MAthEMAtIcS AS thE KEy tO A hOLIStIc WORLd vIEW: thE cASE OF PAvEL FLOREnSKy Vladislav Shaposhnikov* It is well known that Pavel Florensky highly praised mathematics through- out his life. Let us take his letter of 12 November 1933 to his daughter Olga as an example: «Mathematics should not be a burden laid on you from without, but a habit of thought 1 : one should be taught to see geometric relations in all reality and to discover formulae in all phenomena» 2 . But God is in the details, the saying goes, so it is worth specifying Florensky’s ideas on the subject. In this paper, I will attempt to reconstruct the main strands of his rather ambitious project concerning mathematics. A body of literature on the topic is far from being rich and exhaustive. Around 1987, some of Aleksei Losev’s amazing reminiscences of Pavel Flo- rensky were recorded and eventually published in 1990. Losev talked about “identity of philosophy and mathematics” in Florensky and insisted on Flo- rensky’s “great discovery” that mathematical objects are perceptional and alive 3 . The discussion was initiated by 1985-1989 publications by Sergei M. Polovinkin on Florensky’s «philosophical-mathematical synthesis» 4 and by Sergei S. Demidov (joined in the 1990s by Charles E. Ford) on Florensky’s place in the history of mathematics 5 . I have been taking part in the discussion * Associated professor, Faculty of Philosophy, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. 1 The previous part of the sentence is given in Avril Pyman’s translation. See A. PyMan, Pavel Floren- sky: A Quiet Genius, Continuum, New York 2010, 160. 2 P. FLorensky, Sochinenija v 4-kh tomakh [Selected Works in 4 Volumes], Mysľ, Moscow 1994-1999, vol. 4, 39. 3 Cf. P.A. Florenskij po vospominanijam A.F. Loseva [Pavel Florensky in Aleksei Losev’s reminiscences], in Kontekst 1990: Literaturno-teoreticheskie issledovanija, Nauka, Moscow 1990, 6-24. Reprinted in K.G. IsUpov (ed.), P.A. Florenskij: pro et contra, Russkij Khristianskij gumanitarnyj institute, Saint-Petersburg 1996, 173-196; 2 nd ed. 2001, 173-195. 4 S.M. PoLoVinkin, P.A. Florenskiĭ: Logos protiv Khaosa [Pavel Florensky: Logos vs. Chaos], Znanie, Moscow 1989, reprinted in K.G. IsUpov (ed.), P.A. Florenskiĭ: pro et contra, 1996, 625-648; 2 nd ed. 2001, 621-644. 5 Cf. S.S. DeMidov, O matematike v tvorchestve P.A. Florenskogo [Mathematics in Creative work of Pavel Florensky], in A.G. Barabashev - S.S. DeMidov - M.I. Panov (eds.), Metodologicheskij analiz zakonomernostej