Focusing on a subject the author has extensively engaged with over the years (most notably in his 2010 study Der Diener), the article develops the notion of service as a cultural technique, and the media-theoretical figure of the servant as its servomechanism. The analysis follows three distinct scenarios that highlight, via different channels of perception (acoustic, optic and haptic), the interplay between corporeal practices and media objects in the production of specific cultural effects. In each of the examples chosen, service (...) implies highly regulated networks of recursive operational chains that regulate in their turn the production and distribution of power and knowledge. Thus, Krajewski argues, despite, or rather, precisely because of their apparent marginality and invisibility, the ‘small gestures’ of service join the ranks of already established, elementary symbolic techniques such as reading or writing. (shrink)

This paper introduces the special issue on the Concept of God of the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). The issue contains the following articles: Logic and the Concept of God, by Stanisław Krajewski and Ricardo Silvestre; Mathematical Models in Theology. A Buber-inspired Model of God and its Application to “Shema Israel”, by Stanisław Krajewski; Gödel’s God-like Essence, by Talia Leven; A Logical Solution to the Paradox of the Stone, by Héctor Hernández Ortiz and Victor Cantero; No New (...) Solutions to the Logical Problem of the Trinity, by Beau Branson; What Means ‘Tri-’ in ‘Trinity’ ? An Eastern Patristic Approach to the ‘Quasi-Ordinals’, by Basil Lourié; The Éminence Grise of Christology: Porphyry’s Logical Teaching as a Cornerstone of Argumentation in Christological Debates of the Fifth and Sixth Centruies, by Anna Zhyrkova; The Problem of Universals in Late Patristic Theology, by Dirk Krasmüller; Intuitionist Reasoning in the Tri-unitrian Theology of Nicolas of Cues, by Antonino Drago. (shrink)

Compassion is a sign of superficiality: broken destinies and unrelenting misery either make you scream or turn you to stone. Pity is not only inefficient; it is also insulting. And besides, how can you pity another when you yourself suffer ignominiously? Compassion is as common as it is because it does not bind you to anything! Nobody in this world has yet died from another's suffering. And the one who said that he died for us did not die; he was (...) killed. (E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair). (shrink)

The paper is a sketch of a conception of approximative truth (or verisimilitude). The concepts of relative error, and degree of inadequacy are introduced. By means of them the concept of truth-content of quantitative facts-statements, laws and theories is defined. Laws and theories accepted in science have a high truth-content, i.e. they are approximately true.

Citizen Science in the Empire. The System Place “Wertlose Einsendungen aus der Bevölkerung” (Worthless Entries from the Population) in the Archives of the Berlin‐Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Between 1871 and 1946, the Berlin‐Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities maintained a special collection in its archives, which, under the simple name “Entries from the Population”, kept correspondences, projects and proposals, for which a negative expert opinion was issued after thorough examination. The collection offers surprising insights into the pathologies and (...) fantasies of mostly pseudo‐scientific researchers, inventors and discoverers, while at the same time revealing a glimpse of the topics of this epoch that moved the history of science. Using a selection of examples, this essay examines the economic cycles and archive practices of a largely forgotten source of what is now called Citizen Science. (shrink)

The chromatin‐regulatory principles of histone post‐translational modifications (PTMs) are discussed with a focus on the potential alterations in chromatin functional state due to steric and mechanical constraints imposed by bulky histone modifications such as ubiquitin and SUMO. In the classical view, PTMs operate as recruitment platforms for histone “readers,” and as determinants of chromatin array compaction. Alterations of histone charges by “small” chemical modifications (e.g., acetylation, phosphorylation) could regulate nucleosome spontaneous dynamics without globally affecting nucleosome structure. These fluctuations in nucleosome (...) wrapping can be exploited by chromatin‐processing machinery. In contrast, ubiquitin and SUMO are comparable in size to histones, and it seems logical that these PTMs could conflict with canonical nucleosome organization. An experimentally testable hypothesis that by adding sterical bulk these PTMs can robustly alter nucleosome primary structure is proposed. The model presented here stresses the diversity of mechanisms by which histone PTMs regulate chromatin dynamics, primary structure and, hence, functionality. (shrink)

The 2nd World Congress on Logic and Religion, held in Warsaw, Poland, in 2017, is summarized. Then the connective “and” is analyzed; we focus on its meaning in the title of the congress and the title of the present volume. Finally, all the eleven papers included here are briefly introduced; we indicate whether logic or theology is the primary topic of the given paper.

