Full-text resources of CEJSH and other databases are now available in the new Library of Science.
Visit https://bibliotekanauki.pl

Results found: 19

first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last

Search results

Search:
in the keywords:  natural history
help Sort By:

help Limit search:
first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last
EN
In 1775-1783, Jean-Emmanuel Gilibert (1741-1814) stayed in Respublica Poloniae to organize a veterinary school, the Royal Botanic Garden and the Royal School of Physicians in Grodno, and since 1781 he worked in Vilnius as Professor of Natural History at the Principal School of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Little is known about his work conducted in Lithuania in the field of geology and earth sciences. The author has decided, on the basis of Gilibert’s publications and analysis of the literature (works of J. Garbowska and P. Daszkiewicz and others), to present his teaching and research activities in this field. In Grodno, Gilibert looked after and multiplied the collections of the natural history cabinet at the Royal School of Physicians, renowned for its rich mineralogical and fossil collections watched and admired by, among others, King Stanisław August, J. Bernoulli (1744-1807) and M. Patrin (1742-1815) who mentions the amber rosary with a different species of insects preserved in each bead. Gilibert’s tours around Lithuania were the opportunity to enlarge the geological collections and to adapt them to the needs of the school. He also appreciated the importance of ordinary specimens representing the geology of the area. These specimens not only enriched the natural history cabinet, but also defined the way of working and collecting. Ha was the first to found and gather fossil animals from near Grodno. The signs of mineralogical and geological interests of Gilibert can be found in the works of other authors of that epoch (L. Viteta (1736-1809) and J. Bernoulli). In Vilnius, Gilibert conducted a one year-long full lecture on natural history (zoology, botany and mineralogy). In his lectures on mineralogy, he presented not only the systematics, but also emphasized the usefulness of minerals in medicine, for the production of ornamental items and in different sectors of the economy. He adapted the process of teaching to the needs of practical life, based on observations and experiments, and was using the local wildlife specimens in his lectures. Thanks to the French naturalist, the teaching of natural science remained at a good European level since the time the Department was founded at the University of Vilnius. A treatise on physical geography of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is Gilibert’s best-known published work in Poland. Based on own observations, he determined, e.g., the causes of drying of ponds and marshes, as well as of the formation of peat, limonitic iron and ocher, the origin of rivers in Lithuania and the presence of amber, and described a number of fossils. He provided the characteristics of geological deposits (now included in the Quaternary), described their origin and age, and drew attention to the issues of dynamic geology (e.g. erosional activity of rainwater, river erosion, formation of sand dunes). From the period of his eight-year stay in Lithuania, Gilibert also submitted observations on the climate of Lithuania, documented by temperature measurements. He indicated that the climate of this part of Europe was milder than the French believed, with clearly noticeable two seasons: winter and summer. He pointed out that the autumn rains give rise to muddy areas persisting to the end of November, and the most severe frost, usually several days long, occurs in late December and January, when the winds blow from the northeast. June and July are typically the hottest months, but the northern winds sometimes cause July ground frosts. He compared Lithuania’s climate to that of the Alpine foreland. Gilibert was the first scholar who studied the natural environment of Lithuania based on scientific principles. Interesting are his observations on the amber resin, for example, unequivocal statement that amber is a resin, at the time when the idea was still much discussed. Worth noting are the geological elements in the physiographic description of Lithuania, published by Gilibert (1806) in Histoires des Plantes d’Europe. It should also be pointed to the methodological aspect of Gilibert’s works: the facts precede interpretations, the results are attempted to be universalized by transposition into areas other than those investigated by Gilibert, and the observations are linked with scientific theories, which were new at those times, in the field of geology, chemistry and physics. Gilibert’s descriptions were often the first ones available to the naturalists in western and southern Europe. They were all the more valuable that contained a lot of data on the geology, meteorology, physical geography etc., useful in various fields.
