Summary In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Polish geoscientist, philosopher, and statesman Stanisław Staszic (1755–1826) conducted an extensive geological survey of Poland and adjacent areas. In 1815, he completed a book (in Polish), On the geology of the Carpathians and other mountains and lowlands of Poland, complemented by a well-made geological map of Central and Eastern Europe. Early in the nineteenth century, Staszic refined the idea of ‘geological mapping’, though initially he was interested in the exploration (...) of mineral deposits, rock salt, copper and iron ores, and coal. Unlike his predecessors, his book adopted a temporal subdivision of rocks, using a somewhat modified version of Abraham Gottlob Werner's system. He delineated the surface distribution of five rock units and coloured them onto his map. His work gave expression to his view of geological history, and brought the ‘Enlightenment Period’ of geology in Central and Eastern Europe to a close. (shrink)

Fourth-year medical students at the University of Colorado School of Medicine distributed cards to patients in the emergency department asking, "What Worries You Most?" The patients' responses provided insight about their most pressing concerns, often unrelated to their "chief complaints.".

Democracy - hope or illusion? Blooming, failing or declining? Our doubts and hesitation make part of unbending efforts to endorse and explain democracy. Who is right - the custodians of promise or the prophets of decline? The book concentrates on doubts. The author tries to explore «the other side of the moon», emphasizing the role of critical thinking, opposing a main-current optimism. Defending democracy we want to generate hope, but hoping may be a dangerous craft. Protecting our hope we are (...) prone to believe that democracy - even if it is not a full success story - is justified in its nature and out of question. How much do we have to forget to sanction this view? This is, in fact, the main question the book raises. It gives voice to those who never, in their writing on democracy, used a flattering tone. Starting with Greek giants - Plato and Aristotle - up to modern and most recent times, going through a broad field of revealing criticism, leaving us with an unsettling feeling that democracy is rather something to be explained than something to be celebrated. Living in democracy, lamenting its underperformances, we must not overlook a fundamental question - in what part do our disappointments reflect the «art of forgetting», allowing us to cast into oblivion all serious doubts originating in a critical discourse on modernity and democracy? (shrink)

The book by professor Stanisław Kowalczyk, renowned scholar in the field of social philosophy, is, without doubt, one of the most important studies on the idea of freedom. The concept of freedom is as old as mankind. It has many meanings and has been interpreted in many different ways. For instance, we also have the word „liberty," which means „freedom or right" and is synonymous with the word freedom, which means „the condition of being free." The author indicates that (...) in our times the notion of freedom is most frequently used; however, it is often misused or deceptive. Mass media and people of all walks of life talk of liberty; everyone talks of freedom and, for many, it is the highest value. Longing for freedom is rooted in the heart of every human being, for freedom is an existential correlate and the fulfilment of the rational human being. The semantic confusion about the notion of freedom leads to many misuses of the concept. Personalism, as a philosophical concept in which a person stands in the centre of all discussion, serves as a framework for the author's delineation on the concept of freedom. He further states that the appropriate understanding of this value is possible in the context of the personalistic interpretation of a human being. This is the focus of this informative and insightful book. (shrink)

In the first part I focus on the issue of progress, in particular progress in philosophy. Philosophical progress has a special property that it shares with the process of becoming a better person. It is constantly finding yourself “on the way”. This path is not only anchored in the Absolutely Perfect but it conditions and stimulates the reflection towards the truth about the relationship between Him and us. We can assume that the core of this reflection is philosophy. The second (...) part is devoted to the paradoxical nature of the most generally understood memory. I assume that the condition of awareness of a certain content is its outdatedness, that is, its transfer to the sphere of memory. Memory is a constantly updated and constantly re-ordered picture of everything that the subject has ever relegated from being, so that it can be replaced by something else. The foundation of this order is a certain axiology. In the third part I show how the sketched concept of memory is used to describe the mechanism of the evolution of philosophical thought. The “on the way” philosophy would consist of two constantly repeated activities: on reconstructing what is to be denied, and thus on the recognition of the previous philosophical achievements in its totality, and on its negation. This denial would concern the whole of this achievement as an axiologically reconstructed unity. The new system is only realized as a series of consequences of the negation of the current state. The vast majority of philosophical reflection focuses on the constitution of this current state, its supposed unity. In the short part of the fourth, I draw up prospects for further deliberations. (shrink)