The Euclidean ideal of mathematics as well as all the foundational schools in the philosophy of mathematics have been contested by the new approach, called the “maverick” trend in the philosophy of mathematics. Several points made by its main representatives are mentioned – from the revisability of actual proofs to the stress on real mathematical practice as opposed to its idealized reconstruction. Main features of real proofs are then mentioned; for example, whether they are convincing, understandable, and/or explanatory. Therefore, the (...) new approach questions Hilbert’s Thesis, according to which a correct mathematical proof is in principle reducible to a formal proof, based on explicit axioms and logic. (shrink)

There are three main kinds of causal connections between two events: the transfer of energy, the transfer of information and the triggering of the transfer of one of them or both. There are also other kinds of causal connections.

INTRODUCTION The aim of the present volume is to introduce prominent Polish philosophers of the 20th century as well as their significant accomplishments in ...

In the course of his readings, Krajewski explores the complex relationship between truth-telling and lying, being and non-being, clarity and obscurity, the fixed and the unstable, the extraordinary and the commonplace. Underlying these dichotomies is an even more fundamental opposition between two approaches to language and discourse. One is the way of philosophy and linguistics, where the objective is to reduce language to its purest logical form. The other is the way of hermeneutics and rhetoric, where the aim is (...) to preserve the multifariousness of discourse as it occurs concretely in everyday life. Krajewski's goal throughout is to underscore the extent to which understanding is not a private but a social act. (shrink)

This paper considers the method of idealization and factualization as the main method of all advanced empirical science. The procedure is as follows. Some idealizing conditions are assumed: the vanishing of factors $(p_{i}=0)$ which never vanish in the real world. An idealization law is formulated -- a law which is exactly (non-vacuously) fulfilled only in an ideal model, not in any real system. Then the idealizing assumptions are abrogated one by one-it is a process of gradual factualization, of the transition (...) to the factual laws which are fulfilled in real systems. These laws may be directly applied and tested by experience. (shrink)

Certainly one of the key German philosophers of the twentieth century, Hans-Georg Gadamer also influenced the study of literature, art, music, sacred and legal texts, and medicine. Indeed, while much attention has been focused on Gadamer's writings about ancient Greek and modern German philosophy, the relevance of his work for other disciplines is only now beginning to be properly considered and understood. In an effort to address this slant, this volume brings together many prominent scholars to assess, re-evaluate, and question (...) Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, as well as his place in intellectual history. The book includes a recent essay by Gadamer on "the task of hermeneutics," as well as essays by distinguished contributors including Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Gerald Bruns, Georgia Warnke, and many others. The contributors situate Gadamer's views in surprising ways and show that his writings speak to a range of contemporary debates—from constitutional questions to issues of modern art. A controversial final section attempts to uncover and clarify Gadamer's history in relation to National Socialism. More an investigation and questioning than a celebration of this venerable and profoundly influential philosopher, this collection will become a catalyst for any future rethinking of philosophical hermeneutics, as well as a significant starting place for rereading and reviewing Hans-Georg Gadamer. (shrink)

The Man in the High Castle is an Amazon TV show, based on the Philip K. Dick novel, about an "alternate present" (beginning in the 1960s) in which Germany and Japan won World War II, with the former Western US occupied by Japan, the former Eastern U.S. occupied by Nazi Germany, and a small "neutral zone" between them. A theme of the story is that in this alternative world there is eager speculation, fueled by the illicit newsreel, The Grasshopper Lies (...) Heavy, about how the world would have been different if America had won the war. -/- In The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy, twenty-two professional thinkers look at philosophical issues raised by this ongoing enterprise in "alternative history." One question is whether it really made a profound difference that the Allies won the war, and exactly what differences in everyday life we may expect to arise from an apparent historical turning point. Could it be that some dramatic historical events have only superficial consequences, while some unnoticed occurrences lead to catastrophic results? (shrink)

