The paper is devoted to the question of the principle of individuation in Bl. John Duns Scotus. This question is found in his commentary to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, namely the Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis VII, qu. 13. The first part of the paper discusses problems connected with the chronology and structure of the text, whereas the second one is presented as Scotus’s teaching on individuation. S. Dumont and T. Noone argue today on the traditional thesis about the origin of this (...) question and the remaining philosophical writings from the juvenile stage of Scotus’s philosophical work. They claim that some questions from the In Metaph., including also qu. 13 from the book, were written later or in the same time as the commentaries to Peter Lombard’s Sentences. The authors support their views by indicating the following: 1) the text the In Metaph. is better organised, 2) the vocabulary used with reference to the principle of individuation, especially the term haecceitas, is employed twice in the text In Metaph., 3) the quotations from the later works of Scotus and the works of authors who wrote somewhat later than that date of the In Metaph. hitherto presumed, 4) some stylistic terms indicate that the author of the text was a mature person. The traditional thesis is defended by I. Modrić on behalf of the Scotistic Commission. Having made a detailed analysis, Modrić rejected all the arguments from the introduction to the critical edition of the In Metaph. The author of this paper agrees with Modrić’s view. Therefore as long as we do not have a thesis to the contrary we shall hold the traditional opinion about the earlier origin of the In Metaph. in comparison to Peter Lombard’s commentaries on the Sentences. Scotus opens his lecture on individuation with a discussion of various standpoints on this issue. He divides them into positive and negative theories of individuation. This ordering ensures a clear exposition of various views without unnecessary repetitions and vagueness. Eventually, Doctor Subtilis rejects all hitherto views and provides his own solution. The principle of individuation is for him an individuating entity, the ultimate reality of the individual being. In combination with common nature it determines the most individual of possible characterisation of the individuum. This positive individuating entity is called an individual form (forma individualis) in the In Metaph., a degree of entity (gradus entis) and haecceitas. The latter became a technical term to define the Scotist principle of individuation. (shrink)

Focal brain metabolic effects detected by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) represent prospective indices of clinical status and guides to treatment design. Sampling bilateral pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC), anterior middle cingulate cortex (aMCC), and thalamus in 40 adult patients and 16 healthy controls, we examined relationships of the neurometabolites glutamate+glutamine (Glx), creatine+phosphocreatine (Cr), and choline-compounds (Cho) with OCD diagnosis and multiple symptom types. The latter included OC core symptoms (Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale - YBOCS), depressive symptoms (...) (Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale - MADRS), and general functioning (Global Assessment Scale - GAS). pACC Glx was 9.7% higher in patients than controls. Within patients, Cr and Cho correlated negatively with YBOCS and MADRS, while Cr correlated positively with the GAS. In aMCC, Cr and Cho correlated negatively with MADRS, while Cr in thalamus correlated positively with GAS. These findings present moderate support for glutamatergic and cingulocentric perspectives on OCD. Based on our prior metabolic model of OCD, we offer one possible interpretation of these group and correlational effects as consequences of a corticothalamic state of elevated glutamatergic receptor activity alongside below-normal glutamatergic transporter activity. (shrink)

The essay presents some gnoseological themes with reference to the intellect of the separated soul according to John Duns Scotus. Four questions of the Ordinatio IV, d. 45 deal with these themes. In this concret cognitive situation is possible, according to Doctor Subtilis, to get to know the new quiddities of things, in spite of a lack of the empiric cognition. It means leaving behind the conception of generic empiricism and moving to the recognition of more cognitive abilities, as in (...) Aristoteles’s conception. In a post death state intellect continues to have the memory of the quiddities of things known while still connected with the body and can remember concret things and events known by the senses during earthly life. Such a gnoseological notion evidences the cognitive continuity of the human intellect after death, its incorruptibility and cognitive ability at least as such as one had during earthly life. We can see here the connection of philosophic and theological questions, which mutually condition and penetrate each other. According to Scotus it is possible for the intellect of the separated soul to remember the past and to acquire new cognition. Moreover, it is also possible for such an intellect to know the prayers we refer to the blessed in heaven. Such an intellectual approach evidences a strong Augustinian influence on John Duns Scotus’ epistemic conception. (shrink)

