Towards Creation: Sergius Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky on the Relationship Between Scientific and Religious Experience

Abstract

AbstractThe revival of the dialogue between science and religion, which characterizes modern culture, testifies to the relevance of the problem of the correlation of scientific and religious experience in cognition. The article demonstrates various, sometimes opposite approaches to formulating and understanding this problem in modern philosophical thought, indicating the pluralism of positions and points of view, as well as the open nature of its discussion, which requires a solid theoretical basis for further analysis. It is suggested that one of the variants of the theoretical and methodological basis for understanding the correlation of scientific and religious experience is found in Russian philosophy at the beginning of the twentieth century, in particular, in the works of its two prominent representatives – Sergius Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky. Considering economic relations in capitalist society, Bulgakov supplements their study with the religious doctrine of Sophia, which makes it possible to reflect on the creative nature of the activity of the subject of production and find explanations for all those negative phenomena that accompany human economic activity. Florensky points out the limitations of pure scientific research, believing that in scientific knowledge such a limiting area of research inevitably opens up, which is no longer the subject of scientific, but exclusively religious speculation. The article analyzes these ideas of Russian philosophers, gives their interpretation in modern philosophical literature and concludes about the interpenetration of scientific and religious experience in cognition.KeywordsScientific experienceReligious experienceSergius BulgakovPavel Florensky