The Polish energy sector is, to a large extent, based on fossil fuels used in conventional energy, which is not entirely consistent with the current energy policy of the European Union. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the use of renewable energy sources that guarantee the preservation of the value of the natural environment in rural areas. It should be emphasized that in addition to the economic effect, the environmental effect is very important, understood as the impact of renewable energy on the natural environment and the quality of life of rural residents. The intensive development of RES raises a lot of controversy among politicians, as well as among rural residents, who are also associated with the myths regarding renewable energy as harmful to the natural environment.

Rural development should be connected with the socio-economic situation, and even more so with the socio-cultural situation of its inhabitants, because it assumes that the development of rural areas in Poland is associated not only with agriculture, but also with historical and natural values and their durability.

The aim of this work is to determine the attitudes of the inhabitants of rural areas of the Podkarpackie Province on the impact of renewable energy sources on the natural environment. The work assumes that the durability of rural areas is largely connected with the ability to preserve their natural values, as well as ensuring a satisfactory quality of life for residents. The basic source of data was surveys carried out in 2017 among 282 inhabitants of the Podkarpackie Province .

The main goal of this article is to characterise and compare some aspects of Hilary Putnam’s referential theory of meaning and Robert B. Brandom’s inferential theory of meaning. I will do it to indicate some similarities and differences in these theories. It will provide an opportunity for a deeper understanding of these theories and for a more adequate evaluation of how they describe and explain the process of meaning acquisition of linguistic expressions.

In his theory of meaning Putnam emphasises the importance of reference understood as a relationship which connects linguistic expressions and extra-linguistic (empirical) reality. Brandom acknowledges inference as a main category useful in characterising the meaning of expressions used in premises and a conclusion of inference. But his theory of meaning is criticised for minimalising the role of an empirical component (demonstratives etc.). He tries to defend his standpoint in the anaphoric theory of reference.

Putnam like Brandom claimed that we – as cognitive subjects – are not in a situation in which we learn about the extra-linguistic reality in a direct way. It is the reality itself as well as our cognitive apparatus that play a role in a cognitive process.

The present essay is a recapitulation and revision of the author’s research conducted on the Digestum vetus kept by the Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Ms. 824) over the last fifteen years. It focuses mainly on the 230 illustrations in the manuscript’s margins and explores the ways they interpret the text and facilitate its understanding. The Kórnik Digest was copied in Northern Italy in the late twelfth century or around 1200, but it was illustrated possibly in Paris, in the 2nd quarter of the thirteenth century, with historiated initials and marginal images. At the same time, an early version of Accursius’s Glossa ordinaria was also copied. Sometime in the 1470s, the book was brought to Poland by Dziersław of Karnice, a papal collector and a canon of Płock and Cracow. The marginal images in BK 824 were made by professional illuminators, but they are consistent with the concept and function of the earlier relatively widespread practice of the marking of Roman law manuscripts with text-related drawings. The locations of the images, often shared with other manuscripts of the Digest, and their iconography, give us some insight into the common interests of medieval jurists. On the other hand, the marginal illustrations, which play the role of visual annotations, introduce a subject-based indexation of the text and sometimes also cross-references, allowing us to better understand medieval reading techniques.