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Fundamental sciences study the basic laws of nature, and they, first of all, include physics and other related sciences. The status of these sciences determines the plausibility of our knowledge and presupposes the directions and prognoses of further development. The analysis of the present condition of fundamental sciences, or of their condition in the last decades, shows that there are some indications of crisis. The symptoms of crisis have different roots, we mention only some of them: methodological, epistemological, ontological and pragmatic. We are first of all interested in the state of crisis caused by the impossibility of forming one single fundamental science, realized through single fundamental physics. Early in the last century there occurred a paradigmatic change of fundamental science patterned in Einstein’s Special and General Theory of Relativity as well as in Bohr’s and Heisneberg’s quantum mechanics. These two concepts in many parts are not compatible and further development of science aimed at reconciling these two worldviews, and at giving one single theory. But this did not prove feasible till the present day and the cause lies in a deep ontological difference, that is, in different conceptions of physical reality. In this short paper one will try and give indications of these differences which can induce us to the conclusion that we are dealing with a deep crisis; and if these diagnoses are correct, a simple question poses itself: is an end of the fundamental science showing through, and at the same time the end of science in general or whether we have a new beginning?
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The text has two parts: historical and a systematical. In the first one, main theses on subjectivity are briefly traced throughout the entire history of Western philosophy (from Plato to Heidegger), which is generally determined as ‘self-empowering of subjectivity’. Greater attention is given to early German philosophical Romanticism. In the second part, the structure of subjectivity is sketched. Subjectivity is acomplex notion, the descriptive determinations of which are personhood, individuality and privacy. What makes these to be the instances of subjectivity – is the self-consciousness. In general the text deals with the main question: What is subjectivity, and what is its relationship with self-consciousness and self-knowledge?
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It belongs to the peculiarity of reason, that its principle eludes our thinking in which reason manifests itself. The problematic accessibility of what should be most evident for our thinking leads to a phenomenology of concealment. But how then can thinking begin, how can its foundations be laid? This motif marks the beginning of philosophy: e.g. in Plato’s Republic and in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The essay traces the intellectual work on this motif of concealment of what is best known per se and the associated problem of the foundation of thinking following the discourse in Latin philosophy in the 13th–15th century. Taking the example of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa we can perceive very different answers to this question. Cusanus calls the attempt to capture what eludes our thinking the hunt for wisdom, which originates from the natural desire of human reason.
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The current paper examines the phenomena of contingency and necessity with respect to causality presented by Thomas Aquinas mainly in Summa Theologica. According to Aquinas, the first cause (God) is active in the natural actions of things through the secondary causes of nature. Nature is considered as a certain kind of art (the divine art), impressed upon things, by which these things are moved to a determinate end. Creatures can participate not only in determinate natural processes, but also in contingent ones. Aquinas affirms that some things happen as of necessity and others of contingency, for it is according to the condition of the proximate cause that the effect has contingency or necessity. Contingency is considered to be identical with the potentiality to be or not to be. Aquinas maintains that potentiality belongs to matter, whereas necessity results from form, because whatever is consequent on form is of necessity in the subject. Thus contingency is due to the material mode of being. An essential part of this article is dedicated to exemplifying the coexistence of God’s providence and the contingent events.
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The concept of rectitudo in the philosophy of Anselm of Canterbury is one of the important terms when we consider his view of the being. Rectitudo is the inner norm for each existing thing and as such it guarantees the being of the things. Due to rectitude all of the existing entities are keeping their state of being exactly as they were created and therefore they are both right and just – they perfectly fit with their own nature, i.e. with God’s will. Examining some chapters of Anselm’s dialogue “De veritate” we can state that there are some uncertainties considering the view that all existing things are right and just entities. Seemingly not all of the created things inevitably follow their own rectitudo and therefore some of them could cease to follow God’s will and with this to leave their state of being.Continuing this thought we find that the problem with falling away from the rightness, constituting the very being of things, could be traced in the rational willing creatures only. However, this falling away is different form men’s freedom and free choice. In the beginning of De libertate arbitrii Anselm states explicitly, that the ability to err has nothing to do with freedom nor yet with the free choice. By analogy with truth, freedom is defined in an independent from the sin manner.Tracing the main similarities starting with the truth (represented by rectitudo) and the specific definition of freedom, the text aims to show that their concurrence plays a crucial role in understanding Anselm’s anthropological thought.
