Blog

2020-07-31 | Castaneda and the Soviet Union

For some, popularity of Carlos Castaneda in Soviet and post-Soviet esoteric milieu comes as a surprise. In this post, I will try to briefly discuss reasons for popularity of Castaneda in Russia and a way in which his works were adopted in post-Soviet context.

2016-12-28 | Interview with Glenn Alexander Magee

A year ago I interviewed Glenn Magee, the author of Hegel and the Hemetic Tradition and the editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism, for the Russian journal “Research in Religious Studies.” Here I am publishing the original version of this interview.

2016-10-15 | On van Fraassen’s Constructive Empiricism

Constructive empiricism is a theory proposed by Bas van Fraassen (born 1941) in the book The Scientific Image, published in 1980. It is based on the idea that to hold a theory it is enough to agree that the theory is empirically adequate and it is not necessary believe that it describes the world as it actually is.

2016-04-25 | Scientism as a Case of Pseudoscience

When we talk about a pseudoscience, one usually think about religion-related examples like creation science or astrology as an example of pseudoscience. However, pseudoscience is often generated by scientists themselves when they try to make universal implications of their particular scientific knowledge. As an example, let us take scientism.

2016-04-13 | On Diversity in the Study of Esotericism

For me, this winter and spring were full of experiences related to communication with colleagues from different countries. The experience led me to some thoughts that I’d like to share and listen for your feedback.