The (Epistemological) Power of Love : From Pitirim A. Sorokin’s Integralism to a ‘Space for the Heart’ in Scientific Methods

In the contemporary epistemological debate, it is possible to identify approaches whereby rational and sensory human faculties are not the sole essential dimensions in the knowing process. With its intuitional and empathic nature, love emerges as a specific way through which scientists may also know the world. In the 20th century, the Russian–American sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889–1968) was one of the scholars who highlighted the epistemological power of love . In his integral epistemology, the relevance of Altruistic Creative Love within the cognitive process is underlined. Love appears as an energy—linked to a specific intuitional human dimension called supraconscious —through which to know reality, which could integrate the empirical–sensory and rational–mindful dimensions. Following this line of thought, this article presents the thought of this scholar, outlining his general theory of knowledge and, in particular, highlighting the function of Altruistic Creative Love in the scientific method and analysing an original scientific dissemination activity embedded in the Sorokinian perspective that makes use of the arts, which can open new “eyes” and stimulate individual and social transformation.