EN
The present article provides arecontextualization of Wolfgang Caspar Printz’s (1641–1717) landmark music history published in 1690 (Historische Beschreibung der edelen Sing- und Kling-Kunst). later commentators have read it as a primitive, naïve and even failed attempt at writing the history of music. Still, they seem to agree that the text, in virtue of its subject matter, forms part of a canon of music historiography. The present article will seek the interpretative key in the wider intellectual context, outside of the narrow confines of texts about the musical past. It will advance the thesis that Printz built his music historiography from elements of the natural history tradition. Two arguments support this thesis. First, it will be argued that the organization of the material in chapters XIv, Xv and XvI betrays the influence of a classical version of taxonomy closely associated with the natural history tradition. Secondly, that Printz’s inquiry into the purpose of music reveals his reliance on a concept of nature similarly rooted in natural history.
Organon
|
2020
|
vol. 52
47-73
EN
Lamarck and Cuvier built opposite theories concerning the origin of living beings, their links and fate. If they could agree on the bases of the animal classification, they drastically differed in their interpretations. Lamarck claimed the reality of the transformation of species, whereas Cuvier challenged and attacked him fiercely. The two naturalists competed strongly for the leading place in natural history at the beginning of the 19th century, dialoguing indirectly through their scientific papers, which need to be reviewed in light of this debate. Their polemical discussion shows some major issues in the emergent science of biology.
Organon
|
2020
|
vol. 52
5-30
EN
Over the centuries since antiquity, nature writers have evaluated different animal species. One criterion for such an evaluation has been intellect. At the lowest point on the scale of intellectual abilities was stupidity. Ancient authors often attributed inadequate intellect to various animal species by using pejorative expressions. The aim of this study is to determine which animal species Greek and Roman writers considered as inferior in the hierarchy of intellectual abilities, and why these species were chosen in particular. Furthermore, the paper attempts to verify the evaluations formulated in antiquity in light of contemporary observations of nature.
XX
In the 15th and 16th centuries, in the era of early geographical discoveries, animals that were increasingly often brought to Europe, which had been unknown or known only from obscure accounts of ancient philosophers, were becoming something more than just curious species of living creatures. Among them, the animal that deserves special attention is the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), which aroused not only considerable interest but also consternation of naturalists at the time and in years to come. The uniqueness of the specimen is emphasised by the very well-known wood engraving by Albrecht Dürer, depicting the animal in great detail. This work places the rhinoceros in a certain symbolic convention which influenced the way it was perceived in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. This paper is an attempt to interpret the image of the animal in the categories of a carrier of meanings exceeding what is experienced visually. Using the category of participation created by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the author places the rhinoceros in a multi-layer order of reality, similar to the category of semiophore created by Krzysztof Pomian. Such an approach, which assumes looking for a deeper, metaphorical message carried by the rhinoceros, demonstrates that exotic creatures in the 16th century were perceived not so much as natural curiosities but as a kind of references to other, peripheral worlds. These peripheries had long been imagined as legendary, magical places, which therefore filled the gap in the unity of the world, as the space for all that is inexplicable.
EN
The paper analyzes the presence of the remains of ammonites and belemnites in the stones used to build the elevations of houses in modern Polish cities. The process of aestheticizing buildings is the reason for fossilized cephalopods being moved from the natural environment into urban space. I consider whether the use of such materials leads merely to making the buildings look more attractive or if this process provides an opportunity to interpret these buildings in an alternative way, which goes beyond aesthetic categories and is related to the fact that the fossils have been moved from the natural world into the cultural sphere. The limestone elements of architecture also allow one to look at the city as a unique museum of cultural and natural history.
Forum Philosophicum
|
2007
|
vol. 12
|
issue 2
207-225
EN
In this paper, I take three snapshots of Wittgenstein's philosophical work in order to jot a few notes on the issue of the continuity in his philosophy. I use Wittgenstein's distinction between what can be 'said' and what can only be “shown” in order to highlight Wittgenstein's continual insistence that our basic relation with reality is seamless. I propose that Wittgenstein holds, throughout his philosophical career, that our thinking does not stop short of the world. In brief, I suggest that Wittgenstein would note that our natural history is largely what the mediaevals would call second nature.
