Even a preliminary review of philosophical works left by Archbishop Joseph Życiński reveals that he had a clearly outlined philosophical program. Unfortunately, his premature death has not allowed him to fully implement it. His early fascination with science resulted in his original approach to philosophy of science. Rational methods employed by science turned his attention to rationality as an ontological property of the world. This, in turn, led him to an idea of a renewal of metaphysics (although he never used this expression). New style of metaphysics should consist in maintaining traditional 'big questions of philosophy' but treating them with more extensive help of analytic method. This approach should also elaborate an analysis of mutual relations between various philosophical systems. Życiński believed that Whitehead's style of doing philosophy could provide an inspiration to this kind of renewed metaphysics. After becoming a bishop his interests turned to more practical issues related to the contemporary increase of irrationality. He extensively wrote against postmodernism and religious fundamentalism, especially as opposing biological theory of evolution.
The paper contains some arguments against the article ”Philosophical Assumptions of Science. Cultural and Historical Perspective” of Magdalena Górna. The author argues that the formal methodology is – contrary to what Górna says in her paper – neither ”traditional” nor ”dogmatic”, and formulates some suggestions on his own view on the problem of the relations between science and philosophy.
Kazimierz Twardowski is the father of the modern Polish analytical philosophy. One of the most important stamp of this philosophical style is referring - in philosophical investigations - to achievements and methods of natural sciences. The article analyses this plot in Kazimierz Twardowski's philosophical works. It contains, in particular, a reconstruction of Twardowski's views concerning the classification of sciences, the methodological status of philosophy and psychology and the mind-body problem. Some not commonly known facts concerning the sources of Twardowski's interests in philosophy and science are mentioned.
The author presents the main results of his long-term studies on the life and the work of Galileo Galilei within the group of OBI. He mentions his most important publications from this area and points to some problems that are worth elaborating upon in the future.
Laudan’s contribution to the philosophy of science was an attempt to reject the unacceptable evaluative relativism that had been introduced into the interpretation of the scientific revolution. He concludes that the key to understanding scientific progress is not as an approximation to truth but rather with reference to the problem-solving ability of theories. Therefore Laudan proposed his reticulational model in which the tension that arises among theories, methodological rules and cognitive aims is kept in dynamic equilibrium through a process of gradual, piecemeal adjustment. The problem is that the model is highly qualitative, yet it promises quantitative parameters of evaluation, and it is not clear how a comparative evaluative scale of this sort would be determined. Hence, though the reticulation model is valuable as a description of scientific evaluative practice, it does not provide an effective means for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable developments. It is inadequate as a normative theory that prescribes appropriate evaluative decisions in specific contexts.
SK
Laudanovým príspevkom do filozofie vedy bol jeho pokus odmietnuť hodnotiaci relativizmus zavedený do interpretácií vedeckej revolúcie. Usudzoval, že kľúčovým pre pochopenie vedeckého pokroku nie je približovanie sa k pravde, ale schopnosť teórie riešiť problémy. Preto Laudan navrhol svoj „retikulárny model“, v ktorom je napätie vznikajúce medzi teóriami, metodologickými pravidlami a kognitívnymi cieľmi udržované v dynamickej rovnováhe prostredníctvom pozvoľných a postupných krokov. Problémom tohto modeluje je, že vyžaduje kvalitatívno-kvantitatívne parametre hodnotenia, a pritom jasne neurčuje žiadnu hodnotiacu škálu takéhoto druhu. Retikulárny model teda neprináša efektívne prostriedky na rozlíšenie medzi prijateľným a neprijateľným vývojom vedy. Laudanova metodológia tak nie je normatívnou teóriou schopnou predpísať primerané hodnotiace kritériá v špecifickom kontexte a vymedziť presné podmienky zabezpečujúce vedecký pokrok.
Nowadays, computers are in common use, both in experimental and theoretical research. It is worth considering if the implementation of a new, universal research tool has significantly changed the science of the end of 20th century. The crucial question which I will try to answer is if computers have revolutionized the scientific research. In order to find the answer, I will describe modern digitally aided science, taking into consideration the research conducted in the greatest elementary physics laboratory. Subsequently, I will refer to the classic concept of scientific revolution proposed by Thomas S. Kuhn. Finally, I will answer the question related to digital revolution in science.
