Science, reason, and symptom in “Notes from the underground”

Abstract

From the closed world to the infinite universe” – the title of Russian philosopher Alexander Koyré´s work expresses the redefining historical movement of modernity. The “closed world” would be that related to Aristotelian concept of cosmos, still untouched by the revolutionary impacts of scientific methods and language, by the efforts of intellectual redefinitions generically known as Scientific Revolution. In Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground a “sick man” reveals a kind of illness untreatable by scientific experts. In this work, Dostoevsky presents several issues concerning modernity and the advancement of the nineteenth century rationalism. In doing so, the author anticipates and develops (giving a strong literary expression to) issues discussed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for instance by psychoanalysis and philosophy of science. The purpose of this article is to point out briefly these possible dialogues, highlighting the contradictions, flaws and criticisms directed by Dostoevsky to the "infinite universe" that expanded on nineteenth-century Russia.