Ontologies have been successfully used to assign semantics in the Semantic Web context, to support integration of data from different systems or different sources, and to enable reasoning. However, building ontologies is not a trivial task. Ontology reuse can help in this matter. The search and selection of ontologies to be reused should consider the alignment between their scope and the scope of the ontology being developed. In this paper, we discuss how goal modeling can be helpful in this context (...) and we present GO-FOR, a framework in which goals are the central elements to promote ontology reuse. GO-FOR comprises a conceptual architecture, a goal-oriented ontology development process and a supporting tool. In GO-FOR we introduce Goal-Oriented Ontology Patterns as a new type of pattern to be applied to develop ontologies in a goal-oriented approach. Results of the use of GO-FOR to build an ontology used to integrate patient examination data are also shown in this paper. (shrink)

For a free filter F on $$\omega $$ ω, endow the space $$N_F=\omega \cup \{p_F\}$$ N F = ω ∪ { p F }, where $$p_F\not \in \omega $$ p F ∉ ω, with the topology in which every element of $$\omega $$ ω is isolated whereas all open neighborhoods of $$p_F$$ p F are of the form $$A\cup \{p_F\}$$ A ∪ { p F } for $$A\in F$$ A ∈ F. Spaces of the form $$N_F$$ N F constitute the (...) class of the simplest non-discrete Tychonoff spaces. The aim of this paper is to study them in the context of the celebrated Josefson–Nissenzweig theorem from Banach space theory. We prove, e.g., that, for a filter F, the space $$N_F$$ N F carries a sequence $$\langle \mu _n:n\in \omega \rangle $$ ⟨ μ n : n ∈ ω ⟩ of normalized finitely supported signed measures such that $$\mu _n(f)\rightarrow 0$$ μ n ( f ) → 0 for every bounded continuous real-valued function f on $$N_F$$ N F if and only if $$F^*\le _K{\mathcal {Z}}$$ F ∗ ≤ K Z, that is, the dual ideal $$F^*$$ F ∗ is Katětov below the asymptotic density ideal $${\mathcal {Z}}$$ Z. Consequently, we get that if $$F^*\le _K{\mathcal {Z}}$$ F ∗ ≤ K Z, then: (1) if X is a Tychonoff space and $$N_F$$ N F is homeomorphic to a subspace of X, then the space $$C_p^*(X)$$ C p ∗ ( X ) of bounded continuous real-valued functions on X contains a complemented copy of the space $$c_0$$ c 0 endowed with the pointwise topology, (2) if K is a compact Hausdorff space and $$N_F$$ N F is homeomorphic to a subspace of K, then the Banach space C(K) of continuous real-valued functions on K is not a Grothendieck space. The latter result generalizes the well-known fact stating that if a compact Hausdorff space K contains a non-trivial convergent sequence, then the space C(K) is not Grothendieck. (shrink)

In 2006 Tomasz F. Bigaj published in English a book "Non-locality and the Possible Worlds. A Counterfactual Perspective on Quantum Entanglement". He considered the question whether a satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics in the standard form should include the assumption of a non-local, immediate influence of one part of a specific quantum system (like two electrons in the singlet state) on the other, spatially separated part of that system. Bigaj - following H. Stapp - chooses as conceptual instruments of his (...) analysis counterfactual conditional statements and possible-worlds semantics of such statements. After thorough examination of different Stapp's arguments, he reaches the conclusion "that no matter what available interpretation of counterfactuals we decide to follow, there is no need in standard quantum mechanics for measurement-included non-locality". My critique concerns mainly Bigaj's selection of conceptual tools: the counterfactuals and possible-worlds semantics. I point to the fact that such selection assumes the "necessitarian" interpretation of laws of nature in the domain of micro-objects (e.g. for systems like two electrons in the singlet state). The different, "regularist" interpretation of physical laws in that domain is possible as well, and counterfactual arguments are not valid for such interpretation. (shrink)

Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman. Malidoma Patrick Someé. New York: G.P Putnam's Sons, 1994. 311pp. $22.95 (cloth).

