For Plato, language was the way to cognize the universe. The philosophy of language, which was primarily initiated by Plato in the Cratylus, still has not received answers to the questions settled by this great Greek thinker. In fact, it just offered various solutions formed in different conceptions and approaches in the ancient, scholastic, modern and postmodern periods. The questions raised by Plato in his dialogue have been continued in various nativistic theories of language, especially in works of Noam Chomsky. Language—as it is seen by Plato, i.e., as uniting our inner world with the outer world, is a significant feature of humankind, is still underinvestigated.

The new edition in Italian of the articles by the Polish microbiologist and philosopher Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961) edited by Francesco Coniglione offers the opportunity for some considerations around this significant scholar. Fleck anticipates Kuhn’s ideas as well as those of the sociology of science. For him, any epistemology that does not take psychological and sociological methods into account, or that does not concern itself with economics, technology, art, and even politics, is an epistemology imaginabilis. Here we discuss some key points of the essays collected in the book, some observations taken from the rich introduction of the editor, and an inevitable question: Why has Fleck been neglected for so long?

Approximately 80% of water extracted from oil and gas deposits in Poland is disposed of by injection into the rock matrix. The aim of the model research was to predict both the hydrochemical reactions of water injected into wells for its disposal and the hydrogeochemical processes in the reservoir formation. The purpose of hydrogeochemical modeling of the hydrocarbon formation was also to determine the potential of formation waters, injection waters, and their mixtures to precipitate and form mineral sediments, and to determine the corrosion risk to the well. In order to evaluate saturation indices and corrosion ratios, the geochemical programs PHREEQC and DownHole SAT were used. The results of hydrogeochemical modeling indicate the possible occurrence of clogging in the well and the near-well zone caused mainly by the precipitation of iron compounds (iron hydroxide Fe(OH)3 and siderite FeCO3) from the formation water due to the presence of high pressures and temperatures (HPHT). There is also a high certainty of the precipitation of carbonate sediments (calcite CaCO3, strontianite SrCO3, magnesite MgCO3, siderite FeCO3) from the injection water within the whole range of tested pressures and temperatures. The model simulations show that temperature increase has a much greater impact on the potential for precipitation of mineral phases than pressure increase.

During the late Oligocene to early Miocene the residual Magura Basin was located along the front of the Pieniny Klippen Belt (PKB). This basin was supplied with clastic material derived from a south-eastern direction. In the Małe (Little) Pieniny Mts. in Poland, the late Oligocene/ early Miocene Kremna Fm. of the Magura Nappe (Krynica subunit) occurs both in front of the PKB as well as in the tectonic windows within the PKB. Lenses of exotic conglomerates in the Kremna Fm. contain frequent clasts of Mesozoic limestones (e.g. limestones with “filaments” microfacies and Urgonian limestones) and Eocene shallow-water limestones. Fragments of crystalline and volcanic rocks occur subordinately. The provenance of these exotic rocks could be probably connected with Eocene exhumation and erosion of the SE part of the Dacia and Tisza Mega-Units.

Very rare chondrichthyan spines from the Famennian (Upper Devonian) of European Russia are referred here to ctenacanthiforms, euselachians and a chondrichthyan group of uncertain systematic position. Ctenacanthus Agassiz, 1837 is recorded from the lower and middle Famennian of the central and north-western parts of the area. Sculptospina makhlaevi Lebedev gen. et sp. nov. originates from the lower Famennian of the Lipetsk Region. The holotype of ‘Ctenacanthus’ jaekeli Gross, 1933 and a new specimen from the upper Famennian of the South Urals are shown to belong to the same taxon, which is transferred to Acondylacanthus St. John and Worthen, 1875. New specimens of Tuberospina nataliae Lebedev, 1995 from the upper Famennian of Central Russia are described in detail. The newly presented material increases our knowledge of the composition of Famennian marine assemblages from the East European Platform. It is suggested that these assemblages may be classified as chondrichthyan-dominated and dipnoan-dominated. Hypothetically, after the end- Devonian Hangenberg extinction event, which affected numerous secondary consumers in vertebrate communities, some chondrichthyan groups could have encroached to take advantage of previously occupied ecological niches. Ctenacanthus, as well as Acondylacanthus and Amelacanthus survived the end-Devonian mass extinction to continue into the Carboniferous.

