Siarhei Biareishyk – Science and Metaphysics Under Stalin
Tuesday, October 12, 2021 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CEST/GMT+2Discussion
Siarhei Biareishyk will discuss the codification of Marxism as a metaphysical program in the Soviet 1920-30s. In the context of debates surrounding genetics and Lamarckian biology, we will consider Stalin's intervention in scientific developments, which was largely guided by quasi-religious adherence to the dialectical materialist understanding of nature rather than experimental data. Our conversation will focus on the so-called Lysenko Affair, in which a school of biology that insisted on the inheritance of acquired traits (as opposed to genetic research) came to dominate scientific discourse through the mediation of the Bolshevik Party and Stalin himself.
Siarhei Biareishyk is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University. From 2017 to 2019 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin, working in the cluster "World Literature." He is currently completing his book, Spinozan Mediations: The Limits of Materialist Thought in Novalis and His Contemporaries.
This event is the first in a series of seminars organized by the BCB Science & Religion Project, a part of the Oxford-led project "New Horizons for Science and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe" with support from the Templeton Foundation.
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