EN
Quinet studies the logic of life in natural history, history and the arts from an epistemological viewpoint. He shows interesting similarities between different fields of study, and he explains the specificity of the épistémè of the 19th century. This paper will show the impact of the concept of the unity of knowledge on the writing of Quinet’s book, and the ideological and religious implications.
EN
The works of Charles Bonnet illustrate the contribution of imagination to research in natural history in the second half of the 18th century. In his Palingénésie philosophique (1769), Bonnet uses images and metaphors rooted in the philosophical and literary imagery of the Enlightenment to describe the evolution of life. This juxtaposition of scientific and literary discourses did not prevent Bonnet from being regarded as a forefather of modern biology by historians of science.
EN
In the 19th century Japan was still a relatively mysterious land for many Europeans, even after more than a century of trade relations with the Dutch. Once in a while efforts were made to expand the European knowledge of Japan and European scholars tried to explore the country despite the limitations the Japanese put on them. In current research little attention has been paid to the role the Japanese played in collecting information for the advance of European knowledge of Japan. This article discusses the role of the Japanese in the groundwork for Nippon (1832–1858), the description of Japan by Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796–1866). It attempts to answer the question of what this cooperation looked like, which areas of knowledge it affected and what the consequences of the cooperation were for both sides.
EN
In spring 2023, the Gdansk publishers: słowo/ obraz terytoria released the first volume of Krzysztof Pomian’s study Muzeum. Historia światowa [World History of the Museum]. It launches the Polish edition of the monumental three-volume work published by Éditions Gallimard in Paris which is the first study of the universal history of the museum. This is more than a book, it’s a monument! (Plus qu’un livre, un monument!) is what Fabien Simode wrote in the l’OEil monthly (March 2021). At present rarely are such historically broad studies released, possibly because of authors’ fear of being potentially accused of postmodernist meta-narrative. In this case, the work is a comprehensive synthesis in view of the entailed chronology, geography, and thematic range. The discussed volume Od skarbca do muzeum [From a Treasure Chamber to the Museum] recently published for Polish readers tackles the process of European collectorship crystalizing and first museums being its consequence, mainly Italian and several northern ones, from the Capitoline Museum in Rome (1471) up to London’s British Museum (1753). Subsequent volumes are already being prepared. Titled L’ancrage européen, 1789–1850, the second one is dedicated to the history of the museum consolidating into a permanent and significant element of European culture, close to the institution we know today: started by the revolutionary Louvre (1793), this history is created by the vast part of the major museums of today’s Western Europe. Finally, volume three A la conquête du monde, 1850–2020 is the most extensive of them all both chronologically and territorially, as well as in view of the number of museums and their activity discussed. Author’s considerations encompass museums’ expansion to Eastern Europe including Russia, and then eventually to the rest of the world: Asia, Africa, both Americas, mainly the territories connected with the West through colonial bonds; the United States, being the area where today’s dominating world centres have been formed, is analysed separately. At that point the book’s title: world history, gains its full relevance, and relates both to the interwar period in the democratic and totalitarian world, WW II, and to the long contemporary era.
12
71%
EN
Taking as a starting point the German tradition of creating xylotheques, i.e. libraries containing wood samples disguised as books, I recall the biography of Wiktor Kozłowski (1791–1858), the first Polish creator of xylotheques, forester, collector and author of dictionaries of forest terminology against the backdrop of the history of the organisation of the governmental forest service in the Kingdom of Poland. I put forward the thesis that the reorganisation of forestry in the spirit of the Enlightenment’s project of dominating nature caused anxiety, which found expression, among other places, in Karol  Kurpiński’s opera Leśniczy z Kozienickiej Puszczy [The Forester from the Kozieniecka Primeval Forest]. In the first half of the 19th century, the figure of the “young” and “old” forester was juxtaposed, already heralding the rift between the Enlightenment and romantic approaches to the natural world. Wiktor Kozłowski’s xylotheques represent the Enlightenment approach – related to the passion for cataloguing, preparing and objectifying as tools of control over the natural world.