Marian Smoluchowski solved the greatest scientific problem of his time. It was the explanation of the phenomenon of the Brownian motion. In the article, I show that Smoluchowski in fact in this explanation used an ontological interpretation of the causality principle, although in his writings he applied it also in the epistemological interpretation. This is understandable because in the scientific practice some kinds of ontological commitment are required.
This is a review of research conducted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in the field of the history of philosophy of nature and the history of philosophy of science in Poland in the inter-war period. In spite of the domination of positivistic philosophy that tended to ignore philosophy of nature, this kind of philosophizing was quite popular in Poland. The review begins with a summary of works related to the history of science, and then deals, in some detail, with works on the theory of evolution and the theory of relativity, especially with their philosophical aspects. The remaining part of the review is devoted to the principal personalities of that period, namely: Władysław Heinrich, Władysław Natanson, Tadeusz Grabowski, Marian Smoluchowski, Zygmunt Zawirski and Joachim Metallmann.
This paper is a short preface to the anniversary issue of our periodical. The author refers to some of the important events in its history as well as to the figures behind the journal.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, Wladyslaw Heinrich introduced a new style of philosophizing in the Cracow rather traditional philosophical milieu. His way of presenting philosophical ideas in a strict contact with empirical sciences arose great interest and found several talented followers. In the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow the manuscript is preserved bearing the title 'Theory of Cognition'; it was written by Heinrich in 1912. The author presents and critically assesses his 'philosophy of nature' as it can be reconstructed from the above mentioned manuscript.
Scientific works of Wladyslaw Natanson (1864-1937) are briefly reviewed, especially his achievements in the theory of irreversible processes and in the statistical theory of radiation. His philosophical and methodological views are also presented.
It is sometimes argued that beauty and science have nothing in common. This is not necessarily true. When speaking of beauty in science we are touching two branches of knowledge: aesthetics and physics. We show that they are connected, permeate each other and work together to give good scientific results. Scientific theories and aesthetics theories exhibit some similarities not only during the creation phase, but also during the application phase. We examine two aesthetic criteria, namely symmetry and simplicity, which are valuable tools in choosing the correct scientific theory.
This paper presents Stanislaw Zaremba’s contribution to the philosophy of science. Zaremba is widely known as a mathematican but his philosophical works are less known. His philosophical view of physics and mathematics is strlongly influenced by the French philosophy of science (H. Poincré, P. Duhem). We could also find parallels with D. Hilbert’s view on axiomatisation of physics. He proposed some interesting methodological concepts (e.g. distinction between two stages of theory building: creative and axiomatic, which is similar to later famous Reichenbach’s distinction between “the context of discovery and the context of justification.”). Zaremba presented consistent view of the theory of physics as a deductive structure but certain assumptions related to methods of physics are controversial. His philosophical articles were known to continental philosophers of science, mainly French ones. Unfortunately, Polish philosophers of science from the Lvov–Warsaw School only occasionally cited Zaremba’s papers. It seems that members of the Viena Circle did not know Zaremba’s philosophical papers. In this paper I try to show that Zaremba’s philosophical publications are an important, but forgotten, part of Polish philosophy of science before World War II.
In 1922 appeared the first, proof copy of a magazine which two years later was titled “Modern Medicine. Studies on the history of medicine”. The idea to create a new periodical was born among the historians of science, who focused their scientific interest on the topics of medicine’s past. The major purpose was to make a thorough revision of methodological views that usually did not go beyond the positivist or Marxist model. They aspired to some kind of “opening up” to the content present in philosophy and the history of science, including in particular epistemological theories of Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn or Michael Foucault. Consistent references were made to the experiences and findings of cultural anthropology, psychology, sociology and history of arts, highlighting the problems which in national medical historiography had been previously rarely, if ever, present. “Classical” form and content of works published in the magazine was not excluded, though, since the purpose of the editorial staff was not so much to fight against the traditional model of the history of medicine as its enrichment and gradual transformation in the spirit of contemporary needs. The aim of this article is to present as completely as possible – both the content of “Modern Medicine” and the achievements of people contributing to the magazine for the past twenty years of its existence. It is also an attempt to evaluate to what extent the guidelines set two decades ago have been realized in practice.
