reflects on the fear of its own insignificance. In this case, Mr. Simpson’s slip of the tongue expresses what all technologies seem to suggest to human beings: that the inversion between subject and object has already taken place, and that machines are now “proof against fools.” However, reality is more complex than this. The various attempts to use the Versifier gradually earn the poet’s trust: “It is not bad, believe me: I know several colleagues who would not do better. […] Not brilliant, but marketable. More than enough for practical purposes” (Levi, 2005, p. 44). At this point, beyond being an inert object, technology presents itself as a producer of things, displaying the capacity to weigh and shape the verses it generates. “Did you see how it recovered in the final couplet, when it freed itself from the traps? Human, no more and no less,” the poet exclaimed (Levi, 2005, p. 46). A strong claim, but one that is soon reinforced by Mr. Simpson, who explains that all devices are pre-programmed to know the names of all their components, “[...] so that, in case of malfunction, they may directly request the replacement of the defective part” (Levi, 2005, p. 49). In short, a device in which programming and reasoning, algorithm and self-consciousness become indistinguishable—a humanized machine.

For Levi, the influence of technology is not restricted to its immediate technical use as an instrument for solving problems, but profoundly affects the human cultural sphere, breaking down the wall that separates the two cultures—scientific and literary—as he argues in the essay Le parole esportate:

The irruption of Italian into our technological language is a strictly similar phenomenon: it is not in itself a disease, it is merely a symptom, but it is the symptom of a serious ailment: today’s technology is born and develops elsewhere; the lack of creativity in our language signals the low creative level of our technology. This highlights that, in this field, Italy is being “acculturated,” and not merely linguistically so (Levi, 2016b, p. 1410, translation ours).

At the end of the short story, the poet produces a final creation with the machine:

VERSIFIER (warm and inspired voice; then increasingly agitated and anxious):
I love to retrace these ancient
fresh walks, over uneven flagstones
pregnant in autumn with the scent of figs
and moss embedded in these orchards.
I follow the blind paths of lizards,
I follow the secret passage of cats,
I tread traces of distant facts,
of dim gestures and senseless acts,
of monks, devotees, undaunted
and I am brought to mind, caricatured,
memories of brief encounters
with heretics and courteous scholars
Two ligaments have been erased
We are stuck on the rhyme in “-acts”
and we turn into fools
Mr. Simpson, hasten to the battles
Handle the appropriate instruments
Modify the indicated ligaments
Eight thousand six hundred and ten sixteenths
Carry out the repair. Many thanks.
(Levi, 2005, pp. 50-51).

In this case, amid technical difficulties, the machine altered the course of the poem and issued instructions to its owner on how it could be repaired, resorting to creative and unexpected verbal and grammatical constructions. “A link… poetic!” the poet exclaimed. “If this is not poetry, what is?” (Levi, 2005, p. 51), added Mr. Simpson. Such an event caused such astonishment that, regardless of the technical problems that had occurred, it dispelled any remaining doubts the poet had about his acquisition. Thus, the technological prophecy came true: the machine not only created but also thought, deliberated, and produced poetry.

Finally, after recounting the story of the acquisition of the device, the final paragraph of the short story brings us back to the present time:

POET (to the audience): I have owned the Versifier for more than two years. I cannot say that I have yet amortized the investment, but it has become indispensable. It has proven to be highly versatile: in addition to taking over much of my work as a poet, it handles accounting and payments, informs me about deadlines, and keeps my correspondence up to date. I taught it to compose in prose, and now it performs very well in that regard. The text you have just heard, for example, is its work. (Levi, 2005, p. 53).

This ending proves to be surprising and returns to the first analytical category regarding the structure of the short story: the Versifier itself turns out to have been the writer of the entire narrative. This movement closes two cycles that deserve attention: the first, a temporal cycle, in which readers become aware of the closure of the past story and are brought back to the present time; the second, related to the controversies surrounding the Versifier’s “automatic thinking,” which displaces the narrator from the center of the story and positions the machine as the protagonist of the entire narrative. The machine, which at first would merely assist in tedious and repetitive tasks, ultimately comes to dominate the entirety of the poet’s profession—producing even self-praise. This closes a cycle of reflections on the different layers of critique developed thus far: is the machine in our society truly just another instrument of labor like any other? What remains of human labor when we consider digital technologies, the dominance of platforms and algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence systems? Can we trust human memory to be governed by technology, given how little knowledge and control we have over its capacity for production?

These reflections become increasingly pertinent and necessary as digital and generative technologies invade all spheres of social relations, including education. While recognizing and legitimizing a certain inevitability in the presence of these tools, many governmental guidelines have regulated the incorporation of AI into educational processes in basic and higher education. Beyond acknowledging the possible contributions arising from this assimilation, it is clear that this is not the main driving force behind the existence of these technologies. Through its paradoxes and contradictions, Levi’s short story allows us to emphasize that the supposed naturalness of incorporating technological elements in the name of “new times” and “innovation” is merely a reflection of neoliberal capitalism, which offers us as choice what it imposes as a hegemonic way of life. Thus, presented as a form of resistance to the pressures of a dynamic, high-speed information society, Artificial Intelligence becomes an almost unavoidable escape valve—at the cost of rendering autonomous thought nearly unnecessary.

