This book presents a complex picture of the universe and man from historical and contemporary perspectives, including philosophical, theological, and scientific perspectives. It consists of several papers by authors from various fields, and it is divided into three main parts. The first part addresses some interesting questions from the history of philosophy and theology; the second part focuses on contemporary astrophysics and astrobiology and the question of extraterrestrial life; the third part considers the ethical and environmental dimensions of these questions.
The presented analysis juxtaposes a half-peripheral, essentially dystopian masculinity depicted in a Polish fantasy universe (including over 30 volumes by Polish and Russian authors of both genders) and a projected (utopian?) masculinity at the heart of another universe, most of all addressed to girls. Visions of masculinity presented in both the universes are the bases of comparative analysis conducted in the article. The differences between the considered warriors are made conspicuous within a few spheres of their relations and actions, from their purity and body care, to their attitudes to women and erotic relationships they engage in. What concludes the article is the analysis of the protagonists’ and narrators reactions to non-heteronormative behaviours (trace amounts of which appear in the world of the Factory Zone [Polish: Fabryczna Zona] novels, yet feature opulently and overtly in Shadowhunters).
Although it is not until we get to Aristotle that we can be absolutely certain of finding a spherical Earth in ancient cosmology, Diogenes Laertios considers it to have been first conceived by Pythagoras and Parmenides. In both cases, however, we in point of fact do not have at our disposal any additional, adequate sources. Nevertheless, the changes that took place in cosmologies between the 6th and 5th centuries BCE suggest that they are the result of a new cosmological concept. This was based on just precisely a spherical Earth being at the center of the spherical heaven – the universe. Moreover, so far as the concept of a spherical Earth was the product of metaphysical speculation, reports by the representatives of the Italian branch of philosophy would be adequate. Due to an insufficient preservation of the works of the early Pythagorean tradition and the significant influence of Parmenides on the thinkers that followed, it can be presumed that it was Parmenides who was the first to visualize a spherical shape for the Earth.
CS
Ačkoli se s kulovitou Zemí můžeme v antické kosmologii s naprostou jistotou setkat až u Aristotela, Diogenés Laertios ji přisuzuje jako prvním Pýthagorovi a Parmenidovi. V obou případech však de facto nemáme k dispozici další adekvátní podklady. Změny, k nimž došlo v kosmologiích mezi 6. a 5. stoletím před naším letopočtem, nicméně naznačují, že jsou důsledkem nového kosmologického pojetí. To se zakládalo právě na kulovité Zemi ve středu sférického nebe – univerza. Pokud byla koncepce kulovité Země navíc produktem metafyzické spekulace, zprávy zmiňující představitele italské větve filosofie budou adekvátní. Vzhledem k nedostatečnému zachování rané pýthagorejské tradice a významnému vlivu Parmenida na následující myslitele se lze domnívat, že právě Parmenidés nahlédl kulovitý tvar Země jako první.
In the essay geopoetics is proposed as a viable cultural project. First, the author presents synthetically the various – scientific, philosophical, poetic – affluents to geopoetics which the poems and waybooks incorporate and carry. Then he explains the etymology and meaning of the term, pointing out that geopoetics is concerned with the state of the human being in the universe, the relationship between the human being and the planet Earth, and human presence in the world.
The article presents a consideration of the space of nature in the work Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. The variously treated and read space, in which the main character of the book functions, becomes a contribution to reflection on the place of nature in the human environment. Nature understood as the place of plant and animal life, nature as part of the cosmic universe, as well as the myth of Nature. The article also shows how Olga Tokarczuk’s book fits into environmental criticism.
The article examines spatial relationships in Herbert George Wells’s short stories “The Door in the Wall” and “The Beautiful Suit” analyzing the semantic diversity of garden space in cultural, mythological and religious aspects as ‘garden-home’, ‘garden-paradise’ and ‘garden-universe’. This triadic model is determined by the motion of the protagonist wandering through space and leads to the creation of a concentric world picture determined by the archetype of the garden.
Conceptual exactitude is one of the appanages of philosophical thinking and metaphysical thinking specifically. A slight semantic nuance may, in the case of a particular philosophical concept, lead to inaccuracy of thought. What thinking inaccuracy may then conceptual inaccuracy lead to? The consequences may be exceedingly disturbing unless and until corrections and reinstatements are made. This paper aims to use one translation example to highlight just such an extreme historical blunder in the Czechoslovak philosophical milieu. I will try to indicate, using precisely one of the key concepts of Leibniz’s metaphysics – the Latin contingentia, or the French contingence and its derivatives – that translations of philosophical texts may not be permanently reliable unless they are periodically revisited. The above concept of Leibniz and its mistranslation is a striking example of this.
