СОВМЕСТНЫЙ ПРОЕКТ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФИЛОСОФСКОЙ ОБЩЕСТВЕННОСТИ И ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВА «СИДИПРЕСС»

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THE RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHICAL GAZETTE

March 2010 – No 3

FEATURES

Hypathia of Alexandria: “Even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”

Hypatia (born between AD 350 and 370, died 415) was a Greek scholar from Alexandria considered to be the first notable woman in mathematics, who also taught philosophy and astronomy. She lived in the time of the great change: the world of Classical antiquity was yielding to the pressure of the new Christian world: “pagan” temples, statues and precious books were destroyed. Alexandria, her home city, was famous for its culture and old scientific traditions that go back to the Euclidean time. So after the decline of the school of Athens, it was in Alexandria where a new powerful multinational intellectual medium was being formed. But it was alpha male, and it had no room for a female but one – Hypatia, a unique woman of great knowledge and wisdom.

She lived in Roman Egypt, and was killed by a Christian mob who falsely blamed her for religious turmoil. Some suggest that her death marked the end of what is traditionally known as Classical antiquity.

BY NATALIYA LOGINOVA

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History of Philosophy: Punish Not Forgive

 

After reading this article, the reader is invited to punctuate the title as it obviously contains a syntactic ambiguity directly relating to its content. The point is that for no apparent reason “History of philosophy” was struck off from the list of specialties for philosophers seeking a candidate’s degree. The dean of Moscow University’s Philosophy Department Vladimir Mironov says that it was a mistake and it has already been corrected. He also calls on the public not to be too hard on those who sit in the State commission for academic degrees and titles as he thinks the mistake was not intentional. Anyway, should or should not there be a punishment for all that clamour caused?

 

 

INTERVIEW BY SERGEI SHARAKSHANE

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The Best Philosophical Project Competition – Top 4

 

This competition was entirely RPhG-sponsored and arranged. The judges were some of the most prominent political figures and scholars from Moscow and St.-Petersburg Universities, the Russian Academy of Public Administration under the President of Russia, the RAS Institute of Philosophy, members of the State Duma and the Council of the Federation, and the Russian Philosophical Society. The topic of the project work was “The Philosophy of Civil Service and Countering Corruption”. The winning projects were those by Mr. Laptev from Miass, Chelyabinsk Region; Mr. Ivanov from Barnaul, Altai; Mr. Rosov from Novosibirsk; and Ms. Chernyshova from Pyatigorsk

BY EDITORIAL STAFF

 

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The Future of Russia Depends on the Future of Russian Science

 

Vladimir Zakharov, a Russian physicist, Regents' Professor of mathematics at the University of Arizona and director of the Mathematical Physics Sector at the Lebedev Physical Institute, shares his views on the recent 11.8% reduction of the RAS budget.

The U.S. has invested over 3% of its GDP in research and development this year; China – 2%. In contrast, this year’s budget of the Russian Academy of Science is less than 0.3% of its GDP which in no way can be even compared to that of the United States.

However, the RAS budget is not the only subject; Zakharov also speaks on the need of innovation breakthroughs, the problem of bureaucratic voluntarism, the virulent pestilence of pseudo science, the controversial “Petrik’s case”, the ‘ageing’ of Russian science and so on. The article appears to be of extreme interest to those who hold close to heart the problems of Russian science.

 

BY ACADEMICIAN ZAKHAROV

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Art is Jealous and it Demands Man’s Everything

It is about Michelangelo, the greatest Italian sculptor, artist, architect and poet – this is what we think of him. And this is what he wrote referring to himself, “No human has so far been born who would be as inclined to love people as I do”. Michelangelo created titanic works of art, but he dreamt of creating even greater ones. For example, he planned to chisel off a rocky mountain near the sea to a grandiose statue against a natural landscape, imagining that sailors returning from a faraway land would see a huge sunlit statue of Man emerging from the sea, being the highest peak of a mountain ridge. This monument, unbreakable and eternal as the mountain itself, he imagined, would personify the beauty and strength of a free man…

BY NATALIYA LOGINOVA

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105 km of Archives and Contemporaneity

Indeed, if we consider carefully the entire body of government institutions, we are bound to conclude that a country’s archive service is the most stable, conservative and time-defying structure capable of withstanding political tempests. Its importance is that archive documents not only reflect the history of a state but also serve a measuring stick of its scientific, intellectual and cultural achievements. Moreover so, archives keep all kinds of records of a nation’s great personalities – natural scientists, philosophers, politicians, artists, composers and so on, and in this sense archives are definitely a storage place for national heritage.

This article is a story about the National Archives of Norway and, of course, Norway itself, particularly its achievements in social welfare

 

BY VLADIMIR ROSCHUPKIN

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