Man strives to achieve economic freedom, power over a nature that is alienated from him, economic power, or ‘wealth.’ Sometimes he seeks to cast a spell on this nature through magic, to subjugate it to sorcery; sometimes he strives to conquer it through science. However different ancient magic and the science that has replaced it may seem in their methods and general premises, they are identical in this task. In both cases man strives to achieve power over nature, and whatever magic with its occult methods of penetrating into nature’s ‘elementals‘ gave him is the same thing he receives from precise science though it applies quantification and measurement. Magic and science are one in this goal. The ancient magi were the scientists of their time, contemporary scientists the magicians of science.
— Sergei Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy: The World as Household. trans. Catherine Evtuhov (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 220-1.
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