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The paper examines the Estimaverunt Indi, one of the medieval most relevant geomantic treatises which is currently edited in the framework of the project «Foreseeing Events and Dominating Nature: Models of Operative Rationality and the Circulation of Knowledge in the Arab, Hebrew and Latin Middle Ages». Before dealing with the treatise, however, some general issues regarding geomancy are discussed. In chapter 1, in particular, the geomantic technique is described very concisely. Chapter 2 and 3 give a few historical indications concerning its scientific status, at same time stressing its differences from astrology. Chapter 4 raises the crucial issue of the relationship of the Estimaverunt Indi with the famous Étienne Tempier’s condemnation in 1277 and proposes a solution to this question. The final chapter suggests a few working hypotheses for future research on geomancy.
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The article considers some aspects of Richard Feynman’s philosophy of science. The basic assumptions of Feynman’s views on science refer back to the tradition of Greek scepticism. Interestingly, Feynman was probably unaware of this relation, still he became an outstanding modern continuator of this tradition. The analysis is based on Feynman’s lectures included in “The Character of Physical Law”.
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The historical shift in philosophy of science established the understanding that regulative ideas concerning the requirements of scientific description and explanation of nature radically changed as a significant research tradition was replaced by another. In the following paper, we aim to point out and debate several outstanding anticipations of this shift that occurred in Blaga’s historico-philosophical works published in the first half of the 20th century. Essentially, this is about the thesis that the stylistic patterns of big historical cultures determine the requirements of description and explanation of nature that make a research tradition. The importance and topicality of Blaga’s considerations is outlined by comparison with those of some remarkable figures of the new philosophy of science: Al. Koyré, St. Toulmin, and Th. Kuhn.
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Różnorodność propozycji epistemologicznych w edukacji, (o których za chwilę) w dużym stopniu wynika z samego zróżnicowania koncepcji filozoficznych. Każda z koncepcji filozofii dotyczy także jej wewnętrznej struktury. Struktura ta może się rozrastać daleko poza jej pierwotne ramy dlatego, że każda dziedzina rzeczywistości może mieć swoją filozofię, tzn. zespół najbardziej podstawowych pojęć i twierdzeń na temat tej dziedziny. Tak powstały filozofie: historii, prawa, nauki (pedagogiki), człowieka, itp., których darmo by szukać w dawniejszych klasyfikacjach nauk.
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Wiedza, jako teoretyczna podstawa podejmowanych działań, jest jednym z bardziej złożonych problemów dotyczących rozwoju zawodowego nauczycieli. W literaturze przedmiotu odnaleźć można różnego rodzaju typologie i klasyfikacje wiedzy zawodowej nauczycieli, które to przedstawiają liczne jej aspekty i formy. Owa różnorodność determinowana jest formalnymi orientacjami epistemologicznymi, podzielanymi przez badaczy profesji nauczycielskiej. Do współczesnych stanowisk teoriopoznawczych wykorzystywanych w refleksji nad wiedzą nauczycieli należą epistemologie: pozytywistyczna, interpretacyjna i krytyczna (I. Kawecki, 2004).
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Między wielością epistomologiczną a różnorodnością rozwiązań praktycznych w edukacji mieści się obszar badań, których wyniki do tych różnorodnych rozwiązań praktycznych prowadzą, weryfikują je, oceniają. Wielość epistomologiczna znajduje zatem odzwierciedlenie w różnorodności podejść metodologicznych stosowanych do badania zjawisk edukacyjnych.
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The article describes the main characteristics of the holistic pedagogy as an alternative educational trend. The key principles of holistic education have been defined, wholeness and being among them. The conclusion of Holistic Pedagogy as а formed pedagogical branch has been made.
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The institutional landscape in liberal democracies across Europe is undergoing transformation due to the wide-ranging adoption of digitalization measures, the expansion of neoliberal policies, and shifts in global geopolitical power arrangements. This transformation is reshaping the foundation of these societies and wields significant influence on the socio-psychological mindset of individuals, particularly in the realm of value-based and morally-driven choices. This article focuses on online information disruption and dysfunctional communication, exploring whether and how epistemic communities – primarily news media and educational organizations, as well as other branches of cultural industries such as libraries, museums, and media activism in general – should undergo “internal democratization” as a resilience strategy to combat these emerging problems. The objective is to become more attuned to and inclusive of citizens and their concerns, contributing to moral consciousness, thereby enhancing trust, fostering dialogue, and fortifying information integrity and societal cohesion.