Raman spectroscopy and vitrinite reflectance measurements of dispersed organic matter from Carboniferous shales in boreholes in the northern part of the Intra-Sudetic Basin were used for thermal history reconstruction. Microscopic investigations have shown that the organic matter is dominated by the vitrinite maceral group. In analysed samples, organic matter shows a varied degree of thermal alteration determined by the mean random vitrinite reflectance (VRo) ranging from 0.72% to 3.80%. Mean apparent maximum vitrinite reflectance (R’max) values reached 4.98%. The full width at half maximum of D1 and G bands in Raman spectra are well-correlated with mean VRo and R’max. Thermal maturity in the boreholes shows a regular increase with depth. Geological data combined with Raman spectroscopy and mean vitrinite reflectance results indicate that the analysed Carboniferous strata reached maximum paleotemperatures from c. 110 to c. 265°C. The regional paleogeothermal gradient in the late Paleozoic was c. 80°C/km. The Variscan heating event presumably caused a major coalification process of organic matter. The Carboniferous–Permian magmatic activity must have contributed to high heat flow, adding to the effect of sedimentary burial on the thermal maturity.

Morphometric attributes of 705 stromatoporoid specimens from a number of exposures from the Silurian of Podolia (Ukraine) and the Devonian of the Holy Cross Mountains (Poland), representing a wide array of shallow water carbonate sedimentary environments, have been analysed. Taken into account were such parameters as: general shape of the skeleton, shape of the final growth form (living surface profile), upper surface character, latilaminae arrangement, burial ratio and type of initial surface. A number of new ratios has been introduced, designed mainly to improve the mapping of the outlines of the stromatoporoids upper surfaces. All studied specimens were treated as belonging to one group, and relations between particular attributes were tested. The results were analysed in terms of potential environmental factors influencing stromatoporoid morphometric features. Most of the distinguished attributes are common in the studied group and occur in various combinations, with an important exception of parameters designed to reflect the shape of the skeleton’s upper surface, which are distinctly predominated by convex variants. This indicates that surface concavity was a highly undesired feature among stromatoporoids. Upper surface convexity is interpreted herein as a response to the hazard of clogging of the animals pores by tiny sediment particles suspended in the bottom turbid water layer. Common low burial ratios of final living surface profiles and the occurrence of specimens with a smooth upper surface but a non-enveloping latilaminae arrangement are other reflections of this phenomenon. Burial by sediments and redeposition were also important factors governing stromatoporoid development. No direct arguments indicating photosensitivity of stromatoporoids can be deduced from the presented results. The hitherto postulated allometric tendency among stromatoporoids of starting growth as laminar forms and later adopting consecutively higher profile shapes has not been confirmed here. On the contrary, a tendency for gradual elimination of very high profile forms with increasing stromatoporoid size has been observed. The final shape of a stromatoporoid skeleton was always an effect of a combination of various agents.

Successions exposed in the Agadir Basin (upper Albian to middle Turonian), in the Anti-Atlas (lower Turonian) in Morocco and in central Tunisia (Cenomanian–Turonian) yield abundant microcrinoids of the family Roveacrinidae, which are described and assigned to 32 species and formae, in ten genera. The following new taxa are described: Fenestracrinus gen. nov. with the type species F. oculifer sp. nov., Discocrinus africanus sp. nov., Styracocrinus rimafera sp. nov., Lebenharticrinus quinvigintensis sp. nov., L. zitti sp. nov., Euglyphocrinus cristagalli sp. nov., E. jacobsae sp. nov., E. truncatus sp. nov., E. worthensis sp. nov., Roveacrinus gladius sp. nov., R. solisoccasum sp. nov. and Drepanocrinus wardorum sp. nov. In addition, the new subfamily Plotocrininae is erected. The stratigraphical distribution of the taxa in two important localities, Taghazout in the Agadir Basin (Morocco) and Sif el Tella, Djebel Mhrila (central Tunisia), is provided. The faunas from the uppermost Albian and lowermost Cenomanian of the Agadir Basin are nearly identical to those recorded from central Texas, USA, some 5,300 km away, and permit a detailed correlation (microcrinoid biozones CeR1 and CeR2) to be established across the southern part of the Western Tethys, independently supported by new ammonite records. For the middle and upper Cenomanian, rather few detailed records of microcrinoids are available elsewhere, and the North African record forms the basis for a new zonation (CeR3–CeR6). The distribution of Turonian Roveacrinidae in North Africa is evidently very similar to that described in the Anglo-Paris Basin, and zones TuR1–3, TuR9, 10 and 14 are recognised for the first time in the Tethys.