In this contribution to an exchange of views about “lyric philosophy,” the author argues that the philosopher-poet Jan Zwicky, beginning as early as her dissertation at the University of Toronto, has championed the nonlogical, including the ineffable, the oracular, and the mystical, and that more recently those concerns have merged in a more focused way in her attention to ecological issues. The impulse to fix philosophy and the environment depends in her work mainly on further linguistic statements and declarations, and (...) on occasional overt rejections of traditional political remedies. Thus, the audience for her campaign against analytic philosophy, for example, does not seem to reach beyond the walls of higher education in North America. Zwicky has aligned herself with an esoteric philosophical tradition that has sought to achieve its aims covertly — meaning, for one thing, that it becomes difficult to measure the success of those aims, since they are deliberately meant to be unavailable to public scrutiny. Those aims are not dependent on the general populace's involvement or engagement. Indeed, the author concludes, the general populace has been viewed consistently in the esoteric philosophical tradition as weak and resistant, if not hostile, to philosophical thought. (shrink)

Modern philosophy has benefited immensely from the intelligence and sensitivity, the creative and critical energies, and the lucidity of Polish scholars. Their investigations into the logical and methodological founda­ tions of mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, ethics and esthetics, psychology, linguistics, economics and jurisprudence, and the social sciences - all are marked by profound and imaginative work. To the centers of empiricist philosophy of science in Vienna, Berlin and Cambridge during the first half of this century, one always added (...) the great school of analytic and methodological studies in Warsaw and Lw6w. To the world centers of Marxist theoretical practice in Berlin, Moscow, Paris, Rome and elsewhere, one must add the Poland of the same era, from Ludwig Krzywicki (1859-1941) onward. (From our preface to Wiatr [1979p. Other movements also have been distinctive in Poland. Phenomenology was developed in the impressive school of Roman Ingarden at Cracow, semiotics from the early work of the philosopher and psychologist Kazimierz Twardowski at Lw6w in the 1890's, with masterful develop­ ment by his disciples Kotarbinski and Ajdukiewicz onward, conceptual foundations of physics in the incisive methodological reflections of Marian Smoluchowski, and mathematical logic from Jan I:.ukasiewicz and Stanislaw Lesniewski to Tarski, Mostowski, and many others. (shrink)

Władysław Krajewski criticizes frontally Kałuszyńska's argumentation on behalf of anti-realism.

This book is devoted to the problems of the growth of science. These prob lems, neglected for a long time by the philosophers of science, have become in the 60's and 70's a subject of vivid discussion. There are philosophers who stress only the dependence of science upon various sociological, psycho logical and other factors and deny any internal laws of the development of knowledge, like approaching the truth. The majority rejects such nihilism and searches for the laws of the (...) growth of science. However, they often overlook the role of the Correspondence Principle which connects the suc cessive scientific theories. On the other hand, some authors, while stressing the role of this principle, overlook logical difficulties connected with it, e. g. the problem of the incompatibility of successive theories, of the falsity of some of their assumptions, etc. I believe the Correspondence Principle to be a basic principle of the pro gress of contemporary physics and, probably, of every advanced science. How ever, this principle must be properly interpreted and the above-mentioned logical difficulties must be solved. Their solution requires, as it seems, revealing the idealizational nature of the basic laws of science, in any case of the quantitative laws of advanced sciences. This point has been recently emphasized by some Polish philosophers, especially in Poznan. (shrink)

Abstract Three main concepts of model in science are distinguished: (1) semantical model of a theory; (2) real model of another real thing; (3) mathematical model of a real thing. The last concept is the most important for the empirical sciences. The mathematical model is not identical with a theory: it is an ideal object which is directly described by the theory. We have here an intermediate level between reality and theory.