The first good message is to the effect that people possess reason as a source of intellectual insights, not available to the senses, as e.g. axioms of arithmetic. The awareness of this fact is called rationalism. Another good message is that reason can daringly quest for and gain new plausible insights. Those, if suitably checked and confirmed, can entail a revision of former results, also in mathematics, and - due to the greater efficiency of new ideas - accelerate science’s progress. (...) The awareness that no insight is secured against revision, is called fallibilism. This modern fallibilistic rationalism, i.e. the belief in the attainability of inviolable truths of reason which would forever constitute the foundations of knowledge. Fallibilistic rationalism is based on the idea that any problem-solving consists in processing information. Its results vary with respect to informativeness and its reverse - certainty. It is up to science to look for highly informative solutions, in spite of their uncertainty, and then to make them more certain through testing against suitable evidence. To account for such cognitive processes, one resorts to the conceptual apparatus of logic, informatics, and cognitive science. (shrink)

There seems to be something mysterious about applications of for- mal systems, including those of logic, to empirical reality 1 . If logic is to be applied to empirical situations, like those described in an ordinary lan- guage, then { it seems to some people { its statements cannot be necessary, or analytic, propositions. However, they are both applicable and necessary. This supposed puzzle constitutes a signicant part of the problem of philo- sophical foundations of logic 2 . To this (...) mind of the present writer, there is no mystery of applications, since any empirical, or even ostensive, predicate can be involved in cer- tain meaning postulates, e.g. \No red is green", which are both empirical and necessary propositions; empirical as they involve ostensibly dened predicated; necessary, as it is enough to know their meaning to state, their validity. The case of logical theorems can be considered at the same footing, logical constants being treated as dened ostensively. Nevertheless, not an individual state of mind but the actual state of scholarly discussions makes something a problem; in the present state of foundational discussions on logic, the \mystery of applications" preserves its vitality, hence any new way of dealing with it proves welcome. (shrink)

The paper is meant as a survey of issues in computational complexity from the standpoint of its relevance to social research. Moreover, the threads are hinted at that lead to computer science from mathematical logic and from philosophical questions about the limits and the power both of mathematics and the human mind. Especially, the paper addresses Turing's idea of oracle, considering its impact on computational (i.e., relying on simulations) economy, sociology etc. Oracle is meant as a device capable of finding (...) the values of uncomputable functions. Such an idealized entity is exemplified by the human mind's procedure of recognizing the truth of the Gödelian sentence, of identifying uncomputable numbers through Turing's diagonal procedure, etc. Since such procedures are strictly defined and are as reliable as any calculations, they are worth to be called computation as well. From the computation in the strict sense, that defined as purely algorithmic (mechanical) process, one distinguishes them with the term "hipercomputation". Now the following questions arise. - Are there undecidable problems (ie. not decidable with appropriate algorithms) in social research as are (according to what is reported esp. By S. Wolfram) in natural sciences? The answer in the negative would impose limitations on computer simulations (as entirely relying on algorithms). - If there are, then we have the next question: can such problems be addressed with hipercomputational procedures? - How such hipercomputational procedures would be related to analog computation (coextensive, everlappiing, etc.)? Another set of issues is stated in terms of tractability of decidable problems, that is, the efficiency of algorithms needed for solutions. As inefficient are regarded those which require more resources (time, memory, etc.) than is available in a foreseeable future. In this context, one discusses methods of such an efficient organizing computational processes to overcome the scarcity of resources; thus parallel, distributive, interactive, etc. computing are used as remedies. The paper claims, hinting at F.Hayek's ideas, that in some social systems (e.g., stock exchange, and free market in general) such an efficient organization of their computational activities spontaneously evolves. And this is the main source of its advantages over the central economic planning (as defended by O. Lange). This noticing (in terms of complexity theory) of analogy between Hayek's point and the current discussion of efficiency of algorithms is what may count as an original contribution of the present paper. (shrink)