Asma Jahangir, the prominent Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist, who had received several awards for her courageous work, passed away on February 11, 2018. Her untimely death at the age of 66 was mourned by a wide public, not only in Pakistan. The newspaper obituaries particularly highlighted her accomplishments and campaigns on behalf of women, children, religious minorities, poor and disenfranchised communities. The deceased “voice of the voiceless” is probably best known for her advocacy on the rights of the most vulnerable and disempowered sections of society and her uncompromising commitment to democratic principles. However, another aspect of Asma Jahangir’s legacy, her thoughts and insights on political power mechanisms in Pakistan and beyond, has so far been rather neglected. With her long-term experience as a lawyer, an activist, and a UN Special Rapporteur, Asma Jahangir often offered useful reflections on the main causes of human rights abuses in Pakistan and the neighbouring countries. Among other things, she pointed to the detrimental effects of the politics of sectarianization and securitization, and also stressed the ongoing aspiration of a great part of the population in the global South to live a dignified life. On the basis of selected publications, reports, and interviews, this paper will provide a number of Asma Jahangir’s explanations for national, regional, and international shortcomings and structural problems (fragile democracies, undermined rule of law; the influence of militant non-state actors; regional/international interconnections and constraints, etc.) which remain relevant under the current conditions.

In recent reflections on the current situation of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and the threat of their extinction, a number of Iraqi intellectuals have stressed they cannot imagine their society without the plurality and diversity that have contributed to the creation of a common interethnic and interreligious Iraqi identity and historical memory. Among them are writers who raise this issue not only in essays, articles and interviews, but also in their fiction. The aim of the present article is to show the interweaving of literary discourse on Iraqi minorities and the wider debate among Iraqi intellectuals on the deteriorating condition of Iraqi Christians – which has led to their mass emigration – as reflected in a number of post-2003 Iraqi novels. The literary image of this exodus cannot be discussed without addressing the position of Christians among other Iraqi communities currently and in the past, as well as the question of their identity. This article refers to the following novels: Taššārī (Dispersion, 2012) by In‘ām Kaǧaǧī, I‘ǧām (Diacritics, 2004) and Yā Maryam (Ave Maria, 2012) by Sinān Antūn, Sīra dātiyya riwā’iyya (An Iraqi in Paris: An Autobiographical Novel, 2012) by Samū’īl Šam‘ūn, Frānkanštāyn fī Baġdād (Frankenstein in Baghdad, 2013) by Ahmad Sa‘dāwī, and Sabāyā dawlat al-hurāfa (Slaves of the Imaginary State, 2017) by ‘Abd ar-Ridā Sālih Muhammad. The article is divided into four parts, including an introduction in which the above-mentioned debate is presented. The second part depicts the plight of Iraqi Christians after 2003 through a brief outline of the lives of four literary characters. The third part focuses on the situation of Iraqi Christians before 2003 by relating the memories of five fictional protagonists. These two descriptive parts are followed by some final remarks. The theoretical framework of this article is based on the reflections of Birgit Neumann and Astrid Erll concerning the role of literature as a medium in the construction of cultural memory.

The article highlights the significance of the first full English translation of Naqd al-Hitāb ad-Dīnī (Critique of Religious Discourse), one of the most characteristic and important works of the acclaimed Egyptian intellectual Nāsr Hāmid Abū Zayd (1943–2010). The work was firstly published in 1992 by Sīnā li-an-Našr in Cairo, coinciding with the beginning of the so-called Case of Abū Zayd (1992–1995), the campaign of Egyptian fundamentalists against the scholar. Abū Zayd’s critique of the dominant discourses and worldviews in the Arab world, created both by the Islamic fundamentalists and so-called Islamic left, has gained huge acclaim in the international academia but so far there has not been a full translation of the work into English (also taking into account the important role of the full German edition published by Chérifa Magdi and Navid Kermani in 1996). In 2018 Jonathan Wright’s translation was published by Yale University Press in the series “World Thought in Translation”. The edition was enriched by Carool Kersten’s scholarly introduction. The following article discusses the translation dilemma regarding Naqd… (e.g. problems with finding equivalents for Arabic semiotic and hermeneutical terminology utilised by the Egyptian scholar), giving examples of the choices made by the translator. Adding to it, the more general issues of the impact of Abū Zayd’s work on the contemporary rereading of Arab-Islamic turāt are analysed.

UNkulunkulu is a very important figure within Zulu pantheon but his nature is not really defined. Should he be considered God, a god or the first ancestor? The problem comes from Western (Christian) need to find and define a supreme deity within Zulu religious beliefs. In 2013, 2018 and 2019 I conducted thorough field-studies among South African sangomas and asked them about uNkulunkulu. This article aims to organise knowledge about uNkulunkulu and tries to place him within the deity stratum. Also, my research allows to show if searching for answers about uNkulunkulu is a Zulu problem or maybe just Western scholars’. Field studies that enabled writing this paper were sponsored by Polish National Science Centre, Poland (Narodowe Centrum Nauki), project no.: 2017/25/N/HS1/02500.

