The paper is devoted to two Polish philosophers and logicians Henryk Struve and Władysław Biegański. They represented the traditional pre-mathematical approach to logic and stood on the threshold of the new paradigm of logic as formal mathematical logic. Their views concerning logic and its philosophy as well as its relations to philosophy and mathematics will be analyzed. Those views will be compared with views of their contemporaries and with views of Jan Łukasiewicz—one of the main leaders of Warsaw School (...) of Logic who represented the new paradigm. (shrink)

In the article I discuss three types of non-formal curriculum: the hidden, informal and null curriculum. Their negative impact on the moral education of medical students and physicians is documented through the choice of examples from Polish medical schools and the statements of Polish physicians. I also justify the thesis that the teaching of medical ethics as ethics-as-tools is deeply rooted within the Polish moral cultural tradition. The polemic with Władysław Biegański serves as a means of showing the relation (...) between the medical moral tradition and the belief that medical ethic is of little importance in the moral education of medical students and doctors. I also indicate that the lack of references to medical schools as moral entities within moral education condemns physicians to the solitude of their personal conscience when confronted with moral decisions. This, in turn, promotes the idea of defining this conscience in opposition to the law. (shrink)

A fully quantum-mechanical description of the spontaneous emission from an excited two-level atom placed in front of a two-slit interferometer is given. Global modes of the electromagnetic field in a two slit system are derived within the Kirchhoff-Huygens diffraction approximation, serving as a base for the field quantization. The standard Fermi's golden rule, supplemented by a factor coming from the nontrivial mode structure caused by the presence of the two-slit interferometer, is used to show that interference results from the position-dependent (...) coupling between the atom and different field modes of the system. (shrink)

The history of aesthetics, like the histories of other sciences, may be treated in a two-fold manner: as the history of the men who created the field of study, or as the history of the questions that have been raised and resolved in the course of its pursuit. The earlier History of Aesthetics (3 volumes, 1960-68, English-language edition 1970-74) by the author of the present book was a history of men, of writers and artists who in centuries past have spoken (...) up concerning beauty and art, form and crea tivity. The present book returns to the same subject, but treats it in a different way: as the history of aesthetic questions, concepts, theories. The matter of the two books, the previous and the present, is in part the same; but only in part: for the earlier book ended with the 17th century, while the present one brings the subject up to our own times. And from the 18th century to the 20th much happened in aesthetics; it was only in that period that aesthetics achieved recognition as a separate science, received a name of its own, and produced theories that early scholars and artists had never dreamed of. (shrink)

Pali Buddhist Texts-explained to the Beginner. Rune. E. A. Johansson. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 14 Curzon Press, London, Second edition, revised and enlarged, 1977 160 pp. £4.00.

Recenzowana monografia naukowa dotyczy wybranych, niezwykle ważnych kwestii społecznych i etycznych, związanych z poszczególnymi etapami życia ludzkiego: jego początkiem, trwaniem i śmiercią. Składa się z dziewięciu artykułów, które łącznie tworzą szeroką panoramę współczesnych problemów bioetycznych. […] Jest przykładem ich dobrego diagnozowania, aktualizowania refleksji nad nimi i proponowania konkretnych rozwiązań, które odwołują się – co bardzo cenne – do rodzimych przykładów. […] Adresatami publikacji mogą być zarówno osoby profesjonalnie związane z szeroko rozumianą służbą zdrowia, studenci kierunków medycznych, jak i pacjenci oraz (...) ich rodziny, a także osoby zawodowo organizujące wsparcie w trudnych sytuacjach. Publikacja zainteresuje także osoby, które poszukują refleksji nad społecznie ważnymi kwestiami bioetycznymi, ukazanymi w perspektywie personalistycznej. Z recenzji ks. dr. hab. Zbigniewa Wanata, prof. UMK Monografia zawiera szereg interesujących tekstów analizujących dylematy moralne związane z początkiem i końcem ludzkiego życia. Poruszane zagadnienia są ważne i aktualne. W części pierwszej znajdują się opracowania dotyczące kwestii prenatalnych i okołoporodowych, w części drugiej – kwestii terminalnych, a na końcu tekst zwieńczający, dotyczący pojęcia sumienia […] Szczególnie cenne wydają się teksty prezentujące obszerne wyniki badań własnych (np. opieki nad dziećmi z zespołem Downa) i funkcjonowanie niedawno powstałych instytucji (jak hospicja perinatalne) albo opisujące proponowane procedury postępowania w praktyce (np. w stosunku do osób umierających). Inne teksty, nawet jeśli dotyczą zagadnień znanych (np. diagnostyki prenatalnej lub opieki nad ciężarnymi niepełnosprawnymi), omawiają je w sposób porządkujący dotychczasową wiedzę. Powyższe sprawia, że monografię można uznać za dzieło oryginalne. […] Wśród Autorów poszczególnych rozdziałów znajdują się osoby rozpoznawalne w środowisku medycznym i bioetycznym, co sprawia, że publikacja powinna cieszyć się zainteresowaniem w tych kręgach, a sformułowane w niej postulaty mogą mieć wartość aplikacyjną. Z recenzji dr. hab. med. Jakuba Pawlikowskiego, prof. UKSW. (shrink)

