The article presents a disastrous in the consequences earthquake between Sicily and Calabria described by different travelers of Grand Tour after 1783 and analyses the style and method of commenting these historical, tragic events. Several Polish intellectuals and politicians, disappointed in t he situation in the country had chosen the Southern Italy (Sicily, Calabria) and Malta as Destination of their travel. Who arrived there after the terrible earthquake and observed in Messina and/or Reggio Calabria the ruins of these important towns leaved very emotional description in their travel reports. The purpose of the article is to compare different human reactions as well as different ways of describing, from many points of view, the situations they found and observed.
Messina in the stories of Polish travelers over the course of centuries: the double face of the city – The article presents Messina’s ‘verbal postcards’ left by Polish participants in the Grand Tour and travelers who visited Sicily in later times. Travelers whose accounts are widely known, such as Anonymous (1595), Michał Borch, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Chrystian Kamsetzer (XVIII c.), Zygmunt Krasiński (nineteenth century), but also less well-known ones such as writer Zofia Sokołowska, arriving in Sicily in the tragic year of the earthquake (1908), left descriptions from their stays in Messina about the emotional charge they felt, one closely related to the historical moment in which they arrived on the island. This will therefore be a thorough analysis of a fragment of the Sicilian journey concerning Messina left by some Polish travelers, taking into account their professions, areas of interest and the period in which they were in Sicily.
The article is an attempt to reflect upon the way in which some terms coming from modern anthropology (local knowledge, thick description) can be used in studies regarding proper names in the cultural and social perspective. This anthropological way of thinking has been presented in Artur Rejter’s new book “Proper Names in (Con)texts of Culture”. The author of the article shows that studying culture through proper names must entail the widening of the variety of scientific methods and strategies and adding those used in social studies and humanities.
As it is well known, Peter F. Strawson in the introduction to his book Individuals. An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics makes a famous distinction between two types of metaphysics: revisionist and descriptive. Descriptive metaphysics is defined there as a kind of philosophical reflection that “describes the actual structure of our thinking about the world”. Another formula used by Strawson is that descriptive metaphysics “reveals the most general features of our conceptual framework”. In the same text Strawson mentions Aristotle as one of the most important representatives of descriptive metaphysics. However, the question may be asked, whether the formulas used by Strawson adequately describe the actual conception of metaphysics in Aristotle. After all, the aim of Aristotle’s inquiry was to reveal the structure of real beings and to find the causes that are at work in reality, and not only to study our concepts with which we describe the world. In my paper I discuss different ways in which Aristotle’s metaphysical project might be understood and I try to determine to what extent it can be associated with descriptive metaphysics in the sense defined by Strawson. In particular, I inquire to what extent Aristotle uses in his metaphysics the methods proposed in his theory of dialectic, whose aim was to help in the study commonly accepted concepts and beliefs (endoxa).
Portulaca oleracea L. (Portulacaceae) is used as functional food and its nutritional and therapeutic properties are related to the high levels of organic and fatty acids, polyphenols, polysaccharides and cyclo-dopa amides. This study presents a strategy based on liquid chromatography – high resolution accurate mass spectrometry method (LC – HRAMS) and bioinformatic methods to analyze 33 purslane accessions originating from 11 floristic regions in Bulgaria together with 5 accessions of Greek provenance. Extracts were obtained by microwave extraction. Based on the LC-MS metabolic “fingerprints” of assayed samples, a purslane metabolic database was developed. LC-MS data were proceeded with Software application Compound Discover 2.0 (Thermo Fischer Sci., USA). Principal Component Analysis (PCA) combined with both descriptive and differential analyses were used to find marker metabolites to distinguish different geographical regions. The differential analysis of the Bulgarian and Greek samples allowed the identification of 50 marker metabolites. Based on accurate masses, retention times, fragmentation patterns in MS/MS, comparison with commercial standards and literature data, these secondary metabolites were identified after detailed analysis of Volcano-plots. For the first time, 29 compounds are reported. The identified compounds were used to perform a study of the biosynthetic pathways of purslane secondary metabolites using Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) software platform. The statistical treatments identified marker compounds that can be used to distinguish the origin of accession set. Combining LC-MS data with multivariate statistical analysis was shown to be effective in studying the purslane metabolites, allowing for integration of chemistry with geographic origin.
