Group Members Discussed A Synopsis of Pavel Yushin’s Research Project

On May 28, another session of the research seminar «Magic, Astrology, and Science in Russian Modernism» was held, in the course of which participants discussed the synopsis of Pavel Yushin's research project entitled «The Idea of the Fall of Man in Pavel Florensky's Scientific Imagination». The discussion took place on the Skype platform. 

Pavel Florensky, a scientist turned into a priest and religious philosopher, followed an intellectual trajectory typical of the turn of the 20th century. In philosophical parlance, it came to be known as «from positivism to idealism». Brought up in an 1860s fashion, Florensky started his training in the natural sciences from a very young age and, according to his memoirs, by the age of fifteen found himself «on top of the physical thought»: «If asked what I aspire to, I would answer: “To know the laws of nature”, — and indeed, all the energy, all the attention, all the time I devoted to the exact knowledge. Physics, partly geology and astronomy, and also mathematics were things that I was working on with persistence and passion that strengthened each other. In other words, as a teenager, he consciously embodied the very image of a positivist scientist. The ensuing personal and professional crisis («a fracture, a rupture of biography, a sudden internal collapse», as he retrospectively named it) was part and parcel of the fin de siècle’s «revolt against positivism». Against the backdrop of a number of methodological discussions and experimental developments in the natural sciences, which gradually moved them towards recognition of the contingency of the laws of nature and of their own epistemologies, arose a wave of philosophical and spiritual resentment (or excitement, depending on one’s point of view) that found an expression in the announcements of the «bankruptcy of science» and of «revival of idealism». While the task of explanation of nature was replaced by its mere description — although it was but one of the crisis-inducing elements in the intellectual culture of the turn of a century (along with «Godless socialism, immoral materialism, self-centered individualism, cultural degeneration», «Jewish capitalism», «liberal Protestantism», and «growing disciplinary specialization»)  — the so-called «scientific worldview» lost its popular appeal and many of its adherents, including some professional scientists, turned their attention to markedly non-scientific sources, such as esoterism, mysticism, and religion. Likewise, along with the works on philosophy of science — particularly those of Ernst Mach, whose definition of physical theory «as an abstract and generalized description of phenomena» he would later call instrumental in the destruction of the «materialistic metaphysics» — Florensky began to read popular books on anti-scientific and esoteric subjects. Reportedly, after one of the mystical experiences of his own (significantly connected to the state of dreaming), which were likely prompted by this literature and naturally verified its arguments, Florensky finally managed to «throw off the hateful yoke» of positivism: «the solemn edifice of scientific thought has crumbled to dust» and the search for new spiritual «truth» began.

What followed is a complicated history, which still requires a proper intellectual biography, but one of its most noticeable motifs is Florensky’s constant criticism of Western scientific tradition in conjunction with a kind of scientific apologetics: having severed the ties with the «scientific worldview», he soon embarked on a life-long quest to harmonize the catholicity of his research interests (which spanned from mathematics and electrical engineering to theology, philology, and theory of art) with the «catholicity» of the Orthodox Church that provided him with an alternative, «Christian worldview». Fiercely criticizing the former, he directed all his learning — casually mixing scientific and esoteric sources — towards justifying the latter. In a recent monograph that «explores the intellectual history of the relation between fides and ratio in the course of the development of Russian thought», Florensky's philosophical project is hailed as «perhaps the most impressive attempt at the reconciliation of faith and science, not only of the Russian tradition but globally». Be that as it may, the tension between his seemingly divergent roles — that of «a mystic and empiricist, a theologian and a scientist» — certainly became a characteristic trait of his oeuvre.

Surveying the literature on Florensky which addresses this tension in one way or another, it is perhaps unsurprising to find virtually no mention of the Christian idea of the Fall of Man. How could it be relevant to the topic? In this work, I argue that the connection is quite direct, albeit not entirely obvious. Furthermore, it is precisely this idea that accounts for the purportedly paradoxical association of mysticism and empiricism.  As the historian Peter Harrison has convincingly shown, the idea that the fall «had plunged the human race into an irremediable epistemological confusion» — an ancient idea, which was influentially developed by Augustine of Hippo and underpinned by his concept of Original Sin (peccatum originis) — had a significant impact on the ideological foundations of Western scientific tradition: «Renewed suspicion about our cognitive capabilities [...] was the starting point for the methodological discussions of the early modern period and was particularly important in the development of what became known as the experimental philosophy». Over time, the close linkage between the idea of the fall of man and scientific epistemology lost its former significance and was largely forgotten, although its traces were preserved in a variety of sources, including dictionaries. In the late 19th century, a reader curious about the concept of original sin could read that «Before the fall, the man had a clear and bright mind, so that he could penetrate into the nature of things (Genesis, ii, 19-20; 22-24), after the fall, the human mind became deeply obscured, so that at present a man can acquire knowledge of the visible world around him with great effort and many preliminary mistakes».

My main thesis is that this linkage was revitalized in the works of Pavel Florensky. The «Christian worldview», of which the concept of original sin was an essential part, provided him with the convenient framework to reflect on the crisis of positivist thought along with his personal «rupture of biography»: the idea of the fall of man that fueled early modern discussions on the limits of human knowledge proved useful for making sense of the fin de siècle problem of the relativity of knowledge, which was closely connected to the rise of esotericism. Consequently, this idea regulated Florensky’s scientific imagination to a considerable extent: it influenced his views on the nature and history of science, as well as some of his most famous scientific and scholarly projects (e.g., the «theory of imaginaries» and the concept of «reverse perspective»).