W artykule zaprezentowano wyniki badań grafiki dwunastu polskich czasopism popularnonaukowych ukazujących się XVIII wieku w Warszawie i Krakowie. Omówiono charakterystyczne cechy układu graficznego oraz szaty graficznej periodyków, wskazano prototypy europejskie tego typu czasopism oraz źródła pozyskiwania tekstów i ozdobnych elementów typograficznych, a także znaczenie grafiki dla popularyzacji nauki w czasopismach.

Apologia filosofico-storica in cui si mostra il sesso delle donne superiore a quello degli uomini, published in 1737 by the Palermitan nobleman Vincenzo Di Blasi, is a collection of examples – taken from myth, history and literature – of feminine values and virtues, composed in support of the superiority of the “womanish sex” over the virile one. The work is closely linked to the Sicilian cultural context of that time, suspended between a fossilized scholastic philosophy and a slow reception of the secular and modern Cartesian thought. But it confirms – also in Sicily – the growing cultural and disseminating function acquired by the so called “art of conversation”, alongside the already institutionalized model proposed by the academies.

In 2020 the Kórnik Library’s collections were supplemented with new documents connected with the beginnings of the Protestant parish in Bnin. The present article presents the time of formation and the first years of functioning of evangelical community in Bnin, which was one of the biggest communities in Greater Poland (excluding Poznań) for more over 150 years. After a brief introduction, the following part describes upon mentioned sources the establishing of community and construction of the first Lutheran church in Bnin with its buildings. Finally, the annex contains biographies of the first five pastors in Bnin and source edition of these documents.

This article outlines the rise and development of popular science periodicals in Poland from the 18th century until 1939. Their history begins in 1758 with the publication of Nowe Wiadomości Ekonomiczne i Uczone [Latest Economic and Learned News]. Our corpus includes 128 periodicals representing a great diversity of formats and content.

The Thornische Nachrichten von gelehrten Sachen, published in Toruń in 1762–1766, was a learned review journal, the first periodical of this kind in Poland. As one of its editors' priorities was to keep track of current Polish writing, the magazine regularly published reviews of the most notable books of Polish Enlightenment (among its reviewers were Stanisław Konarski, Wacław Rzewuski, Franciszek Bohomolec, Józef Minasowicz).

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

The issues of the history of culture and science of the eighteenth‑century Polish‑Lithuanian Commonwealth are rare in the works of Józef Andrzej Gierowski. This article analyses his views on these issues. He devoted most attention to the subject of the beginnings of the Enlightenment in Poland, joining a long scholarly discussion about it. He agreed that the precursors of the Enlightenment in Poland were already active in the 1740s, during the era of the Wettins’ rule. He pointed to educational reform, writing activity (Benedykt Chmielowski’s, the political and journalistic work of a number of writers) and publishing (especially of the Załuski brothers), and the development of periodicals as the three pillars on which reforms were carried out in the future – during the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski. In addition, and just as importantly, he drew attention to methodological weaknesses concerning the study of intermediate periods, i.e. between the Baroque and the Enlightenment. He also pointed out the need for a comprehen-sive picture of the cultural history of the Polish‑Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18 ^th century – proponents of both Sarmatian culture and Enlightenment thought.

The author presents main tendencies in the Polish republicanism of the 18th century from the perspective of its philosophy of history and philosophy of politics presented by Dunin-Karwicki. The author tries to make a critical comparison of two contradictory interpretations of the reality understood as the creation of God or the people and the infl uences of these two interpretations on social changes and differences in the perception of the reality.

Jerzy Topolski was one of the most outstanding Polish historians of the late 20th century. He wrote numerous works, including a synthesis of the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Com-monwealth in the 16-18th centuries, which is the object of the analyses presented in this article.