This paper studies the ontology of the term “ex nihilo” as used by physicists in the context of constructing quantum cosmogenesis models. The meaning of the term “ex nihilo” in the representative approaches of Tryon and Fomin, Zeldovich–Grishchuk, Vilenkin and Hartle–Hawking is indicated and, in each case, the word “nothing” turns out to be actually “something”. We also examine the epistemological status of quantum cosmogony models and show that they are effective theories of the early evolution of the universe at the Planck epoch. These theories’ baseline – the low level of emergence – is always a physical reality (e.g. quantum vacuum fluctuations). The high level of emergence is a de Sitter universe. The mechanisms of emergence are quantum processes and lead to a classical world. The multiplicity of these approaches corresponds to the different proposals for quantum mechanism. Moreover, the paper undertakes Woleński’s question: “Is physics based on philosophical assumptions?” The question is placed in the context of cosmology understood as the physics of the universe. We argue that if such assumptions cannot be found in the models of quantum cosmogony, neither can they be found in cosmology as such. In the paper it is demonstrated that all models of quantum origin are realizations of the idea of emergence of the classical world from quantum rules acting in the quantum universe, thus a lower state of the emergence cannot be empty at the very beginning.
PL
W pracy przedstawiamy modele kosmologiczne kosmogenezy kwantowej. Wszechświat powstaje w nich na drodze pewnego mechanizmu kwantowego. W pracy wskazujemy też na różne ontologie terminu ex nihilo stosowanego przez fizyków proponujących modele kosmogenezy kwantowej. Za każdym razem wskazujemy, że owo „nic” jest „czymś”: a to punktem w podejściu S. Hawkinga, zbiorem pustym w interpretacji G. McCabe’a, stanem próżni kwantowej, zerowym stanem nicości czasoprzestrzeni, etc. W kontekście krytyki modeli kosmogenezy kwantowej stawiamy dwa problemy: (1) Jaka jest ontologia modeli kosmogenezy kwantowej ex nihilo; dokładnie samego stanu ex-nihilo? (2) Jakie jest wyjaśnienie faktu, że fizycy używają terminu „nicość”, który należy do obszaru filozofii czy też teologii, gdy w praktyce badawczej okazuje się, że zawsze zakładana jest jakaś rzeczywistość, którą banalizują. Na pierwsze z postawionych wcześniej pytań odpowiadamy, że w fizyce i kosmologii kwantowej nie jest możliwe zbudowanie modelu kosmogenezy kwantowej ex nihilo, oraz że te konstrukcje teoretyczne powinny być nazywane modelami emergentnymi: z pewnej rzeczywistości kwantowej wyłania się nowa rzeczywistość wszechświata klasycznego. Metod opisu tego przejścia dostarczają teorie efektywne a rekonstrukcja poznawcza daje się ująć w postaci procesu emergencji epistemologicznej. Na drugie pytanie odpowiadamy, powołując się na klasyczne rozróżnienie Reichenbacha kontekstu odkrycia i kontekstu uzasadniania. Pisząc wstępy do swoich prac badawczych, fizycy starają się je odpowiednio zareklamować i nadać im marketingowe tytuły. W dalszej części pracy przedstawiany jest rachunek, w którym muszą oni poczynić pewne założenia, aby wyprowadzić z formalizmu wnioski o charakterze fizycznym. W tej zasadniczej części pracy tkwią założenia co do tego, jak rozumiana jest nicość. Nasze badania ontologii terminu ex nihilo w modelach kosmologicznych powstania wszechświata są również motywowane próbą odpowiedzi na klasyczne pytanie Jana Woleńskiego: „czy w fizyce występują założenia o charakterze filozoficznym?”. My adresujemy to pytanie do kosmologii rozumianej jako fizyka wszechświata. Jeśli chcemy szukać założeń filozoficznych w fizyce, to właśnie w początkach wszechświata. Case study modeli kosmogenezy kwantowej pokazuje explicite, że takich założeń nie czynimy w praktyce badawczej, chociaż używanie terminu metafizycznego ex nihilo mogłoby to sugerować.
The paper develops the implicit as well as explicit meaning which evokes Stanisław Lem’s concept of the Body and the Corporality portrayed in the novel Return from the Stars. Moreover, Lem’s novel about an astronaut Hal Bregg and his return on Earth is analysed. In this novel author uses the idea of Einstein’s twin paradox. Hal Bergg-the stereotype of masculinity-is confronted with decadent and egalitarian society, which may be refers to the reunion masculinity with femininity. Such storyline shows the multidimensionality of the issue of Corporality, and presents the Body as a epistemological metaphor of modernism and postmodernism. In addition, the Body is depicted in the Return of the Stars as a figure of a mask and a costume. Furthermore, the Body in Lem’s novel is also interpreted as part of the Universe-as the boundary between what is temporary and what is infinite and transcendent.
