Physics, technology, and theology in Pavel Florensky

Abstract

“If the ignorance of nature gave birth to the gods, the rise of knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them … Man, when instructed, ceases to be superstitious.” This bleak diagnosis can have no positive prognosis unless Alfred North Whitehead’s comment, made in the 1920’s, goes unheeded: “When we consider what religion is for mankind and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them.” For, as John Paul II wrote to George V Coyne, the Director of the Vatican Observatory, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the publication of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, unless intense dialogue takes place between science and religion, these two fields of thought will not contribute to the future integration of human culture but to its fragmentation. Interestingly, among the few authors mentioned in Fides et ratio for their “courageous research” in a “fruitful relationship” between faith and reason is Pavel A Florensky who, in his own words, sought to open “new ways for a future global vision of the world.”