The article examines the relationship between Aby Warburg and his library by analysing the media which is involved: first, the arrangement of the books according to the library’s principle of the ‘law of thse good neighbour’, which helps to order the books on the shelves. Second, the handling of the library is even more determined by Aby Warburg’s use of index cards and card indexes. Like his card index which is situated between him and the library, Aby Warburg himself is (...) in between two library paradigms: on the one hand, as a person of the nineteenth century, Warburg belongs to the supporters of the systematic shelving instead of cataloguing the book collection. On the other hand his work is based on swift associations and direct responses to research questions, the associations not only thought up by words, but also visually, manually to be re-arranged on the shelves, which turns out to be a rather clumsy practice. The motor and initiator of these new orders is the card index with its mobile elements, allowing quick connections between the entities and resulting in enormous processes of re-shuffling of whole shelves and systematic arrangements in the book collection. It is especially the combination of these usually incompatible paradigms that makes the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg such a unique institution and rich example of knowledge practices in the twentieth century. (shrink)

In den letzten zehn Jahren sind die digitalen Geisteswissenschaften von einem Randphänomen zu einem der sichtbareren Felder kultur- und geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung geworden. Dieser Erfolg ist von Kritik begleitet und Fotis Jannidis identifiziert drei Topoi der Kritik an den Digital Humanities, die oft vorgebracht und wiederholt werden: 1. ›Das wussten wir schon vorher‹ 2. ›Die Themen der Digital Humanities sind veraltet‹ 3. Es handle sich bei den Digital Humanities um eine neue Form des Positivismus, der geisteswissenschaftliche Gegenstände nicht adäquat beschreibt. Diese (...) drei Vorwürfe gegen die Digital Humanities werden von Jannidis aufgegriffen und auf ihren argumentativen und wissenschaftspolitischen Gehalt befragt und hinterfragt. Der Beitrag schließt mit einem Plädoyer für das Ausprobieren, Basteln und für die Neugierde auf die neu entstehenden Datensammlungen in den Bibliotheken und Archiven. Markus Krajewski hält die Erwartungen an das Innovationspotenzial der Digital Humanities dagegen für überzogen, die aus seiner Perspektive bisher über den Status einer Hilfswissenschaft nicht hinausgekommen sind. So wie die Diplomatik um die Analyse von Urkunden oder die Numismatik um die Einordnung von Münzen oder die Paläographie um die Analyse von Handschriften besorgt ist, so kümmern sich die Digital Humanities bisher lediglich um die Nahtstelle von geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungsfragen mit computergestützten Methoden. Die eigentliche Aufgabe der Digital Humanities bestünde aber darin, die Kulturtechnik Codieren in den Vordergrund zu rücken. Denn Programmcodes lesen und schreiben zu können, seien auch für Geisteswissenschaftler eine Schlüsselkompetenz, damit die Schrift der Zukunft – die von Softwareentwicklern, Computeringenieuren und selbstlernenden Maschinen entworfenen Algorithmen – weiterhin kritisch kommentiert und interpretiert (und nicht bloß passiv angewandt) werden kann. During the last ten years, the so-called digital humanities have developed from a footnote to being a major player in the academic field of cultural studies and humanities alike. However, success goes hand in hand with increasing criticism, and Fotis Jannidis identifies three topoi of critique digital humanities repeatedly have to face. 1. ›We already knew that‹ 2. ›The topics of digital humanities are outdated‹ 3. Digital humanities are said to be a new form of positivism not adequately describing humanities related issues. Jannides takes up these accusations against digital humanities by scrutinizing and questioning their argumentative and scientific- political substance. The article closes with a speech promoting of a phase of trial and error, of tinkering and of curiosity for the subject at hand while analyzing newly originated data collections from libraries or archives. In Markus Krajewski’s opinion, however, the expectations placed in the potential of innovation of digital humanities are exaggerated which subsequently leads him to label them an ancillary discipline. The usefulness of digital humanities is entirely limited to providing the link between humanities-related research questions and computer-based methods in the same way diplomatics relies on the analysis of records, numismatics on the process of categorizing coins or paleography on the analysis of historical manuscripts. Krajewski sees the real task of digital humanities in bringing the cultural technology of coding into the spotlight. He describes the ability to write and read source code as a key competence every modern humanities scholar needs in order to be able to critically comment and interpret the script of the future: algorithms designed by software developers, computer engineers, and auto-didactic machines. (shrink)