PL
Obierając za punkt wyjścia niemiecką tradycję tworzenia ksylotek, czyli bibliotek zawierających próbki drewna ucharakteryzowane na książki, przypominam biografię Wiktora Kozłowskiego (1791–1858), pierwszego polskiego twórcy ksylotek, leśnika, kolekcjonera i autora słowników terminologii leśnej na tle historii organizacji rządowej służby leśnej w Królestwie Polskim. Opisuję, jak reorganizacja leśnictwa w duchu oświeceniowego projektu dominacji nad przyrodą wywołała niepokój, który znalazł wyraz między innymi w operze Karola Kurpińskiego Leśniczy z Kozienickiej Puszczy. W pierwszej połowie XIX wieku zestawiano postaci „młodego” i „starego” leśniczego, zapowiadające rozdźwięk między oświeceniowym i romantycznym podejściem do świata przyrody. Ksyloteki Wiktora Kozłowskiego reprezentują podejście oświeceniowe – związane z pasją katalogowania, preparowania i obiektywizowania jako narzędzi kontroli.
PL
W Państwowym Archiwum Historycznym Litwy w Wilnie znajduje się wiele ciekawych źródeł do dziejów nauki polskiej w XIX wieku. Należy do nich korespondencja profesora Adama Ferdynanda Adamowicza z lat 1848-1867. Listy pisane do niego i przez niego ukazują stan życia umysłowego Polaków na Wileńszczyźnie. Niniejszy artykuł przedstawia autorów tych listów i komentuje ich treść.
EN
Many interesting sources to the history of Polish science in the 19th century are kept in the State Historical Archive of Lithuania in Vilnius. Among them is a correspondence written to and by Professor Adam Ferdynand Adamowicz from 1848 to 1867. These letters present the status of intellectual life in the region of Vilnius in the Partition period. This article comments the letters and describes their authors.
EN
J.E. Gilibert – his life and work in the light of a correspondence and testimonies of his time
Organon
|
2017
|
vol. 49
265-280
EN
The first research on Prehistory in Alsace took place in 1865 in Haut–Rhin, in the foothold of a naturalistic society founded in 1859 in Colmar. Collections of stone tools and fossil bones attributed to prehistoric times, were built from this period, in a way inspired by the discoveries made in France and Belgium. After these early beginnings, the four changes of nationality that took place in Alsace between 1870 and 1945 led to deep changes in the life of scientific societies and museums. Nevertheless, prehistoric research has continued in this region despite these constraints. Researchers like Paul Wernert took advantage of this situation by establishing the link in their work between the French and German traditions.
EN
Thirty years ago, at the occasion of the tercentenary of the birth of Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788), one of the leading figures in French science and literature of the Enlightenment, a volume devoted to the relationships between him and Poland was published. Still today, it is one of the few contributions to the study of the circulation of knowledge and ideas between France and Central and Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century. Here, we analyze its contents, and, more generally, we outline a reflection on the historiography of Buffon’s relations with the European culture of his time. We briefly examine the different agents of diffusion and their role in the (often biased) transmission of scientific texts and conceptions from one country to another, and the ways these agents have been studied by historians in Buffon’s case, in particular by the authors of Buffon (1707–1788) et la Pologne. Certainly, this work did not attempt to bring general conclusions, but it contributed to give a first sketch of the complex networks of relationships between French and Polish naturalists in the late eighteenth century. It would be valuable, nevertheless, to develop a more comprehensive approach of these processes, to consider multipolar rather than bilateral exchanges, and to take into account the role of other (German, Russian…) cultural zones.