Most discussions of the reproducibility crisis focus on its epistemic aspect: the fact that the scientific community fails to follow some norms of scientific investigation, which leads to high rates of irreproducibility via a high rate of false positive findings. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a heretofore underappreciated and understudied dimension to the reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience that may prove to be at least as important as the epistemic dimension. This is (...) the communication dimension. The link between communication and reproducibility is immediate: independent investigators would not be able to recreate an experiment whose design or implementation were inadequately described. I exploit evidence of a replicability and reproducibility crisis in computational science, as well as research into quality of reporting to support the claim that a widespread failure to adhere to reporting standards, especially the norm of descriptive completeness, is an important contributing factor in the current reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience. (shrink)

We argue that Yarkoni's proposed solutions to the generalizability crisis are half-measures because he does not recognize that the crisis arises from investigators' underappreciation of the roles of theory in experimental research. Rather than embracing qualitative analysis, the research community should make an effort to develop better theories and work toward consistently incorporating theoretical results into experimental practice.

In this paper I argue that from the point of view of a theist, inclusivism with respect to the issue whether adherents of different religious traditions can have veridical experience of God (or Ultimate Reality) now, is more plausible than the Alstonian exclusivism. I suggest that mystical inclusivism of the kind I imply in this paper may contribute to the development of cross-cultural philosophy of religion, as well as to the theoretical framework for inter-religious dialogue, because (1) it allows for (...) the possibility of veridical experience of God in a variety of religious traditions, but (2) it avoids the radical revisionist postulates of Hickian pluralism and (3) it leaves open the question whether the creed of any specific tradition is a better approximation to the truth about God than the creeds of other traditions. (edited). (shrink)

Inequality of incomes is one of the significant factors forming the social capital. Two views dominate among economists dealing with the influence of inequality of income on economic growth. On the one hand, a too low inequality of income does not motivate people to increase the labour productivity. A low inequality of income might result from an extended social care system and overloading GDP with social transfers. A good example of it may be a situation when the unemployed refuses to (...) accept a job offer and prefers the unemployment benefit rather to a slightly higher salary. Moreover, a lack of incentives for the employee who fails to acknowledge the economic sense of increasing the productivity of his work might lead to the slower growth of economy. On the other hand, a contrary view suggests that an increase of the inequality of income has a negative impact on the economy. The accumulation of wealth by a small number of citizens raises doubts about good use of that wealth for investments necessary for the growth of the economy. An excessive inequality of income is confronted with disapproval of the significant part of society and regarded as unfair and unjustified. It may also increase the crime level and decrease the trust and, more generally, lead to the weakening of social capital. The arguments above lead to a hypothesis that the influence of the inequality of income on the growth of the economy has a non-linear character. We confirmed this hypothesis in growth models of the US and Swedish economies. We assess the historically optimal inequality of income measured by the Gini coefficient at 46% and 24% for the US and Sweden respectively. The optimal inequality of income in Poland was assessed previously at 29%. The dissimilarities may result from the cultural differences, educational level differences, ethnic differences and differences in diligence. (shrink)