The article deals with selected aspects of two well-known publications on the multiplicity of worlds and extraterrestrial life that emerged at the end of the 17th century. These are Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686) by Bernard de Fontenelle and Cosmotheoros (1698) by Christiaan Huygens. In the first part, the article focuses primarily on how both authors understand the position of man in an inhabited and unbounded universe. Fontenelle and Huygens provide in their texts a convincing refutation of the often repeated notion that the idea of the infinite universe awakened terror and fears in early modern intellectuals. Actually, for them, the unbounded universe meant a celebration of reason that is able to emancipate itself from a geocentric superstition and anthropocentrism. At the same time, in the spirit of the early Enlightenment, it was also a celebration of the cosmic universality of reason. In its second part, the article deals with so-called cognitive passions: especially with fear, amazement and curiosity. The analysis of Huygens’ and Fontenelles’ works confirms and deepens some points of Lorraine Daston’s research. It turns out that at the end of the 17th century, fear and admiration were clearly understood as manifestations of ignorance and backwardness, although in the previous philosophical tradition they were associated with piety and the beginning of philosophy. Compared to it, traditionally condemned curiosity has become a legitimate, even desirable, characteristics of a true scientist.
CS
Článek se zabývá vybranými aspekty dvou známých publikací o mnohosti světů a mimozemském životě, které vyšly na konci 17. století. Jedná se o Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686) Bernarda de Fontenelle a Cosmotheoros (1698) Christiaana Huygense. V první části se článek soustředí především na to, jak oba autoři chápou postavení člověka v obydleném a neohraničeném univerzu. Fontenelle a Huygens poskytují ve svých textech přesvědčivé vyvrácení často opakované představy, že idea neohraničeného vesmíru probouzela v novověkých lidech hrůzu a obavy. Ve skutečnosti pro ně neohraničený vesmír znamenal oslavu rozumu, který se dokáže vymanit z geocentrické pověry a antropocentrismu. Současně se v protoosvícenském duchu jednalo i o oslavu vesmírné všudypřítomnosti rozumu. Ve druhé části se článek zabývá tzv. kognitivními vášněmi: zejména strachem, úžasem a zvědavostí. Analýza děl Huygense a Fontenella potvrzuje některé poznatky Lorraine Dastonové a prohlubuje je. Ukazuje se, že na konci 17. století strach i obdiv byly již jednoznačně chápány jako projev nevědomosti a zaostalosti, ačkoliv dříve byly spojovány se zbožností a počátkem filosofování. Proti tomu dříve odsuzovaná zvědavost se stala legitimní, ba dokonce žádoucí vlastností opravdového badatele.
The aim of this paper is to present and interpret the issues connected with Crowleyan perspective on the death motif, which is strictly correlated with the Thelemic geneal-ogy of the mankind. It is also connected with the voluntaristic and pragmatic percep-tion of reality, which can be found in the writings of Aleister Crowley. The analysis comprises the issues of physical death compared with the spiritual one. Moreover, author brings up the question of the consequences of being belong to soul and the shell of the astral world as a flesh at the same time.
Some problems are too subjective, too intimate, too proximal, to admit in principle of any scientific solution: Why is anything you? Is there free will? Is death the end? Other problems are too objective, too macroscopic: Why is there a universe? Why is there anything? What is it to be? Why does mathematics exist? Why does anything happen? Scientific explanation is therefore essentially subject to at least two types of limit, subjective and objective, even though other problems prima facie straddle the subjective/objective divide: What is consciousness? Why is there such a time as the present? Why is there any distinction between right and wrong? Classical (Newtonian-Einsteinian) science largely brackets these problems, but the interpretations of quantum physics variously force them upon us. They only admit of solutions if God exists, there is free-will, and, if some existence is your existence, then you are an immortal soul.
Współcześnie istnienie nauki oraz jej sukcesy w różnych dziedzinach nikogo nie dziwią. Tak bardzo przyzwyczailiśmy się do funkcjonowania nauki, że nie pytamy nawet, dlaczego my, ludzie, potrafimy naukę uprawiać. Prawa przyrody traktuje się jako „dane”, lecz tylko nieliczni zastanawiają się, skąd się one wzięły. Czy to, że umysł ludzki posiada zdolność racjonalnego myślenia i skutecznego odkrywania tajemnic natury, czyni z nas kogoś wyjątkowego, czy przeciwnie, jest nic nie znaczącym zbiegiem okoliczności? Czy nasze istnienie ma jakiś głębszy sens? Czy jest ono zwykłym przypadkiem, czy też może wpisane jest w prawa przyrody? Jaka jest relacja między nauką a religią? Rozważania w wymienionych wyżej obszarach tematycznych podejmuje Paul Davies w przemówieniu wygłoszonym na uroczystości wręczenia mu Nagrody Templetona.