FR
Ce volume, paru il y a maintenant treize ans, faisait suite à un colloque tenu au Centre de l’Académie Polonaise des Sciences à Paris à l’occasion du tricentenaire de la naissance du naturaliste français Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788). Consacré aux relations entretenues par le grand naturaliste français des Lumières avec la Pologne, il constitue une rare contribution à l’étude des circulations de savoirs scientifiques entre la France et l’Europe Centrale et Orientale au xviiie siècle. Le parcourir, treize ans après sa publication, nous invite à évoquer l’historiographie relative à Buffon et à ses rapports avec la culture de son temps.
EN
The geographical names of the rivers which occur in great numbers in Śpiewy historyczne (Historical chants) by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, represent some kind of imagined water circulation system. The idea of such a system, the one closely mingled with the past of the nation, was considered an important element not only of mental geography but also of national identity. The making of “ourselves” became a hot topic of public debate after the Congress of Vienna (1815), promising Polish people the right to cultural autonomy at least. Border rivers play a significant role in Niemczewicz’s work and they are recognized by the author as a basic element of natural, nonhuman world. They may also assume the role of state borders but only as a result of a combat. The riverbanks in Śpiewy historyczne are therefore frequently considered to be bloody battlefields. Getting across the river was a crucial moment in the biography of national heroes. On the map of Śpiewy two shared rivers, namely the Dnieper and Dniester, are conceived of as a boundary between the Western and Eastern world on the one hand, and between the civilization and barbarian people on the other. In view of the didactic and therapeutic functions of Niemcewicz’s work, all “historical” rivers mentioned in it play the role of the rivers of memory. They are thought of as instruments in remembering the lost homeland, by analogy to the rivers of Babylon, and envisaged as bedrocks of Polish self-consciousness and identity. The water circulation system in Śpiewy historyczne is similar to the images present in other works of the period, e.g. in the works of Staszic, Surowiecki, Woronicz. This idea and image would moreover be useful as a starting point to analyse the biographically and politically important phenomenon of “domestic” river in the works of Mickiewicz and Syrokomla.
EN
Jacob Theodor Klein (1685–1759) was one of the most prominent collectors and naturalists operating in Gdańsk in the 18th century. Apart from natural specimens, he was gathering nature drawings, acquired from sources such as Samuel Niedenthal’s body of work or Hiob Ludolf’s legacy. In the mid-1720s, Klein commissioned David Schultz, a draughtsperson based in Gdańsk, to produce visual documentation of the Museum Kleinianum. Afterwards, the task was taken over by two of Klein’s daughters, Dorothea Juliana Gralath and Theodora Renata Klein, who made in-situ studies of selected museum exhibits with the former designing vignette illustrations for her father’s editions as well. Engravings modelled after the nature drawings from Klein’s collection often illustrated his scientific publications. Earlier ones, from the late 1720s and early 1730s, were made by Gdańsk-based Peter Böse and Johann Friedrich Mylius; later ones, from the mid-1730s to the end of the 1740s, by professional artists from Nuremberg, Leipzig and Halle on the Saale, among whom Georg Wolfgang Knorr, Johann Wilhelm Stör and Johann Michael Seligmann deserve special mention. Klein’s work consolidated the naturalist community of Gdańsk and promoted academic networking within the region.
19
45%
PL
W artykule rozważam problem ontycznej różnicy między historią naturalną a historią społeczną. Zagadnienie analizuję w kontekście pięciu kwestii szczegółowych: problemu tempa zmian jakościowych oraz jednorodności czasu, problemu (an)izotropowości czasu, kwestii „końca historii”, zagadnienia całościowości (totalności) dziejów oraz problemu różnicy między historycznością a czasowością. Dochodzę do wniosku, że w aspekcie kategorii czasu (pod względem struktury zmienności) trudno znaleźć istotne różnice między tymi dwoma rodzajami procesów historycznych.
EN
In this paper I undertake the question of differences between natural and social history. I consider five detailed issues: the pace of qualitative changes and homogeneity of time, the arrow of time, the end of history, the totality of history, and the difference between historic nature and temporality. I emphasize that the differences between natural and social history are not ontologically essential.
first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.