Science & religion in Russian post-soviet context

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleScience & religion in Russian post-soviet context
3. Language term English
4. lemma author Tampakis, Kostas
5. lemma category Culture and national identities - Biology - Philosophy of science/epistemology
6. Publication date 2005
7. lemma work Arinin Evgeny [Author]. Science & Religion In Russian Post-Soviet Context
8. lemma manifestations European Journal of Science and Theology
9. Keywords religious studies - Idealism - materialism - Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich - Post-Soviet Russia
10. Url Click Here
11. Lemma body

    1. This paper is a bridge between the 2013 “Religion, Theology and Science in Russia” and the 2004 “Essence of Organic Life In Russian Orthodox and Modern Philosophical Tradition” papers. It begins by discussing how the quest for a new Russian national idea intersects with contemporary views on religion. During the Soviet era, religion was seen as ideology. However, in contemporary Russia, there has been a resurgence of religious and spiritual beliefs among the general populace. Scientists however remain mostly atheists and materialists in their views. The paper identifies this fact as an obstacle in the emergence of a fruitful science and religion dialogue. The author then moves to a discussion of different methodologies that can be used to interpret the Sacred. During the Soviet period, “Idealism” and “Materialism” emerged as a shift from ideological philosophy. Various categorizations were proposed. Chief among them was the “Systematic” and “Meta-systematic” understanding of objects (V.P. Kuzmin, 1986), “Naturalistic” and “Anthropomorphic” principles for cognizing the essence of objects (A.Tchanyshev 1981), “Objectivism” and “Subjectivism” (B.T. Grigorian, 1973). Later on, Yu.A. Shreider (1990) opposed “Naturalistic” and “Individualistic” principles for interpretation the world, S.N. Smirnov (1978) emphasized “Functional” and “Structural” principles for the development of a scientific interpretation of objects, S. Petrov (1980) distinguished between “Structural”, “Functional”, “Phenomenological”, and “Substratum-substantial” principles, B.M. Kedrov (1980) between “Functional” and “Substratum” principles, while A.R. Sokolov (1985) worked mainly with “Functional-substantial” principles. What all these intellectuals have in common, the paper proposes, is a willingness to deny the dogma of State Marxism in favor of a dialogue with Western philosophical and Church traditions. In current times, the author discusses new possibilities for a science and religion dialogue, based on the Hegel-Schelling concepts of substrate, function and substation. He identifies three types of worldviews on the Sacred, the Archaic/Esoteric, the Christian and the Secular. The paper then moves on to discuss how one can use the Hegelian notions to analyze the Archaic view and contrasts it with the emergence, within civilization, of three different principles: The Naturalistic, tied to function-substratum, the Platonic-Idealistic, tied to substratum-functional and the Pluralistic, tied to subjective-functional. Finally, the author discusses scientism under the same Hegelian schema. The paper ends by underlining current views on organic life, also assigned into different categories, such as Organismic, Biospheric and Evolutional.