The essay is meant to be a reflection, a conclusion of sorts regarding the topic proposed by the organizers of the "Towards beauty." It is meant to be about the problems of introducing aesthetics to public spaces. From the point of view of many disciplines. This academic event took place in the April of 2014 at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk. The Author assumed the perspective of an architect when contemplating the problems being discussed. This approach emphasizes the role that is played by the concept of the urban landscape. The work is composed of an introduction, which illustrates the reasons for adopting this perspective. This part is followed by a classification of the stances and academic research that has been presented in the delivered lectures and essays. This generalization has the form of a typology composed of five points, which describe the general issues that were discussed. The overarching thesis of this is essay is the statement that the choice of problems that have been discussed at the conference are the result of a contemporary model of thinking about the management of space, which results from a much too liberal approach that has been adopted after the socioeconomic changes that occurred in 1989. This begs the question whether the issues that are important in the context of the aesthetics of cities are effects the causes of which could lie in society's approach to its reality. Due to the aim of this essay being a commentary on the academic event that was the Gdańsk conference and a sort of reflection on the issues that were being discussed there, the Author decided not to provide it with a conclusion at the end. The Author's comments contained in this work are only a voice in the discussion and a complementation of the opinions that have been presented during the conference. The article is supposed to elicit a familiarity with the presented issues so that the reader can form their opinions, and, what is perhaps even more important, provide the foundation for future academic discussion on the topic of the beauty of the cityscape.
The article analyses physicists’ attitudes towards philosophy on the examples of the positions of eminent theorists. There are two physicists’ philosophical attitudes towards philosophy: pro-philosophical (Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, von Weizsäcker, Penrose, Rovelli) and anti-philosophical (Weinberg, Hawking, Feynman). I analyse some physicists' arguments for or against philosophy. It is demonstrated that physicists are most critical of all philosophical conceptions that accept a priori factors in cognition, while those who recognize the significance of philosophy for science most often refer to the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition as the proper basis for understanding modern physics.
This article is an introduction to the subject matter discussed in the forty-seventh issue of “Teka…”, the Journal of the Urban Design and Architecture Commission of the Krakow Branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences. It focuses on the aesthetic matters associated with the shaping and protection of urban spaces. It is also a homage to the academic achievements of Professor Wojciech Kosiński, as a scholar and an architect.
The article presents the main functions of aesthetic values (beauty, simplicity, symmetry) in the process of formulating, evaluating and accepting scientific theories in the work of physicist: 1) they motivate to undertake scientific research; (2) have a heuristic role which enables the direction of the search for a new theory to be selected; (3) are a criterion for choosing between empirically equivalent theories in the absence of empirical evidences and (4) sometimes constitute an epistemological obstacle. The basic thesis of the work is that aesthetic values, in addition to positive functions, also play a negative role in science, hindering the acceptance of new theories or leading to inefficient research. Too much weight on the aesthetic side of theory can pose a threat to the objectivity of scientific cognition.
The year 2000 was the year of the creation of ‘The Polish Library‘ also known as ‘Beauty Unknown‘. This year is the 20th anniversary of her birthday and at the same time a great opportunity to recall the creation content and promotion of this impressive 50 volume collection. The following article is dedicated to these events.
Secular processes are one of the reasons of the contemporary cultural crisis. They influence many aspects of individual and social life which is reflected in the sphere of art. Artistic activity is not only a picture of human existence, but also an expression of longing and desire for what exceeds wordliness. Great masterpieces, in spite of being created many centuries ago, confirm this, as they do not stop to delight us because their creators were inspired by the beauty of Christian faith. The contemporary depar-ture from God takes different forms – from securalizatiom which radically denies the supernatural reality to desecularization with its “new spirituality”, being quite often an indefinite spiritualism in the New Age style. In this perspective, sacred art, instead of surrendering to the secularization pressure, should find its new identity as an im-portant element of the new evangelization. Art as via pulchritudinis is to continue to fulfill its evangelizing mission for modern man who so often loses his way to God. It will then become for us a meaning full of hope which human life receives from the mystery of Christ’s redeeming love.
Most of the medieval Italian cities are civitas born of the ruins of the ancient Roman civilization. Their beauty ist the origin for deep esthetical experiences, to which Sławomir Gzell gave the name bellezza. There are a few characteristic features composing the "picturesqueness", painterliness and harmony of those cities, which lead the observer to strong emotions and constant, sensual exploration. The author contemplates the aspects creating the phenomrnon of beauty of Italian cities and towns - which are the metapfor of human desires and deepest cravings.
The starting point of the article is V. Ivanov’s epistolary statement and an expression included in it: “me, semper idem” as important for reflections on the question of “person and time.” Ivanov’s expression, considered within its context, was analysed taking into account other texts by the same poet (the poem Fio, ergo non sum, as well as others from the Prozrachnost’ cycle, author’s commentaries etc.), and S. Frank’s philosophical reflection and his idea of a person as a unity which encompasses continuing in time (“vremiaoblemlushcheje jedinstvo licznosti”). In analogous interpretation (lecture analogique) of both expressions included in the title of the article, two Paul Ricoeur’s conceptual categories were used: the idem identity and the ipse identity, as well as the thinker’s notion of their dialectic relationship. Referring to the European model of thinking about time (St. Augustine), taking into account its presence in Frank and Nikolai Berdyaev, author of the article considers two types of conceptualisations of the category of becoming, in its relation to the category of Being and the problem of transcending time in the reflections of the above- mentioned thinkers and in V. Ivanov’s poetry. Therefore, the article discusses situations in which a human as a person transcends the order of “horizontal” time, and in their existential experience enters the vertical dimension of Eternity (“moment-Eternity”). In relation to that, what turned out to be useful was another notional analogy: the concept of the “poetic moment” and “metaphysical moment” in Gaston Bachelard.