Problems connected with the questions of: being-nonbeing, existence, modes of existence and alike, belong to the basic and most important in metaphysics. The article discusses some answers to the aforementioned issues, as proposed by the ancient philosophers, St Thomas Aquinas, R. Ingarden and A.N. Whitehead. In the Appendix some remarks are made on Aristotle’s and S. Thomas’ theory of act and potency.

The mutual influences of the medieval discourse of courtly love and the literary visions of divine love have long been recognized by readers of medieval lyrical poetry and devotional writings. They are especially visible in the affinities between the language used to construct the picture of the ideal courtly lady and the images of the Virgin Mary. Praises of Mary’s physical beauty, strewn with erotic implications, are an example of a strictly male eroticization of the medieval Marian discourse, rooted in (...) Bernard of Clairvaux’s allegorical reading of the Song of Songs, where Mary is imagined as the Bride of the poem, whose “breasts are like two young roes that are twins”. Glimpses of medieval female erotic imagination, also employed to express religious meanings, can be found in the writings of the mystical tradition: in England in the books of visions of Margery Kempe, in the anonymous seers of the fourteenth century, and, to some extent, in Julian of Norwich. Though subdued by patriarchal politics and edited by male amanuenses, the female voice can still be heard in the extant texts as it speaks of mystical experience by reference to bodily, somatic and, sometimes, erotic sensations in a manner different from the sensual implications found in the poetry of Marian adoration. The bliss of mystic elation, the ultimate union with God, is, in at least one mystical text, confidently metaphorized as an ecstatic, physical union with the human figure of Christ hanging on the cross. (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.

Sixty years that have passed since the Warsaw Uprising are meaningful on the life scale of human generations. The Uprising, planned for 2 or 3 days, lasted in fact for 63 days. That fact astounded the military experts and was even noticed by the German high command, which has to be mainly ascribed to the exceptional tension of patriotism of the soldiers and the population.The Germans suffered especially great losses on the average around 1,900 weekly, almost twice as many as (...) during the highest intensity of fighting in 1944/45. On our side the losses were estimated at 18,000 dead and about 6,500–7,000 wounded insurgents. However, the Warsaw Uprising and the whole nation counted around 150,000 dead among the civilians.During the two months of the uprising 25% of the pre-war buildings in Warsaw were destroyed, mainly due to the barbarian practice of burning the whole streets. Against the conditions of the capitulation agreement just signed, the majority of historical monuments were burned down.In Warsaw, the tradition of sacrifices and solidarity in action, bravery and the deep attachment to liberty, manifested in September 1939, was alive and brought results all the time of war through the acts of the patriotic resistance organizations. The leaders of the Warsaw Uprising belonged to the resistance fighters before World War I and during it. The battle for independence was their curriculum vitae, and the majority of the uprising participants, the youth, was educated in the independent Polish Republic, in respect for patriotic traditions of independence fights and insurrections.Jerzy Kirchmajer believes that the Warsaw Uprising was an error, as it did not suit the Soviets; Jan Ciechanowski from London—that it was against the plans of the British ally. It is said sometimes that the Uprising started without calculating the possibility of a helping hand.Faith played a major role during the Uprising. The clergy helped the community every way they could. (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.

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)