Florensky on Creation

"Objectivity does exist. It is God's creation. To live and feel together with all creation, not with the creation that man has corrupted but with the creation that came out of the hands of its Creator; to see in this creation another, higher nature; through the crust of sin, to feel the pure core of God's creation... But to say this is to posit the requirement of a restored, i.e., a spiritual, person."

"'Nothing,' says St. Methodius, 'is evil by nature. Things become evil by the mode of their use...'"

"The body is something whole, something individual, something special."

"[T]he life of each of these organs--head, chest, and stomach--can be deepened by an appropriate training, and then a person becomes a mystic of the respective organ."

"[C]hurch mysticism is the mysticism of the chest.... If the chest is the center of the body, the heart is the center of the chest. And, since ancient times, the entire attention of church mysticism has been directed at the heart."

"A genuine Christian ascetic is distinguished from mystics of [the head] by restraint of a proud mind. He is distinguished from mystics of [the stomach] by inhibition of [lust]. All that a genuine Christian ascetic lives by arises in him not arbitrarily in one separate organ or another, but in the living center of his being, in the heart, and it arises there under the grace-giving action of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter."

"The genuine Christian ascetic is essentially connected with all of creation and does not despise anything that belongs to creation. But, in his case, in his feeling for creation, there is no lust. He penetrates deeply into the mysteries of heaven and earth and is not deprived of their knowledge, but, in his knowledge of the mysteries, there is no pride."

"Two feelings, two ideas, two presuppositions were necessary for the possibility of the appearance of science: first, a feeling and idea whose content was the lawlike unity of creation (in contrast to the caprice of demons...); second, a feeling and idea which affirmed the genuine reality of creation as such. Only these two feelings and ideas made it possible to pierce the reality of creation with a fearless, direct gaze, to approach this reality with trust, and to love it joyously.
Theologically speaking, it was necessary to introduce two dogmas in man's consciousness: the dogma of the Providence of One God and the dogma of the creation of the world by a Good God, i.e., the dogma of the giving of its own, independent being to creation. The providence of God and the freedom of creation form, in their antinomy, one dogma, the dogma of God's love for creation, a dogma that has its foundation in the idea of God as Love, i.e., the idea of the Triunity of Divinity. This antinomy, in all its decisiveness, is the foundation of modern science."

"Only Christianity has given birth to an unprecedented being-in-love with creation. Only Christianity has wounded the heart with the wound of loving pity for all being."

"'Love of nature...But what about ascetism, the escape from nature?'--we can hear the objection of worldly people. In response, I affirm in advance that worldly literature has never understood the spirit of Christian ascetism.... This leads to a situation in which the substantial differences between Christian asceticism and the ascetism of other religions, especially the Hindu religion, are usually not recognized. ... [T]here is nothing more opposed than they. ... One despises creation, although it is involuntarily attracted by its evil, and attempts to acquire magical powers over it; the other is in love with creation, although it hates the sin eating away at it, and the ascetic does not need magical powers, because grace-endowed creation will remove the yoke of sin's heteronomy and will be able to live as it is in itself, in accordance with its originally given mode of being."

These thoughts, scattered throughout Florensky's chapter on "Creation" in The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, summarize for me the full meaning of science--this "being-in-love with creation." And it is only through a certain disposition--a "mysticism of the heart"--that one can truly enter into this kind of science.

That's my take on the relationship between science and religion.