We believe we know our bodies intimately—that their material reality is certain and that this certainty leads to an epistemological truth about sex, gender, and identity. By exploring and giving equal weight to transgendered subjectivities, however, Gayle Salamon upends these certainties. Considering questions of transgendered embodiment via phenomenology (Maurice Merleau-Ponty), psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud and Paul Ferdinand Schilder), and queer theory, Salamon advances an alternative theory of normative and non-normative gender, proving the value and vitality of trans experience for (...) thinking about embodiment. Salamon suggests that the difference between transgendered and normatively gendered bodies is not, in the end, material. Rather, she argues that the production of gender itself relies on a disjunction between the "felt sense" of the body and an understanding of the body's corporeal contours, and that this process need not be viewed as pathological in nature. Examining the relationship between material and phantasmatic accounts of bodily being, Salamon emphasizes the productive tensions that make the body both present and absent in our consciousness and work to confirm and unsettle gendered certainties. She questions traditional theories that explain how the body comes to be—and comes to be made one's own—and she offers a new framework for thinking about what "counts" as a body. The result is a groundbreaking investigation into the phenomenological life of gender. (shrink)

1. Phenomenology is first and foremost about intentionality. As Husserl puts it, “Intentionality is the name of the problem encompassed by the whole of phenomenology”.1 Broadly understood, the phen...

This paper seeks to define the main trends, arguments and problems regarding the question of method formulated by Twardowski and his students. In this regard, the aim of the paper is twofold. First, I situate Brentano’s project of descriptive psychology within the context of disputes in the school of Twardowski concerning the method of both psychology and phenomenology, arguing that descriptive-psychological analysis was dominant in this respect. Second, the study explores the notion of eidetic phenomenology, as founded on a methodological (...) procedure, which supposed to guarantee infallibility of its descriptions. To show this, I first reconstruct Brentano’s concept of descriptive psychology, its object, its method and aims. Second, I track the changes and reinterpretations provided by Twardowski in his view of descriptive-psychological analysis. Third, I explore Witwicki’s and Bandrowski’s—both early students of Twardowski—discussions of the descriptive approach. I try to show that the former accepted psychologism, while the latter overcame it by means of logical analysis. Fourth, I suggest that the only student of Twardowski who renounced the Brentanian method was Ingarden, who developed eidetic phenomenology. Finally, I present Blaustein’s—one of the last students of Twardowski—reappraisal of descriptive psychology and his critique of Ingarden’s method. This controversy over the method of descriptive psychology reveals how one can situate Twardowski’s legacy within early phenomenology in Poland. (shrink)

This essay considers what is critical in critical phenomenology, and asks what features critical and phenomenological methods share. I suggest three fundamentally significant resonances between the critical and phenomenological enterprises. First is the suggestion that critique, like phenomenology, is an attempt to move beyond a dualism of inside and outside in order to extend into outer regions of what is known. Second is the insistence that what at first appears to be a purely negative endeavor, a finding of limit, is (...) incomplete if, upon finding that limit, it comes to a stop. Just as the reduction is not a means to banish or negate the world, but rather the condition through which it can more fully emerge, critique cannot be merely a cataloguing of the limitations of the present situation. Third is the openness to the possibilities of the world, a wonder or curiosity, that is revealed through the work of description in phenomenology, or Foucault’s characterization of philosophy not as an unmasking, but a making visible of what is visible. Finally I consider critical phenomenology’s futures: How is a newly enlivened kind of scholarship emerging from these two forms of thinking, both of which have been dismissed as outmoded or irrelevant? The new work currently emerging in phenomenology, with its emphasis on its own reflexive self-consideration and decolonization, offers hope that it might yet be capacious enough to simultaneously encompass the revelation of its limitations as well as the expansion of its reach. (shrink)

This paper seeks to define the main trends, arguments and problems regarding the question of method formulated by Twardowski and his students. In this regard, the aim of the paper is twofold. First, I situate Brentano’s project of descriptive psychology within the context of disputes in the school of Twardowski concerning the method of both psychology and phenomenology, arguing that descriptive-psychological analysis was dominant in this respect. Second, the study explores the notion of eidetic phenomenology, as founded on a methodological (...) procedure, which supposed to guarantee infallibility of its descriptions. To show this, I first reconstruct Brentano’s concept of descriptive psychology, its object, its method and aims. Second, I track the changes and reinterpretations provided by Twardowski in his view of descriptive-psychological analysis. Third, I explore Witwicki’s and Bandrowski’s—both early students of Twardowski—discussions of the descriptive approach. I try to show that the former accepted psychologism, while the latter overcame it by means of logical analysis. Fourth, I suggest that the only student of Twardowski who renounced the Brentanian method was Ingarden, who developed eidetic phenomenology. Finally, I present Blaustein’s—one of the last students of Twardowski—reappraisal of descriptive psychology and his critique of Ingarden’s method. This controversy over the method of descriptive psychology reveals how one can situate Twardowski’s legacy within early phenomenology in Poland. (shrink)

