Jurij Moskvitin

Jurij Moskvitin (Robert Jurij Moskvitin Hansen, 6 January 1938 – 25 May 2005) was a classical pianist, composer, philosopher, mathematician and boheme.

Jurij Moskvitin grew up in Denmark; his mother was a Russian aristocrat and his father was a Danish civil engineer.

After World War II he studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.

He then obtained a master's degree in Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen.

He was a friend of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Simon Spies, Tao Nørager and Henrik Stangerup.

His works include:

He was one of the main characters in the documentary "En aften i november" the other being Ilja Bergh.

He was also interviewed in the documentary "At skrive eller dø & At forråde virkeligheden" about his relationship with Henrik Stangerup.

He regularly appeared in the Danish TV-program "Smagsdommerne" until his death.

He also appears in the radio documentary "Eliten fra Minefeltet" where he talks about his relationship to the pianist Klaus Heerfordt.

In this book, Moskvitin records a collection of his theories on the beginnings of thought and language.

In his view, the origin of language and thought lie in spontaneous and rare creative acts, often inspired in a human in a stressful and dangerous situation.

These thoughts are inspired by a period in which the author turned his attention "from 'what he thinks' to 'how he thinks'", a turn to introspection.

Moskvitin describes how he came to observe "states of mind when consciousness is kept somewhere halfway between the waking state and dream."

Moskvitin became aware of strange "sparks" and "smoke-like forms", which "upon close and intense observation became the elements of waking dreams, forming persons, landscapes, strange mathematical fractal forms."

Moskvitin came to believe that the hypnagogic patterns he was observing were the actual `material' out of which the conscious mind `builds' its representation of the external world.

Our inner world of dreams and visions comes before the outer one of sensory stimuli (Closed-eye hallucination).

For Moskvitin, this inner world of sequential impressions we observe as our experience.

Aggregates of lower-level forms creates concepts and higher-level ideas.

In his view, humans have a tendency to relate their experience to the already known, dealing with situations in the world with methods and ideas created prior.

It is only when this tendency to the familiar is reversed, or the use of it is nullified, such as in a dangerous situation, does a creative act emerge.

The totality of those prior ideas and concepts (the totality of memes) he labels the 'anthroposphere'.

For Moskvitin, the origin and development of this anthroposphere is in the multi-thousand year accumulation of rare and fortunate creative acts by individuals put in demanding situations.

Analyzing the creative act itself, Moskvitin postulates the existence of a 'projection mechanism' in humans - a mechanism which combines a few sustained impressions into a new aggregate, an idea.

Building on what is essentially the stream model of consciousness, the mechanism depends on memory to store sequentially occurring impressions and the combinatorial projecting mechanism which provides the creating actor with the "vision" of the new idea from the lower-level forms mentioned above.

Jurij speculates about schizophrenia as an inability to distinguish between lower-level, interior forms and the exterior.

He further postulates that the act of creation might involve a temporary state of schizophrenia.

There are also further explorations of the topics of mysticism, occultism, and mathematics.

Original title "Det er spændende at tænke".

This book was made by Moskvitin in an effort to kick start a child's imagination.

It contains classical examples in philosophy and logic and features illustrations by Jakob Hoffmeyer.

It was published by Sommer og Sørensen.

Original title "Den store undren".

This book takes up the philosophical questions: What is time?

who am I? What is real?

Why does anything exist at all?

and presents them for the adult reader while guiding the reader through the history of philosophy.

The book was published by Lindhart og Ringhof in 1992.

Shortly thereafter Moskvitin wrote a highly critical and devastating review of his book in the Danish newspaper Politiken under a pen name.

The aim was to create debate and interest in the book, but Moskvitin's plan backfired and the result was a low sale.