Jan W. Wojcik - The Works of Robert Boyle - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 543-545 Book Review The Works of Robert Boyle Robert Boyle. The Works of Robert Boyle. 14 vols. Edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999, 2000. Cloth, $1,950. This is the first edition of Boyle's oeuvre since that of Thomas Birch , and is the first scholarly edition ever. It is a (...) masterful achievement by Michael Hunter and Ted Davis, informed as it is by a total of approximately forty years of experience with the Boyle archive housed at the Royal Society of London. What began in 1980 as an attempt to catalogue the archive has led to this new, and most welcome, edition—one that includes not only Boyle's published work, but also two volumes of previously unpublished archival material. Despite its many defects, Birch's 1772 edition, in its reprint of edition of 1965 , has been popular with scholars living far from access to large collections of seventeenth-century works. The first thing to note about this new edition is that the editors have repaired the defects in Birch's edition. In selecting.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 103-104 [Access article in PDF] Robert Boyle. Correspondence of Robert Boyle. 6 vols. Edited by Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio, and Lawrence M. Principe. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001. Cloth, $795.00. A complete edition of Boyle's correspondence has long been needed. Up until now, scholars who have attempted to incorporate Boyle's correspondence into their work have been thwarted by (inter alia) illegible (...) handwriting, foreign languages in the seventeenth-century versions, and scattered correspondence across a number of different countries on at least two continents. Michael Hunter and his co-editors, Antonio Clericuzio and Lawrence Principe, along with help from a staff of translators and editorial assistants, have succeeded brilliantly in creating order out of chaos.Given the length of time that Hunter et al. have been working on this edition and the extent to which cooperation has been sought and given by Boyle scholars worldwide, this Correspondence is as complete as is humanly possible. It is likely that in coming years stray letters will be found (most likely in private collections), but such finds will not be due to these editors' having failed to search assiduously for all extant correspondence. Next to completeness, the editorial methods and scholarly apparatus determine the usefulness of such an edition, and here again, Hunter and his co-editors have performed faultlessly. Hunter's introduction explains fully the decisions that were made concerning editorial choices (such as the choice of copy texts, etc.). In the letters themselves, the editorial annotations are easy to follow and arranged in such a way as to present a relatively uncluttered text (with textual variants being consigned to a section at the end of each volume). Editorial footnotes have been clearly distinguished from authorial footnotes. The editors have been quite successful in identifying correspondents and have provided useful cross-references in the footnotes to other relevant materials. In addition, each volume contains a section of brief biographical entries for those correspondents whose letters occur frequently in that volume.The editors' annotations are detailed and helpful and reflect years of dedication to the search for relevant information concerning Boyle's interests and his contemporaries. Throughout the entire Boyle Project, Hunter has elicited input from Boyle scholars on various people, topics, and references, and (as is the case with Boyle's Works) the result is an amazing amount of complementary information.Correspondence in a foreign language appears in both the original and in translation. This makes it possible for a scholar without competence in, for example, early modern Latin to have access to the content of the correspondence while allowing other scholars to check the accuracy of translations for themselves.Perhaps most useful of all the scholarly apparati is the glossary that appears at the end of each volume. Here one may find the meanings of the many seventeenth-century terms that are opaque to the typical twenty-first-century reader. Given the extent of Boyle's involvement in alchemy, without this glossary and its identification of the many alchemical terms it would be virtually impossible for a modern reader (even one who has studied chemistry) to make sense of many of the letters. Credit in this case goes to Lawrence Principe, who has contributed the fruit of his years devoted to the study of medieval and early modern alchemy. [End Page 103]A personal note from the reviewer may help to emphasize the significance of the contribution that Michael Hunter and his associates have made to Boyle studies. When I first began dealing with the (at that time) unpublished sources available to Boyle scholars, the situation was one of almost complete chaos. I was fortunate enough to have access at that time (1990-91) to Hunter's "Finding List" to the sources available at the Royal Society of London. This was surely an advantage over previous scholars, who could only pick their way through the many volumes looking for information that might be relevant to their studies; even so, progress in pursuing a particular aspect of Boyle scholarship was tedious. Cross-references to related... (shrink)

The book is devoted to the thought of one of the 20th century's most interesting philosophers of religion. Heschel, a traditional Polish Jew who became a modern thinker, was also an impressive prophet of interreligious dialogue.