The paper presents two objections against Putnam’s Twin Earth argument, which was intended to secure semantic externalism. I first claim that Putnam’s reasoning rests on two assumptions and then try to show why these assumptions are contentious. The first objection is that, given what we know about science, it is unlikely that there are any natural-kind terms whose extension is codetermined by a small set of microstructures required by Putnam’s indexical account of extension determination. The second objection is that there (...) may not be a plausible concept of a speech community whose adoption would classify Oscar and Twin Oscar as members of different speech communities and, at the same time, render Oscar and Twin Oscar as being in the same psychological state. I contend that Putnam’s argument fails because both objections are justified. (shrink)

During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising Witold Kieżun served in the Home Army’s “Harnaś” [Highlander] Special Unit. During an assault on the Polish Post he personally took 14 Germans prisoner, seizing large quantities of arms. He also singlehandedly damaged a German tank in the district Wola. A unit under his command captured the parish office of the Holy Cross Church and a heavy machinegun, and was the first to enter the city’s police headquarters, where it seized another heavy gun.During the (...) Uprising Witold Kieżun was decorated with the Cross of Valor, he also received the Virtuti Militari from the hands of the Home Army Supreme Commander. (shrink)

Autor przedstawia krytyczną analizę pewnych idei nominalistycznej teorii N. Goodmana w interpretacji R. Eberlego. Teoria ta, czyli „rachunek indywiduów", oparta jest na trzech podstawowych pojęciach, zasadzie sumowania, relacji „część-całość" i zasadzie indywidualizacji. Owe pojęcia wzięte razem charakteryzują przedmioty, które chcemy zaliczyć do indywiduów, przy czym charakterystyka ta określa raczej czym jest pewien zespół indywiduów, niż to czym jest pojedyncze indywiduum. Według Eberlego na specjalną uwagę zasługują tzw. atomistyczne uniwersa indywiduów. Definicja takich uniwersów ma stanowić właśnie określenie tego, czym są indywidua. (...) W ogólności „atomistyczne uniwersum indywiduów" to podzbiór pola relacji „część-całość", w którym są spełnione odpowiednie warunki dotyczące sumowania i indywidualizacji przedmiotów. Pojęcie to autor wiąże z atomizmem logicznym B. Russella oraz rozważa jego możliwe zastosowania. (shrink)

The paper is a comment on distributed cognition treated as an approach to the study of all cognition. This account is presented by E. Hutchins in the article “The cultural ecosystem of human cognition”, as well as in other works.