The field of Science Education already includes important editorials highlighting the challenges and limits of AI, which either reduce us to an algorithm or allow us to recognize our humanity (Erduran, 2026), as well as emphasizing the risks associated with the use of Generative AI, calling for a critical stance toward its use in academic production, “recognizing its complex, intricate nature and the lack of research production in the field of science education” (Azevedo and Santos, 2025, p. 1).

Thus, in this article we argue that the currently predominant discourse of identifying the “pros and cons” of AI in education and in society as a whole, although reasonable, represents a limited and under-problematized way of framing the issue. This discourse establishes a false equivalence between technology as individual use (retail level) and technology as a central element in the production and reproduction of the socioeconomic system (wholesale level). Beyond and despite all dialectical perspectives that shape human material and symbolic relations with nature and things, many of the concrete meanings of these relations are produced externally—what we may understand as the sociocultural context, institutionalized relations, and social relations heavily mediated by the economic character of society—in opposition to self-realization toward a more dignified, just, and egalitarian life. This complex social field of multiple yet uneven determinations leads us to the necessity of understanding that,

The world becomes a world for the realization of the market, and the subject becomes capital itself; an automatic, tautological subject that regulates all alterity on the basis of its own self-referentiality. The inversion of the relationship between things that become humanized and humans that become reified characterizes the very social reality organized around the necessity of value realization. […] Intellectual labor, which becomes dissociated from manual labor, is only one of the contradictions that drives the process in which the metaphysical subtleties of the commodity govern the general unconscious. (Barros, 2023).

On January 20, 1974, in the essay Tecnografi e tecnocrati, a one-page entry published in the newspaper Corriere della Sera, Levi referred to the (already at that time) energy crisis, which “brings into sharp relief some absurd and gross errors of technological society” (Levi, 2016b, p. 1368, translation ours). For him, the scenario of technological advancement brought with it a degree of calamity that converges so closely with science fiction narratives that he could state that “we were wrong in inventing titanic and tragically glorious catastrophes.” However, the author continues,

Today we have not yet reached the end, but we can already see its possibility, and it is a narrow, sordid, and prosaic end, like a commercial failure. All that remains for us technographic prophets is to make peace; our teachers, the technocrats of all countries, are left with the urgent task of slowing their mad rush toward immediate profit and of using the colossal wealth of knowledge accumulated in recent decades to give humanity a less precarious and less painful destiny (Levi, 2016b, p. 1368, translation ours).

In the current framework of contemporary capitalism, in which science and technology are incorporated as an integral part of the production system, the relationship with technological instruments is increasingly less oriented toward a reflective use aimed at human emancipation. In this way, all dimensions of contemporary urban life are mediated by digital platforms shaped by the interests of large private companies operating transnationally, which increasingly extend their logics into the educational field—such as the intense movement toward the platformization of basic education in some Brazilian states, for example São Paulo. There is a hegemonic political and economic project that must be critically addressed so that we may release the human potentials embedded in technologies that, to a large extent, operate toward the deepening of the precarization of human labor:

“Thinking” machines will invade the most diverse fields of human intellectual activity, but they will remain merely the material means of this theoretical activity. Human beings will transfer to machines an ever-increasing number of functions they perform in the process of thinking, reserving for themselves a single function: thinking itself as a means of representing reality through abstractions. They will develop this latter function by making use of all means, including so-called thinking machines. (Kopnin, 1978, p. 140)

Despite the immanent emancipatory potential of technology, the world in which we live has been rapidly leading us in the opposite direction: toward the capitulation of thought in favor of practical life—life that is entirely conditioned by the uncritical appropriation of technologies presented as efficient solutions for increasing labor productivity, without altering the qualitative conditions of workers’ lives. As Adorno and Horkheimer (1985) argue, “[…] the more the process of self-preservation is secured by the bourgeois division of labor, the more it forces the self-alienation of individuals, who must shape themselves in body and soul according to the technical apparatus” (p. 36).

It is important that reflection on science and science education be carried out in light of the major transformations that have taken place in capitalist society since the last decades of the twentieth century, which have generated economic and social deregulation and are producing extremely severe and complex crises. The complexity of social, economic, political, environmental, and more recently sanitary crises gives rise to the need for strong links between technical reason and moral reason, between instrumental rationality and value rationality. We argue that in the life and work of Primo Levi there are emotive and cognitive elements that may contribute to the urgent task of reflecting on the meaning of reason and science in human life, on the relations between human beings and nature, and on the relations between human beings and culture, history, and society.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Although Natural Histories, by Primo Levi, was first published in book form in 1966, we suggest that the work—especially the short story “The Versifier”—may contribute to a science education concerned with the scientific, technological, social, human, and environmental dimensions of society.