Stosunek polskiej filozofii katolickiej do Augusta Cieszkowskiego był ambiwalentny. Z jednej strony, uważano go za wybitnego filozofa polskiego, żarliwie religijnego i inspirowanego tradycją chrześcijańską, z drugiej strony, jego myśl budziła liczne zastrzeżenia doktrynalne (ewolucyjna perspektywa religii, możliwość realizacji Królestwa Bożego na ziemi, wątki panteizujące, ograniczanie wolnej woli, uzurpowanie sobie prawa do absolutyzmu poznawczego, jeśli chodzi o "Boże plany", uznanie Boga przed stworzeniem świata za nierozwiniętą jeszcze Możność, "elitarna" koncepcja nieśmiertelności jednostkowej za zasługi). Z dzisiejszej perspektywy filozofia Cieszkowskiego budzi opór ze (...) względu na próbę "totalizacji" rzeczywistości i eksponowanie utopijnego modelu ustroju teokratycznego. (shrink)

Polish conservative thinker Władysław Leopold Jaworski developed an interest for the theories of Austrian philosopher Othmar Spann. Both accepted universalism, both also believed that universalism was inspired by romantic tradition, although Spann sought its roots much further back in history, even as far as Aristotle. Both authors staunchly criticized modern-day individualism and liberalism, which they considered fatal. In their opinion individualism and liberalism upset the primacy of totality in social thought, which led to multiple pathologies. Despite their accentuation of totality, (...) both philosophers displayed very decided anti-totalitarian convictions typical for many conservatives. (shrink)

This article presents research on the scale of the phenomenon of sexual violence against students at selected 33 universities across Poland, the mechanisms used to combat the problem and the awareness of students on the subject. The study focuses on the practical dimension of combating sexual violence against students in the Polish academic environment. It looks at the existence and functioning of both specialised bodies and the procedures used to help the victims and punish the perpetrators. Additionally, the paper describes (...) how the diversity of available legal measures to address the problem by both helping the victims and holding perpetrators accountable creates the issue of the coexistence of two systems—criminal and intra-university. Presenting preliminary results of gathered opinions of universities’ officials regarding functioning of the bodies specialised in combating sexual violence shows not only the most dominant observations and conclusions the professionals have regarding the functions they hold at their home universities, but also main challenges that have to be considered in both creating sufficient policies in order to deal with sexual violence and conducting comprehensive research on said phenomenon. (shrink)

The purpose of the essay is to critically analyze the influence of J. Derrida’s deconstruction on David J. Gunkel’s book Deconstruction (MIT Press 2021). Gunkel’s handbook is aimed at making deconstruction a tool of critical thinking accessible to non-professionals. It turns out that accomplishing this task comes at the expense of precisely the critical potential of deconstruction itself. Gunkel is well aware that his arguments are sometimes superficial and overlook deeper problems that should be addressed. Such a failure takes the (...) form of a fetishistic denial, which in psychoanalysis is summarized by the formula “I know well, but all the same.” In turn, deconstruction itself, insofar as it is separated from Kant’s transcendental philosophy and Hegel’s dialectics, becomes an academic ideology. Restoring its proper subversive potential can only be done by returning to a philosophy of reflection, in which the thinker himself must ultimately consider his own position as an author and bring it under criticism. This is the path that Gunkel avoids, because he could then no longer be the author of a handbook on deconstruction, rather than someone who practices deconstruction. -------------------------- Received: 4/11/2022. Reviewed: 13/12/2022. Accepted: 20/12/2022. (shrink)

Decision-making is a complex action requiring efficient information processing. Specifically, in movement in which performance efficiency depends on reaction time, e.g., open-loop controlled movements, these processes may play a crucial role. Information processing includes three distinct stages, stimulus identification, response selection, and response programming. Mainly, response selection may play a substantial contribution to the reaction time and appropriate decision making. The duration of this stage depends on the number of possible choices an individual has to “screen” to make a proper (...) decision. Given that reaction time is crucial in many sports, the possibilities of reducing it through practice are very tempting. The information processing and its relationship to the manner an individual is practicing are discussed. Especially the variability of practice issues will be explored. In variable practice conditions, an individual has to react to one or more stimuli and has to produce one of the many variations of the same movement or different movements they learned. One has to identify a stimulus appropriately and has to select a response optimally, i.e., choosing from as few choices as possible to reduce the reaction time. On the other hand, in constant practice conditions, an individual can be exposed to one or many stimuli. Still, there is only one variation of the movement that can be executed in the presence of a learned stimulus. Based on the information processing theory and the results of the research focusing on variability of practice, I discuss how the practice conditions may affect reaction time and, as a result, the decision-making process. I conceptually frame the possible implications of practice conditions on decision making related to information processing. In this review, a possible mechanism and relationship between practice conditions and decision-making are presented. Future research directions are presented. (shrink)

