CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Iushin, Pavel |
|---|---|
| Title | How Science Went Bankrupt: Pavel Florensky and the Crisis of Scientific Rationality in Fin-de-Siecle Europe |
| Summary | The thesis offers a new perspective on the debate about the “bankruptcy of science,” which was a conspicuous feature of European intellectual life at the turn of the twentieth century, by examining the life and work of the Russian religious philosopher and polymath Pavel Florensky (1882–1937). The study consists of three research chapters and a conclusion, preceded by a general introduction and a note on methodology. Arranged in roughly chronological order, the chapters use material from Florensky’s (auto)biography and writings to distinguish and outline several important components of the fin-de-siècle crisis of scientific rationality: (1) its intellectual genesis in the context of nineteenth-century psychologism, which fostered a new trend in epistemology that emphasized the limitations of conceptual reasoning and the relativity of knowledge, thereby raising doubts about the epistemic authority and moral import of science; (2) the relativization of scientific rationality and the appearance of its alternatives, the ideas of “mythical” and “four-di mensionalȁ d; thinking; (3) the anti-Semitic racialization of scientific rationality, which underpinned and intensified criticism of the “inhuman” features of modern science. Finally, I briefly consider one of the most extreme consequences of this anti-scientific attitude — the rejection of the Copernican heliocentric cosmology — and draw a tentative conclusion as to what has so far prevented a more comprehensive understanding of how science went bankrupt. |
| Supervisor | Hall, Karl; Kontler, Laszlo |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/iushin_pavel.pdf |
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