A first reading of the short story may lead to a humorous reflection on the Versifier’s ingenuity, while also opening pathways for us to reflect on the role of technoscience in our technological society. Thus, although the article does not explicitly detail how the short story could be effectively incorporated into educational processes, there is room for reflection on the need to construct reasonable environments of deliberation regarding the place of technologies in contemporary society and the possible ways of mobilizing the convergences of these elements with science education and the education of science teachers.

For Levi, a fundamental element of the Nazi project was the construction of a new “race,” formed by the various conquered peoples and transformed into slaves. In the New Order created by Nazism, the new “race” was to be composed of a human being “in whose gaze not the slightest thought could be read” (Levi, 1988, p. 91). The human being who increasingly delegates the capacity to think and act to machines—ever more sophisticated and complex; who renounces complex thought in exchange for induced suggestions; who is unable to orient themselves either through historical, cultural, scientific, or political knowledge—would such a human being not be experiencing a return to the “obscure labyrinth” of the pre-modern era, even if it is a hyper-technological labyrinth? Goya’s phrase, “the sleep of reason produces monsters,” can be updated in the form suggested by philosopher Paolo Ercolani (2019, p. 15) in his diagnosis of our time: “monsters produce the sleep of reason.” The monsters that exist in contemporary society are boundless powers capable of disinforming, manipulating, mobilizing, and colonizing both consciousness and the unconscious, as well as human passions and drives.

Drawing on the theoretical frameworks mobilized to interpret both reality and Levi’s short story, we argue for the profound unfeasibility of insisting on the increased presence of technologies in educational experiences, at least in hierarchical and bureaucratically imposed terms, as has often been the case. Despite discourses of possibility, the scenarios for a freer, more just, and emancipated humanity within education remain limited. Levi’s writings are important sources of provocation and reflection on this complexity, as they do not shy away from questioning the anticivilizational implications of the indiscriminate advancement of science and technology. His texts allow us to envision new horizons in which human reason does not succumb to the hegemonic automatism to which it is massively and permanently subjected.

In opposition to an increasingly bureaucratized and technicist form of education, governed by the corporate logic of competencies, skills, and performance indicators, we highlight the potential of fictional short stories in fostering a critical stance toward technology, rather than merely a pragmatic one. We thus propose a science education centered on ethical and moral reflection regarding the relationship between human beings and machines, rather than on uncritical utilitarianism in the face of the relentless logic of progress. The Versifier materializes and anticipates an existential condition of humanity in times of generative AI, in which each technological innovation promotes a way of life where human beings merely function and perform tasks, but are unable to exist: they act and think only through criteria of productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness, becoming increasingly disoriented and incapable of knowing themselves, others, culture, history, society, and the world.

The reflections presented here aim to indicate formative potentials that encourage the reading of narrative, historical, fictional, and fantastic short stories as a possible and necessary interface between art, literature, and science education. Science education, beyond the teaching of concepts, also forms citizens capable of better understanding the world in which they live: not only the natural world, but also the full complexity that science and technology bring to twenty-first-century societies. In this regard, we find in Primo Levi elements that allow for a discussion of the awakening of reason and of the human being from a state of sleep and apathy regarding the directions of democracy, as well as the irresponsibility and boundless hedonism driven by technologies; human existence reduced to purely technical labor; and the exclusion of human beings from intellectual and moral reflection on their own lives and society.

Future work may draw on Primo Levi to develop theoretical-methodological elements that contribute to reflecting on still-possible formative meanings—of denunciation and annunciation—in a society highly permeated by technology.

The appropriation of technologies in the educational field, which appears to us as inevitable, must always be accompanied by a process of self-reflection that takes into account their creation and use in favor of profit and systemic efficiency, the proletarianization of teaching, the hollowing out of scientific knowledge, and the reduction of intellectual reflection to technicist elements of the world of labor.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi (Turin, Italy), the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), and the São Paulo State University (Unesp), Araraquara campus, as well as the Graduate Program in Social Sciences of the latter institution.

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¹

There has been a recent incorporation of this theme into the latest National Meeting on Research in Science Education (ENPEC), held in 2025. In this case, the thematic strand “Science Education, Culture, Art, and Technologies” was explicitly established as a research area within the field. The thematic strands of ENPEC 2025 can be accessed through the following link: https://eventos.idvn.com.br/enpec2025/linhas_tematicas.

Data availability

No research data were used.

Funding:

The research did not receive funding.

Supported by

CECIMIG thanks CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) and FAPEMIG (Foundation for Research Support of the State of Minas Gerais) for funding the publication of this article.

Correspondence

E-mail: [e-mail]

Correspondence

E-mail: [e-mail]

Correspondence

Contact: Center for Science and Mathematics Education of Minas Gerais - CECIMIG, School of Education - Federal University of Minas Gerais, [e-mail]

Responsible Editor

Guilherme Lima

Declaration of conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest in the publication of this manuscript.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  10 Aug 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  17 July 2025
• Accepted
  12 May 2026