Pavel Florensky’s Legacy on the Future of Science

The thought of P.A. Florensky is a peculiar expression of Russian phi-losophy and, more generally, of Russian cultural identity. At the same time, it can nevertheless be regarded as a legitimate heir to the cul-tural tradition which from its powerful Ionian roots unfolds through the peaks and abysses of Western philosophy stricto sensu, up to the ultimate crises of contemporary thought. Florensky, a physicist, mathematician, electrical engineer, theo-logian, epistemologist, semiologist, historian of ideas, art theorist, fi-ne artist, himself, of words and conceptual architectures, killed in 1937, after a long imprisonment in a Gulag on the Solovetsky Islands, embodies not only an incisive synthesis of different scientific disci-plines, but also a singular and effective overlapping of cultural terrains – a fertile, luminous borderline between Russia and the West.