This paper gives a description of the head shield of Alona protzi, a rare species of Cladocera (water fleas) whose separated head shield has not yet been described in detail. Subfossil head shields of A. protzi were found in sediment cores taken from lakes in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Poland. Despite the rarity of the species this suggests a wide distribution of A. protzi in northern Europe. The ecology of A. protzi is poorly known. The environmental spectrum of the finding sites was wide and ranged from relatively nutrient poor clear water lakes to eutrophic turbid water lakes, indicating that A. protzi is not narrowly restricted. Most of the lakes were, however, meso-eutrophic with neutral to high pH, and with a relatively low abundance of submerged macrophytes. However, we cannot exclude the possibility that A. protzi mainly lives in groundwater and is only occasionally transported into lakes.
In the paper I present the famous argument between Peter F. Strawson and Bertrand Russell on definite descriptions. I do not go into details of the two rival solutions to the problem of definite descriptions. Instead I present the controversy against the background of two traditions within analytic philosophy, i.e. the philosophy of natural language (Strawson) and the philosophy of ideal language (Russell). In consequence, the aim of this paper is to sketch the principal features of the two traditions and to indicate their influence on the argument. In the first paragraph I discuss Russell’s theory of descriptions and present it as a result of dramatic changes that he had made in his philosophy before he finally presented them in On Denoting in 1905. The second paragraph deals with the two traditions within analytic philosophy after the linguistic turn and underlines the role of Strawson in the philosophy of natural language. In the third paragraph I analyze in detail Strawson’s arguments against the theory of descriptions and I focus on some details that are usually omitted in standard presentations. The fourth paragraph discusses Russell’s response to Strawson’s objections, i.e. the counter-arguments formulated from the standpoint of philosophy of ideal language. I end with some suggestions about how to reconcile both approaches.
From a historical point of view, Peter F. Strawson’s philosophical studies are an important element within contemporary interdisciplinary investigations of the mind-body problem. The aim of this article is to present and analyze Strawson’s program of descriptive metaphysics, along with the associated conception of persons, that he has proposed. In the second part, I also present his non-reductive naturalism, focusing on two of his analyses that belong to the field of mind-body relations: these concern the problem of other minds, and the question of the nomological reduction of mental states of persons to physical ones (i.e. mind-body identity theory). I then point to several possibilities of using Strawson’s conception of persons in the context of issues raised by other questions linked to the mind-body problem (namely, personal identity as it relates to split-brain persons, and the different phases of a person’s development).
The jubilee volume “Slavica Wratislaviensia”, CLIX: Wyraz i zdanie w językach słowiańskich (8), is a collection of contributions by pupils, collegues, and friends, dedicated to Professor Jan Sokołowski slavist of Wroclaw University, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The publication topics covered subjects connected with researches on word and sentence in Slavic languages, their description, comparative and contrastive studies, and translation. They take up important current topics, reliably and comprehensively analyze problems that have not been noticed before or have not been solved yet. Due to the selection of topics and high scientific level (most authors are renowned linguists) the volume should be considered as representative for contemporary Slavic linguistics.
In the Hajnówka district, over 450 surnames with the suffix (derivational morp heme) -uk are recorded which were mostly formed from patronymics based on given names of Greek origin, less frequently of Hebrew, Latin and Slavic. The goal of the present article is to discuss patronymic surnames with the suffix -uk found exclusively in Poland or in largest numbers in the Hajnówka district in the Białystok region, which is overwhelmingly inhabited by the Orthodox population, who usually speak Belarusian, Ukrainian or sometimes mixed dialects. The material basis of the present study is therefore the surnames with the suffix -uk most characteristic of the area investigated and strictly associated with this territory from the time of its settlement.
The author set himself the following specific objectives: a) establish the number of people with a particular surname in Poland; b) establish the number of people with a particular surname in the Hajnówka district; c) establish the surnames with the suffix -uk found exclusively in Poland or in largest numbers in the Hajnówka district; d) establish the origin of the surname investigated. The article may prove useful not only in establishing the origin of the surnames studied but also in determining the place where they arose and the directions of migration of the population within Poland.