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The article is an attempt to rethink the category of autoethnography in the context of feminist and affective epistemologies. The author make additions to the typologies of autoethnography built so far as a paradigm, method and research technique, and situates it as a primordial stage of the research process that is a meta-analysis of the embodied conditions of the research sub- ject. Finally, this conceptual framework is complemented by a feminist directive that delineates the space of the household as the research field.
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As part of our research project titled The Shaping of Subjectivity and Biographies of Individuals in the Face of the Transformations of a Neo-modern Society, data was collected with a tool of narrative interviewing focusing on the present experience. In this article, we propose a nondichotomous way of analyzing this qualitative material. The inspiration for creating the presented analytics is the epistemological position of the Gestalt psychotherapy as well as phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty and Waldenfels). The narrative interviews were aimed at theorizing (about) subjectivity in the biographies of contemporary Poles, but the analysis focuses not so much on depicting subjectivity as ‘basic agency’ – i.e. that which provides the possibility of action, interaction, self-narrating – but, rather, on seeing subjectivity as a component that emerges only in the long process of narration and interaction.
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Elke Brendel claims that, regarding several challenges, her nonindexical contextualism fares better than the so-called indexical versions of contextualism supported by prominent epistemic contextualists such as Keith DeRose, Stewart Cohen, etc. Of these challenges, we will consider the problems of disagreement and retraction. I will argue that the indexical nature of DeRose’s account doesn’t necessarily have to relate to personally indicated standards. Instead, I will offer an interpretation that generalizes the idea of conversational context and determines conversationally indicated epistemic standards as the main bearer of the content and the truth condition of knowledge attributions. In some cases, conversationally indicated epistemic standards are collapsing into personally indicated. In other cases, some form of the reconciliation of personally indicated standards produces the final conversationally indicated epistemic standards. This interpretation is motivated by Mion’s contextualist position, but in the first stage, it doesn’t require his notion of objective contexts. When dealing with typical face-to-face disputes, this interpretation of DeRose’s position will successfully account for the challenge of disagreement. Only when we are faced with so-called one-way disputes and the challenge of retraction, we will depart from DeRose, and instead, refer to Mion’s position. I will claim that by adopting his view, we are in a position to better respond to these two challenges, than Brendel with her nonindexical account.
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The Brundtland Report (Brundtland Report, cited in United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 1999) definition of education for sustainability (EfS) allows us to conceptualise sustainability in a number of ways in education, such as ecological sustainability, sociocultural sustainability and, political sustainability. Whilst EfS issues have multi-dimensional meanings, including effects, root causes, change strategies and preferred futures each curriculum area can contribute. This paper focusses on how approaches to science education can contribute to or inhibit EfS, according to what degree it informs understanding of sustainability issues, how it may support values and beliefs underpinning sustainability and how priorities in constructing curricula can influence pedagogy. Epistemology, as conceptions of knowledge associated with science, and ideology, as political influences that shape curricula, can direct approaches to pedagogy, which may or may not support EfS. Examples of approaches to science education that may support EfS are discussed with implications for appropriate pedagogy to support EfS summarised.
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One of the distinguished theoretical advantages of the concept of grounding is its ability to unify various cases of the metaphysical dependence and determination relations. That presupposes that the concept of grounding is itself unified. The unity of grounding was usually tacitly presupposed among grounding theorists, but it gradually became a subject of discussion because of various skeptical challenges. In this article, I will examine three most general theories of the unity of grounding: 1) singularism: the view that the unity of grounding is based on the idea that there is a single relation of grounding; 2) generalism: the view according to which grounding should be understood as a generic notion; and 3) the view that the unity of grounding rests upon an objective resemblance between different grounding relations. Special attention will be given to the third option which was a largely neglected view. Our considerations will show that this standpoint, due to its inherent theoretical virtues, deserves more serious treatment in metaphysical disputes on grounding.
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