The Author tries to “think out of the box”, presenting “Sponsalia ex hoc mundo” (“Hand fastening out of this world”). The title reflects the view that the outer space sciences and the sea sciences are analytically separable, but practically interlinked. It might be observed in the context of space technology and satellite technics, a new system of management and government, as well as a new system of law and policy. Nowadays, the outer space infrastructure (the use of artificial Earth satellites for Direct Television Broadcasting, communications, remote sensing, navigation, military missiles) affects infrastructure of our Planet, including maritime infrastructure. There is, therefore, the need for a new face of integrated system of science and practice.

The article The Influence of the Bible on Civilization (The Bible and Natural Sciences) shows us the importance of the Holy Bible in relation to the forming of Western civilization. The Bible is at the foundation of the heritage of European civilization. Written down during the period of almost 1500 years, it contains truths that concern all fields of life, both on the individual and the social level. As a work of literature it had its role, together with the civilization of Ancient Greece, in the origins of sciences. Science and religion are two very important elements of human culture. All reflections on the subject of the genesis of the world have their roots in these two basic aspects of seeing reality. Everything that exists needs an explanation of its origin. Thus the basic question that gave the beginning to philosophy was the question of the human being about himself and about the Universe. The relation of the science of creation, originating from the biblical description showing God as giving existence to everything, came into conflict with the empirical description of the beginning of the Universe and man in it. The questions that Latin civilization took from Greek philosophy and Christianity, based on biblical foundations, were transformed during the course of history to a conflict between science and faith, which began with the Copernican revolution and the Galileo issue. It had its greatest inflammation in the 19th century, as the result of the discoveries in the field of bio- logy, mainly connected with the theory of evolution of C. Darwin. One of the basic aspects of this conflict is the question of the origin of the world, which issue is, so to say, a natural place of meeting of theology with natural sciences. This conflict began as a result of trying to discover the essence of God's message contained in the Bible, by natural sciences. This discovering was an interpretation of the inspired text in relation to the eternal truth and to cultural variables, and also to civilization frames.

The struggle undertaken by Galileo Galilei against Aristotelian physics—and his subsequent defense of Nicolaus Copernicus’s theories—led the Pisan scientist to bring about the so-called modern scientific revolution and to lay the foundations of the experimental method, the fundamental result of which was to deprive the natural world of subjective qualities and to reconfigure it in purely quantitative terms. On the purely historical level, agreement among historians of science and philosophy is almost unanimous, while the same cannot be said for questions concerning interpretations of Galilei’s modus operandi and the basic philosophical options adopted by Galilei during his demolition of the entire Aristotelian-scholastic framework. Not all experts in the Galilean thought or of science, in fact, agree in tracing the Galilean reflection within the Platonic tradition, but one authoritative voice that has instead argued for its deep intertwining between Plato and Galilei is the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer. In this contribution I will attempt to demonstrate, partly considering two unpublished manuscripts of Cassirer, the plausibility of the Cassirerian thesis about Galilei’s physical Platonism.

The paper presents national report of Poland for IAG on positioning and applications. The selected research presented was carried out at leading Polish research institutions and concern precise multi-GNSS satellite positioning – relative and absolute – and also GNSS-based ionosphere and troposphere modelling and studies. The research resulted in noticeable advancements in these subjects confirmed by the development of new algorithms and methods. New and improved methods of precise GNSS positioning were developed, and also GNSS metrology was studied. New advanced troposphere models were presented and tested. In particular, these models allowed testing IPW variability on regional and global scales. Also, new regional ionosphere monitoring web-based services were developed and launched.

This review paper presents research results on geodetic positioning and applications carried out in Poland, and related to the activities of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) Commission 4 “Positioning and Applications” and its working groups. It also constitutes the chapter 4 of the national report of Poland for the International Union of Geodesy and Geodynamics (IUGG) covering the period of 2015-2018. The paper presents selected research, reviewed and summarized here, that were carried out at leading Polish research institutions, and is concerned with the precise multi-GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) satellite positioning and also GNSS-based ionosphere and troposphere modelling and studies. The research, primarily carried out within working groups of the IAG Commission 4, resulted in important advancements that were published in leading scientific journals. During the review period, Polish research groups carried out studies on multi-GNSS functional positioning models for both relative and absolute solutions, stochastic positioning models, new carrier phase integer ambiguity resolution methods, inter system bias calibration, high-rate GNSS applications, monitoring terrestrial reference frames with GNSS, assessment of the real-time precise satellite orbits and clocks, advances in troposphere and ionosphere GNSS remote sensing methods and models, and also their applications to weather, space weather and climate studies.

The distinction between primary and secondary qualities, most famously outlined by Galileo, and subsequently supported, inter alia, by Descartes and by Locke, has widely been considered one of the crucial factors in the development of modern idealism. In its contemporary form, the distinction identifies some of the perceived properties as mental phenomena due to their content and structural dependence on the mind. However, this account of the primary/secondary distinction is largely different from its original version developed by the above-mentioned philosophers, within whose work the mental being of the perceived qualities was demonstrated objectively, from the conceptually-derived nature of matter, and not subjectively, by referring to the mind’s participation in the cognitive process. It was only at the next stage of the early modern subjectivisation of sense perception, best exemplified by such philosophers as Arnold Geulincx and Richard Burthogge, that the creative role played by the mind in sensation and, consequently, the mind-dependency of the sensible qualities was recognised – a turn influenced by the reinterpretation of Aristotelian philosophy offered by Jacopo Zabarella and the Paduan school, as well as by anti-Aristotelianism of the kind developed in Netherlands. Furthermore, the two different approaches to the primary/ secondary distinction can be linked with two main types of post-Cartesian idealism, i.e. Berkeleian and Kantian – a claim for which illustrative evidence from British philosophy, namely from Berkeley’s and Burthogge’s respective theories, can be drawn.