Pavel Florensky, the symbols of the infinite

Abstract

Pavel Florenskij has been introduced to us as the Russian Leonardo da Vinci, a Renaissance Universal Man pursuing an integral world view. In this first session we are focusing on Florenskij the theologian and mathematician, and in my twenty minutes I shall be sharing with you some reflections on whether, and if so in what way, one can integrate the two disciplines within one and the same person. I shall then give an account in some, but not much, detail of Florenskij’s position on this issue. The title of Florenskij’s 1904 paper that provides the basis of my considerations, namely, “The symbols of the infinite. An essay on the ideas of G. Cantor,”1 points simultaneously to a specific piece of mathematics and to its theological connection. The piece of mathematics in question is the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, put forward by the German mathematician Georg Cantor in 1895, the same Cantor of set theory fame. Cantor was not only a pure mathematician; he was also extremely concerned with the philosophical and theological implications, as he and some of his contemporaries saw them, of his mathematical work on the infinite. This mathematician-theologian is the Cantor whom Florenskij embraced, and whom he introduced to a Russian public. Let me now discuss the personal integration of theology and mathematics in the context of four positions on the relationship between theology and mathematics.