Group Members took part in the St. Petersburg State University International Conference
On March 22-23, the International Conference of St. Petersburg State University «Art on the Border with Science, Science on the Border with Art in Russian Culture of XVIII-XX Centuries» took place.
On the first day of the conference, Ilona Svetlikova, Maria Fesenko, and Nikita Kalinovsky made a presentation titled «“Fatuous Knowledge of Antiquity” and the “New Science”: A Commentary to V. V. Rozanov». On the second day, Varvara Kukushkin, Ilona Svetlikova, and Pavel Yushin presented a paper on the «Fear of Stars in the Early Twentieth Century: the Scientific Contexts of the “Star Horror”».
The first paper «“Fatuous Knowledge of Antiquity” and the “New Science”: A Commentary to V. V. Rozanov» was devoted to the relationship between astronomy, astrology, and positivism in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Starting from an obscure fragment of Rozanov's «Apocalypse of Our Time» (1918), speakers highlighted two aspects of this relationship. One was related to the role that astronomical knowledge played within positivism: according to Auguste Comte, it was in astronomy that the transition to the most advanced, “positive” stage of human development began. Astronomy also best embodied the ability for «rational foresight» that Comte regarded as one of the chief criteria of scientificity. Therefore, at the turn of the century, astronomy could be looked upon as the expression of a positivist spirit, and positivism as a doctrine was thought to be realized most fully in astronomy. The second aspect was connected to the peculiar convergence of astronomy and astrology that appears in Rozanov's text. This convergence goes back to Comte himself, who believed that astrology contributed to the gradual implementation of the idea of scientific law and the abandonment of the notion of the power of individual will. In addition, positivism was often directly compared with astrology. One finds such comparison in works of historian Friedrich von Bezold and orientalist Otto Franke: in both cases, the starting point was that astrology and positivism explain historical events by the action of certain natural laws.
The second paper «Fear of Stars in the Early Twentieth Century: the Scientific Contexts of the “Star Horror”» was built upon two texts by Andrei Bely that depict a peculiar variety of rejection of modern cosmology. The fear before stars and monkeys described in «The Sphinx» (1905) was considered in the context of the relationship between astronomy and the Darwinian theory of evolution. A tendency, characteristic of the second half of the 19th century, to transfer evolutionary ideas into the domain of astronomy contributed to the destruction of the image of the stationary and unchanging universe and found a fitting emblem in the «struggle for existence in the heavens» formula. Several fragments from Bely’s «Second Symphony (Dramatical)» (1902) were used to further clarify intellectual motivations for contemporary fear of stars. In addition to traditional apocalyptic expectations, the context of the expression “star horror” included psychiatric sources that analyzed phobias and morbid fears. «Astraphobia», first described by the American physician George Beard as a symptom of neurasthenia, underwent a curious reinterpretation over time: fear of lightning turned into fear of celestial phenomena in general.