The Moscow Pythagoreans

In Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, mysticism, anti-Semitism, and mathematical theory fused into a distinctive intellectual movement. Through analyses of such seemingly disparate subjects as Moscow mathematical circles and the 1913 novel Petersburg, this book illuminates a forgotten aspect of Russian cultural and intellectual history.

"This book seems to me an excellent example of modern studies in intellectual history, for it explores comparatively different and heterogeneous fields of culture - as for instance political ideology, mathematics, and literary fiction - traversed by common ideas and tendencies. Rich in original factual information, clear-sighted in its analysis, Ilona Svetlikova's book will be helpful to scholars specialized in twentieth century's Russian intellectual history, as well as to those who are interested - as I am - in methodological problems of the history of ideas." - Sergey Zenkin, Professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU), Moscow, Russia

"The Moscow Pythagoreans reconstructs the political ideology of the Moscow mathematicians of the beginning of the twentieth century, who blended mathematics with mysticism, racism and Russian monarchism. Original and fascinating, Ilona Svetlikova's book is an important contribution to our knowledge of the Russian intellectual history, and a highly stimulating example of cross-disciplinary study." - I.P. Smirnov, Professor Emeritus at the University of Konstanz, Germany and Professor of the UNESCO Department at the Herzen State Pedagogical University, St. Petersburg, Russia

Autorentext

Ilona Svetlikova is Senior Research Fellow of the Russian Institute of Art History, St. Petersburg, Russia. She is the author of The Origins of Russian Formalism (2005).

Inhalt

1. Origins of the Ideology of the Moscow Philosophic-Mathematical School: N. V. Bugaev 2. P. A. Nekrasov: The Moscow Philosophic-Mathematical School and Its Founders (1904) 3. P. A. Nekrasov: Theory of Probability (1912) 4. Some Other Members of the Moscow Philosophic-Mathematical School 5. Pythagorean Connotations of the Ideology of the "School"