The paper presents a short survey of standpoints in the philosophy of science related to the problem of the philosophical assumptions of science. These assumptions refer to the special kind of philosophical beliefs that scientists might not be aware of and that create a peculiar foundation of their work. The paper represents the point of view of culture studies. In this framework, science is described as one of the spheres of culture. The metaphysical assumptions of scientific theories as reconstructed by some philosophers are briefly presented. Scientific studies, as seen from the culture studies perspective, treat both philosophy and science as the spheres of culture. In respect to this view, the paper scrutinizes the historically changing philosophical concepts of science (from those, which perceive science as an autonomous system to those that stress its relations to other socio-cultural phenomena) as well as some controversial issues related to the problem of the philosophical assumptions of science.
Lifeworld realism and quantum-physical realism are taken as experience-dependent conceptions of the world that become objects of explicit reflection when confronted with context-external discourses. After a brief sketch of the two contexts of experience-lifeworld and quantum physics-and their realist interpretations, I will discuss the quantum world from the perspective of lifeworld realism. From this perspective, the quantum world-roughly speaking-has to be either unreal or else constitute a different reality. Then, I invert the perspective and examine the lifeworld from the standpoint of quantumphysical realism. This conception of the lifeworld has gained momentum from new research results in recent decades. Despite its experiential basis, quantum-physical realism bears an ambiguity akin to that of lifeworld realism. While the perspectival inversion serves to highlight the problem, it also contributes to an improved understanding of lifeworld-realism.
The article deals with the problem of time in the context of several theories of modem physics. This fundamental concept inevitably arises in physical theories, but so far there is no adequate description of it in the philosophy of science. In the theory of relativity, quantum field theory. Standard Model of particle physics, theory of loop quantum gravity, superstring theory and other most recent theories the idea of time is shown explicitly or not. Sometimes, such as in the special theory of relativity, it plays a significant role and sometimes it does not. But anyway it exists and is implied by the content of the theory, which in some cases directly includes its mathematical tools. Fundamental difference of space-time processes in microcosm and macrocosm is of particular importance for solving the problem. In this regard, a need to understand the time in the way it appears in modem physics, to describe it in the language of philosophy arises (satisfactory for time description mathematical tools also do not exist). This will give an opportunity to get closer to the answer on question of time characteristics. And even if we do not obtain the exact answer, we will still be able to formulate the right question about its nature. For this purpose, the present research carries out analysis of the key theories of modern physics with regard to historical and scientific, historical and philosophical perspectives, hi some cases, this gives an opportunity to detect the succession of the associated with time perception ideas, their development, as well as the origination of fundamentally new ones. During the analysis, the conect characteristics of time are formulated from the point of view of physical theory and the attempt to state the nature of time is made. On the ground of conducted research, the conclusions about current state of the problem and its future solution perspectives are drawn.
The commonalities Gombrich affirmed between his own positions on science, politics, and art and those of his friend Karl Popper are key to understanding both his work on the history of style and the conservative fulminations on method he published from the early 1950s onwards. United with Popper by their shared experience of exile from fascism, Gombrich failed to register the amateurish character of Popper's political theory and that his aversion to notions of social determination disabled the historian. Popper's skepticism regarding the ontological status of social collectivities and rejection of the concept of totality reinforced Gombrich's suspicions of holistic analysis and led him to fall back on naturalistic descriptions of individuals acting in a social world glued together by such commonsensical categories as "traditions" and "institutions". In this regard he is representative of the common aversion to sociology of the British intellectual establishment in the early Cold War.
Scientists, who have made significant contributions to the deepening of knowledge in their area of research, often engage in discussions concerning the ultimate explanations of the Universe. This is particularly visible in cosmology for the theories presented directly refer to the major questions raised by the philosophers such as the origin and the fate of the Universe, the nature of the physical laws and the existence of God. Stephen Hawking has made himself known as one of the most vocal speakers in this regard by insisting that the no-boundary Hartle-Hawking model can be used to explain away the need for any external agent in the creation of the Universe. In his recent popular book entitled The Grand Design written together with Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking declared the death of philosophy on the grounds that it did not stood up to the challenges of science by not answering the ultimate questions the way science is now capable of doing. The article aims at demonstrating that Hawking’s and Mlodinow’s radical claims rest on very strong and ill-justified philosophical assumptions of the model dependent realism. Although it is a philosophically legitimate standpoint, its reductive character does not permit the extent of generalization as suggested in The Grand Design.
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