Synergy. A History of Knowledge

Tatjana Petzer investigated synergy concepts from the Slavic-Orthodox cultural sphere and their religious prefigurations. The research project took up the idea that Russian modernism was influenced by the doctrine of synérgeia, the interaction between human and divine energies in theosis. Russian religious philosophy translates this synergetic, transformative potential into modern terms that complement the discourse on humans as synergoi of nature from the realm of natural philosophy and holism. Petzer’s study analyzed the synergy paradigm within the contexts of ideological theories, aesthetic concepts of transformation, and future technology—factors that have drawn special attention thanks to cutting-edge thinkers working between disciplines and their sense of crisis around 1900 as they strove to create a “new humanity.”

Stephan Steiner’s research was devoted to a scientific-historical reconstruction of the current theological reception of synergetics, as it aimed to clarify the basic concept of nature. The search for mediation between religion and science—characteristic of 20th-century debates—formed the background of this exchange. Theological discussions of synergetics were focused on the desideratum of a holistic understanding of nature. The prevailing gap between scientific and everyday experience—illustrated by the disjunction between science’s mathematized understanding of nature and ‘naïve’ ethical, aesthetic or religious views of nature—appeared increasingly problematic from such a perspective. Today, in Christian (Alexandre Ganoczy) as well as in Jewish contexts (Edgar Morin), synergetics constitutes a framework that allows for dealing with the multidimensional facets of nature. As a theory of interaction, synergetics promises to sidestep the hostile antagonism of the dismembered notions of nature and, through a hermeneutical project, replace them with an interdisciplinary, multilayered description of reality. The project thus addressed the heterogeneous symbolizations of nature and analyzed their interwoven complexity.

Editor: Tatjana Petzer

Since the fin de siècle modern research and technology have taken inspiration from dreams of extending longevity, resurrecting the dead, and elevating humans to a higher form of existence. Historical and more recent texts by Slavic authors, reflecting about potential immortality and recognizing possible means and ways to eternal physical existence in the developments of experimental disciplines such as bionics, electrophysiology, genetics, gerontology, immunology, cybernetics, transplantation medicine, cell biology, or cryobiology, were examined. A selection of these texts, which not only engaged with contemporary debates on immortality, but also left a culturally specific mark on the corpus immortalis, have been translated and published in an annotated anthology.