When Earthly Minds Contemplate Infinity: Existentialism in Dostoevsky, the Limitation of Rationality, and Curved Spave for Crooked Souls
Prior to becoming a man of letters, Dostoevsky studied at the Main Engineering School in St. Petersburg from 1838 to 1843. After he was arrested, submitted to mock execution by firing squad, and sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia for his involvement in the revolutionary Petrashevsky Circle in 1849, most of the books and journals from the period of his education were confiscated and destroyed by the Third Section of the Russian Secret Police. Although scholars largely discount the legacy of his engineering studies, the literary aesthetics of his works communicate uncanny awareness of mathematical principles and debates. Michael Marsh-Soloway will share details from his recent book, The Mathematical Mind of F. M. Dostoevsky Imaginary Numbers, Non-Euclidean Geometry, and Infinity (Bloomsbury, 2024),investigating how subtexts in the writings of Dostoevsky participate in extended discourses of mathematical thought that evolved throughout Classical Antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution.
Hosted by the Oberlin College Program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the North American Dostoevsky Society with support from the Oberlin Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies (OCREECAS).
