Theological searching of aircraft designer I.I. Sikorsky

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleБогословские искания авиаконструктора И.И.Сикорского
3. Language term Russian
4. lemma author Saprykin, Dmitry
5. lemma category Theological works of scientists and engineers
6. Publication date 2014
7. lemma work Gavryushin Nikolay [Author]. Theological searching of aircraft designer I.I. Sikorskiy
8. lemma manifestations Богословские труды Игоря Сикорского. : Theological works of Igor Sikorskiy.
9. Keywords Sikorskiy Igor
10. Citations
    1. http://www.bogoslov.ru/text/4182231.html
11. Lemma body

    1. The article is devoted to the I.Sikorsky’s theological works’ analysis. His works reveal the unique synthesis of Orthodox faith in life practice, philosophical and theological searching and scientific and engineering highest achievements, united in the character of Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky.

       Gavryushin writes the Sikorsky’s works to express deeply mature and gained worldview which stoutly disagrees with the technocratic optimism and the enslaving-nature pathos dominating that time. Sikorsky poses religious and ethical attitude to life extremely higher than any scientific theories and technical inventions, vigorously brushing away any illusions related to progress.

       The author points out as a positive fact the principle of unity of the Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition which Sikorsky follows in his interpretations of the main Christian texts. “He had a perfect understanding the final criterion of verity to be either textual study nether formal and logical computations, but only the spirit of the Biblical truth given and personalized by Christ”.

       The Sikorsky’s cosmology is very much like Bruno’s, Galilei’s, Fontenelle’s and Tsiolkovskiy’s, says the author. “The plurality of inhabited worlds” motivates the diversity of intelligent life forms, assures in existence of “beings higher than man”. Sikorsky willingly disserts of beings free from “finiteness of our physical existence”, from gravitation, able to “appear in any place by their will”. Sikorsky regards our Earth as a zone “occupied by hostile power”, and only the conviction in the higher forms of moral life existing in other planets and galaxies, in other words in the Kingdom of God’s Truth reality, leaves him the ground for hope.

       According to Gavryushin, Sikorsky is being well oriented in the basics of Gospel Revelation however sometimes demonstrates ideological hesitations and allows particularly a definite tendency to ontologization of evil. Therefore he tries to justify struggling with it by means of external remedies, which may remind one a famous work of I.A.Iliin “Resisting the evil with a force”. The private theological Sikorsky’s view of hell also has parallels in some Russian intellectuals’ works, says the author.

       Gavryushin thinks that the name of I.I. Sikorsky must be in line of those famous Russian theologians who had distinctly caught the demand of deep interpretation of ethical and psychological exploit of Christ.