In the article the author deals with the contributions of Goettingian scholars to the study of the so-called “Runic”-Turkic inscriptions discovered in the early 18th century in Siberia during the 18th and 19th centuries before their decipherment by Vilhelm Ludvig Peter Thomsen (1842–1927) and Friedrich Wilhelm Radloff (Vasilij Vasilievič Radlov; 1837–1918). The author points to the scholars speculations on the unknown language of the inscriptions based in Göttingen as well as the research in this field and times outside that town.

Among the big corpus of the commentaries over the Qur’an, one of the special developments was a genre of gloss (hāšiya). The study addresses main Ottoman glosses written to the Qur’anic commentaries, contextualizing it within the internal dimensions of the content transformations. It is argued that since the glosses were used as the textbooks in the Ottoman medrese, they could be considered as the “mainstream” Ottoman reading of the Qur’an. This reading was not merely one of the practices for approaching the Qur’an, but the kind of tradition with the related authorities and meaningful developments. The research covers these patterns of interpretations applied to the case of Āl ‘Imrān, 3: 7, showing the way of how the philology and theology interacted in the Ottoman tafsīr glosses.

The paper presents how the pluralism of relations in the early Muslim sources concerning the memory the Qādisiyya narrative is problematic for reconstructing the event of the battle by modern scholars. Specific studies of the early Islamic sources concerning the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya lead to the conclusion that it is certainly easier to interpret the functions of particular topoi than to determinate the facts about the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya. The main, unsolved questions related to the Qādisiyyah narrative are the uncertainty of the date of the battle, the size of the Muslim and Persian forces that fought in the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya as well as some contradictions and different presentations of the battle. Scholars have undertaken many attempts to make the conflicting accounts more coherent but in fact, they only made some speculations or, at the best, case scenario – explanations made on the basis of limited and uncertain evidence. For these reasons, the paper contains the suggestion to avoid an undue emphasis on the importance of the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya and to replace this term by the more general expression “the Mesopotamian campaign 634–637.” The critical evaluation of the Muslim sources leads to a more general description of the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya as an element of the campaign (stage 634–637) whose unambiguous evaluation is impossible.

The term “comfort women” refers to the women, mainly from the Korean Peninsula and China, who had been forced to serve as sexual slaves by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War. The problem emerged at the beginning of the 1990s and became an impediment especially in relations between Japan and South Korea. The article analyzes how the “comfort women” issue was approached to by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in both countries. It is argued that while the problem led to invigoration of civil society institutions, it also incited strong nationalist movements. Anti-Japanese feelings in South Korea contributed to lack of flexibility in negotiations with Japan and rejection of the apologies by the government of that country. Such reaction, in turn, weakened the position of moderate NGOs in Japan that tried to compensate the victims, and made them prone to criticism from right-wing movements. The paper examines these complex developments.

The shrine antechamber is a standard component of the Indian temple architecture. It was originated in the Buddhist context, and the context was the rock-cut architecture of the Deccan and central India. The first antechamber was attempted in circa 125 CE in the Nasik Cave 17. It was patronised by Indrāgnidatta, a yavana , who possibly hailed from Bactria. The second antechamber was created in Bāgh Cave 2 in ca. late 466 CE. The patron remains unknown. The third antechamber was initiated in Ajanta Cave 16 within a few months. It was patronised by Varāhadeva, the Prime Minister of Vākātaka Mahārāj Hari Sena. When the third antechamber was only half excavated, the plan was cancelled by the patron himself due to a sudden threat posed by the Alchon Hūns led by Mahā-Sāhi Khingila. The Nasik antechamber was inspired from Bactria, the Bāgh antechamber was inspired from the parrallels in the Greater Gandhāra region, whereas the Ajanta Cave 16 antechamber was inspired from Bāgh Cave 2.

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 considers Steven Pinker’s recent outlook presented in his book Enlightenment Now. The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. The paper discusses not only current political and philosophical Pinker’s views on a considerable number of evidences in favor of mankind’s progress in the last period. The authors claims that Pinker’s views may serve as an antidote to the contemporary pessimism that is being spread inter alia by mass media. The reader is pulled into a debate regarding issues surrounding the contemporary state of being of the human race. This is something more than just pop-scientific excursion of a well-established specialist beyond his area of expertise, but a valuable aggregate of data enticing also to professionals from the realm of sociology, philosophy and politics. Above all Pinker’s voice should be regarded as a counterbalance to all-pervasive pejorism and however momentary relief.