ROUND TABLE. To the 130th anniversary of the birth of S.I. Vavilov. From physical light to spiritual light. The inner world of S. I. Vavilov

Abstract

The report is devoted to the inner world of the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences S. I. Vavilov, revealed in his diary entries, which deal with both forturous philosophical reflections on the nature of consciousness, the meaning of life, and grievous personal experiences associated with the loss of loved ones and the death of a brother. In search of an answer to the metaphysical questions of being, Vavilov often moved from the world of "joyless materialism" to panpsychism, which removes the question of the primacy or secondariness of consciousness and matter. But even this did not always bring relief. Hamlet's question, addressed to himself, was symbolically and repeatedly repeated in Vavilov's diaries in his suicidal moods and feelings of the duality of the "I". Overcoming-in the selfless work on the development of Soviet science, both in the conditions of evacuation of the physical institutes of the Academy of Sciences during the Great Patriotic War, and in the post-war years. Overcoming is in his love for the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, for architecture, sculpture and painting of the Renaissance, for domestic and foreign poetry. Overcoming is in empathy with the reflections of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Pushkin. A remarkable fact is a volume of Goethe's Faust, which Vavilov carries with him in the First World War. There are thousands of books in Vavilov's library in different languages, he speaks English, German, French, Italian and Polish. In the last year of his life alone, he read 96 books. In Leningrad, Vavilov created the Lomonosov Museum in the Kunstkamera. With his help, the Pushkin Museum Reserve, destroyed by the Nazis, is being restored. The historian of science S. I. Vavilov publishes a biography and Optics of Newton, translates Lucretius, writes essays, articles and reports on Galileo, Lomonosov, Faraday and Euler. Educational and publishing activities of Vavilov in the creation of the Knowledge Society, publishing houses of the BSE, "Literary Monuments" and "Classics of Science". At the end of the report, in the context of the philosophical searches of S. I. Vavilov, the fundamental issues of the correlation of mental and physical knowledge are discussed in the correspondence of V. Pauli with K. G. Jung and in the book "What is life?" by E. Schrodinger.

Speaker

Boris Medvedev
Saratov State University
Russia

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