In 1951–1952 a selected committee appointed by the US Congress investigated the circumstances of the so-called Katyn Crime. The reasons why the highest US legislative body undertook the issue hale to be sought in the international situation of the day, which was determined by the Korean War.The “Katyn Committee” was called up on September 18, 1951 by the House of Representatives of the 82nd Congress on the strength of Resolution 390. Sitting on it were Daniel L. Flood, Thaddeus M. Machrowicz, (...) George A. Dondero, Foster Furcolo, Alvin K. O’Konski, Timothy P. Sheenan and Ray J. Madden, who was also appointed its chairman. The committee began interrogating witnesses on October 11, 1951 and closed the interrogations on November 14, 1952. Simultaneously, the committee inspected 183 material exhibits pertaining to the Katyn event. In all the committee took down the testimonies of 81 main and about 200 secondary witnesses as well as about a hundred written testimonies and accounts.The committee’s final report to the House of Representatives clearly stated the responsibility of the Soviet NKVD for the 1940 massacre of around 15,000 Polish officers from POW camps in Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostaszków.In response to the committee’s proceedings the east bloc staged a propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting its work and upholding the so-called Katyn Lie—a 1943—originated false version of the events whereby the executions of the Polish officers had been carried out by the Germans in the latter half of 1941.The Soviet government took an official stand on the committee on February 29, 1952. It rejected all possibility of cooperation and underscored the Germans’ responsibility for the massacre. On March 1, 1952 the Polish government issued a statement condemning the committee and reiterating the false version of the Katyn incident. This statement appeared in the March 1 edition of the national daily Trybuna Ludu under the heading, The Polish nation indignantly condemns the cynical provocations of American imperialists, who are feeding on the tragic deaths of thousands of Polish citizens in Katyn.The main wave of attacks on the Madden Committee rolled through the Eastern European press in March, 1952. It was most intense in the Soviet Union and Poland, but also penetrated to other countries like Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. In the USSR most of the related coverage was published in the communist party daily Pravda. In Poland articles attacking the Madden Committee and propagating the false version of the Katyn events appeared in all dailies and periodicals, including the party, military, youth, branch and satirical press. Especially avid in this respect were papers brought out by the Czytelnik publishers, notably Życie Warszawy. Also published was a deceitful book The Truth About Katyn by Boleslaw Wójcicki.Simultaneously to the press campaign against the Madden Committee the eastern countries launched broad scale repressions involving the prosecution, courts and intelligence services. (shrink)

World War II broke out as the result of an alliance between Germany and Soviet Union with the aim to conquer and partition Poland. Having broken off the treaty of friendship and co-operation, Germany attacked the USSR in 1941, forcing the Soviet Union to change sides from that of a German ally to the ally of the anti-German coalition. In 1943, following the German discovery of the graves of Polish officers murdered by Soviet forces in Katyń, Stalin declared that the (...) crime had been committed by the German army and broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish Government-in-Exile in London which had requested that an official investigation be launched by the Red Cross committee in Geneva. Some one hundred German officers were sentenced to death for the Katyń massacre as the result of Stalin’s prosecution trials. 50 years later, the world was rocked by the discovery of a document signed by Stalin ordering the execution of Polish officers in Katyń.In a secret meeting in 1943 in Teheran, President Roosevelt and Stalin agreed on the plan to annex Poland’s eastern territories.The decision to stage an independent fight for independence during the Warsaw Uprising was justified by the inevitable approach of the Red Army, the fear of German reprisal actions for disobeying the order to participate in fortification works, the fear of a spontaneous uprising fuelled by a Soviet radio broadcast in Polish which appealed to the people of Warsaw to put up a fight against the oppressor.Stalin’s decision to withhold the Soviet offensive and ban American and British planes carrying humanitarian aid for Warsaw from landing in Soviet airports contributed to the downfall of the Uprising. The Warsaw Uprising was a cue for the civil outbreaks that followed in Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Paris and Prague. The halt on the Soviet Army’s offensive, which enabled the German forces to eliminate the Polish centre of political command subordinate to the Government-in-Exile in London, limited the European territory that fell subject to Soviet supremacy. The memory of the heroic fight put up by the entire population of Warsaw deterred the Soviet Union’s ambitions to curtail Poland’s sovereignty. (shrink)

The considerations presented in the paper are an attempt to prove that free access to all scientific publications is evaluated on some world scientific forum. Scientists have to make selections among scientific publications again and again. In order to economise the scientist' time it is proposed to execute selections in three phases: the first phase - preliminary - even without seeing the relevant publications, and only on the basis of the title, author's name, names of publishers and journals, list of (...) references, blurbs etc.; the second phase (with the relevant publications at hand) - the verification of results of the first preliminary phase on the basis of rough reviewes of the publications; the third phase - selective - the verification of results of the second phase by attentive studies of selected publications. (shrink)