EN
Today no one is surprised at the existence of science and its successes in various domains. We have used to the functioning of science so much that we don’t ask why we, people, can pursue science at all. Laws of nature are regarded as a “given” and only few are wondering how they emerged. Is the fact that human mind has the ability of rational thinking and successful discovering the mysteries of nature a basis for concluding that we are special, or, on the contrary, is it a meaningless coincidence? Does our existence have any deeper meaning? Is it a mere accident or is it written into the laws of nature? Author considers these themes in address given at the ceremony of Templeton Prize.
All philosophers, beginning with the pre-Socratics, through Plato and Aristotle, and up to Thomas Aquinas, accepted as a certain that the world as a whole existed eternally. The foundation for the eternity of the world was the indestructible and eternal primal building material of the world, a material that existed in the form of primordial material elements (the Ionians), in the form of ideas (Plato), or in the form of matter, eternal motion, and the first heavens (Aristotle). The article outlines the main structure of the philosophical theory of creation ex nihilo developed by St. Thomas Aquinas and indebted to his metaphysical thought. It shows the wisdom-based and ratiocinative foundation of the rational cognition of reality—reality that comes from the personal creative act of God. It concludes that the perception that the beings called to existence by the personal act of God the Creator are intelligible is the ultimate rational justification for the fact that our human cognition, love, and spiritual creativity are rational.
The article presents the universe in cosmology of the Venerable Bede, British scholar of the eighth century. Bede’s description of the world as whole was made by the knowledge of ancient (Pliny the Elder) and Christian (St. Isidore of Seville). Geocentric cosmos conceived as a system of fixed stars and the planets on the circles. Celestial bodies are made of fire. On Earth, there are four elements. Bede was interested in philosophy of nature and enrichment of scientific knowledge with the theological reflection. Cosmology of Bede represents an important stage of development of science in Western Christianity in the early Middle Ages.
PL
Artykuł przedstawia wszechświat w kosmologii Bedy Czcigodnego, brytyjskiego uczonego z VIII wieku. Beda opisywał świat za pomocą elementów wiedzy antycznej (Pliniusz Starszy) i chrześcijańskiej (św. Izydor z Sewilli). Kosmos pojmował jako geocentryczny system gwiazd osadzonych na sferze niebieskiej i planet krążących na okręgach. Ciała niebieskie zbudowane są z ognia. Na Ziemi występują cztery żywioły. Będą interesuje się przyrodoznawstwem i wzbogaca wiedzę naukową z pomocą refleksji teologicznej. Kosmologia Bedy stanowi ważny etap rozwoju nauk w zachodnim chrześcijaństwie wczesnego średniowiecza.
Henryk M. Gôrecki’s oeuvre is characteristic in its almost constant oscillation between meditation on the world, the universe, nature, and implication in history, tradition, culture; between the delight in the beauty of nature and the delight in culture. ‘We were no longer the centre of the universe, we became nothing.’This idea of the composer was fundamental for his creation of his II Symphony. Its two-movement form was a consequence of his own understanding of the Copernican revolution. Its Latin text was derived from the Book of Psalms; due to the circumstances of its commission, it also includes a fragment from Copernicus tractate. The distribution of tension in the first movement is non-trivial. Judging by the composer’s “cosmic” fascinations, the beginning is a “Big Bang”. The central climax of this movement appears in its finale, when the huge chorus sings and cries the words of the Psalms. In Movement Two we are ushered into a different, a lyrical world of contemplation. The soloists are singing in traditional and simplest possible way. The chorus, harmonized modally is singing the words of Nicolaus Copernicus about the “heaven” - “beauty” relation. Chorale-like, they place us in a transcendental dimension. The work is crowned with long-standing yet pulsating sonorities of the orchestral mass in pentatonic interval structure, resolved into an A flat major triad: in the tradition of Baroque rhetoric, depicts emotions of stillness, of the calm of the night; in late Romanticism - the emotion of mild and solemn. Perhaps these sonorities of the orchestral mass in the finale - that is exactly the sound of the Universe as Górecki has been expressed?
This article contains an analysis of the concept of harmony in Empedocles' philosophical framework. The term itself appears several times in his poem On nature in different meanings. The concept of harmony is portrayed in this article in relation to active principles of Love and Repulsion and four passive principles. Moreover, harmony is discussed from the perspective of balance between the individual passive elements and from the perspective of the ontical condition for the unity of archai.
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