The Cognitive Science of Religion represents a contemporary attempt at a naturalistic explanation of religion. There is debate as to whether its account of how religious beliefs arise is reconcilable with the religious account, which holds that religious beliefs are caused by God. In my paper, I argue that these two accounts cannot be reconciled when it comes to the specific question of how Christian religious beliefs arise if one accepts an important theological doctrine of the supernaturality of Christian belief. (...) This doctrine implies that there can be no natural explanation for how Christian beliefs arise because they are a gift of divine grace. This leads to a conundrum for Christian theists: they can either reject the CSR account of how their religious beliefs arise, or they can reject the supernaturality of Christian belief. I argue that the latter is preferable. I then draw on the work of the theologian Denis Edwards to illustrate how one can drop this doctrine without abandoning some other fundamental tenets of Christian theology. (shrink)

ObjectivesA growing number of studies indicate that coping with the experience of a crisis event, which causes a breach in the individual’s fundamental beliefs regarding the world and his/her place in it, can result in posttraumatic growth. Positive emotions can have an undoing effect on negative emotional arousal and broaden an individual’s scope of action, and they can foster posttraumatic growth. This study aimed to examine relations between prioritizing positivity, styles of rumination, coping strategies, and posttraumatic growth.MethodsOne hundred and sixty-four (...) Polish adults took part in the study, filling out questionnaires to measure prioritizing positivity, hope, and self-efficacy. Twelve to fifteen months later, 104 of them accepted the invitation to the second part of the study. The participants reported the intensity of rumination associated with the most critical event in their lives, which took place between the first and second stages of the study and the coping strategies they used. Posttraumatic growth and life satisfaction were also measured.ResultsResults from hierarchical regressions found that higher levels of prioritizing positivity, deliberate ruminations, and religious coping and lower level of intrusive ruminations were associated with posttraumatic growth. The results also indicate that self-esteem was a significant predictor of life satisfaction.ConclusionsThe results of the prospective study confirm that individual differences in prioritizing positivity can relate to a process of posttraumatic growth. Prioritizing positivity was associated with the use of an active coping strategy and deliberate but not intrusive ruminations. Previous studies on the role of prioritizing positivity have focused on the impact on the level of wellbeing of seeking positive emotions in everyday life. Our results show the importance of prioritizing positivity in coping with stress and trauma. These results can be used to design effective psychological intervention techniques to support people experiencing trauma and psychological crises. The results also indicate that life satisfaction has different predictors from posttraumatic growth. (shrink)

We show that for every enumeration degree $a there exists an e-degree c such that $a \leq c , and all degrees b, with $c \leq b , are properly Σ 0 2.

In his book Między ukryciem a jawnością [Between Hiddenness and Openness] (2023), Professor Jacek Wojtysiak argues that on the assumption of atheistic naturalism, no convincing explanation can be given for the ‘great fact of faith,’ that is, the phenomenon of the historical persistence and universality of the belief in the existence of God. The purpose of this paper is to challenge this thesis. Drawing on selected theories from the field of the Cognitive Science of Religion, I sketch a naturalistic explanation (...) of how religious belief arises. (shrink)

Studies show that involuntary displacement often creates various threats for the community and individuals. To reduce these risks, Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, Health Impact Assessment, and Social Assessment are recommended. Whereas assessments focus mostly on the community level and studies describe cases of large population displacements, there is a lack of empirical evidence about how individuals cope with involuntary displacement and what factors contribute or hinder their successful adaptation in the target location. This study uses semi-structured interviews with 21 (...) people about their experience of resettlement due to a mine collapse in Bytom, Poland, that led to involuntary displacement of 560 people. Data was analyzed according to the constructivist grounded theory principles. Results show that this case illustrates a mixture of post-disaster and development-induced displacement. Various factors and resources that affected coping strategies were analyzed, including: material and legal status, health and age, communication skills, and relocation experience. Our findings suggest that, when circumstances allow, an individual resources assessment should also be conducted to counteract impoverishment and further marginalization of the disprivileged and vulnerable individuals. (shrink)