We discuss epistemological and methodological aspects of the Bayesian approach in astrophysics and cosmology. The introduction to the Bayesian framework is given for a further discussion concerning the Bayesian inference in physics. The interplay between the modern cosmology, Bayesian statistics, and philosophy of science is presented. We consider paradoxes of confi rmation, like Goodman’s paradox, appearing in the Bayesian theory of confirmation. As in Goodman’s paradox the Bayesian inference is susceptible to some epistemic limitations in the logic of induction. However, Goodman’s paradox applied to cosmological hypotheses seems to be resolved due to the evolutionary character of cosmology and the accumulation of new empirical evidence. We argue that the Bayesian framework is useful in the context of falsifiability of quantum cosmological models, as well as contemporary dark energy and dark matter problem.

The aim of this article is to examine the influence of the contemporary speculative philosophy on the neo-fantastic fiction (Le monde enfin by J.-P. Andrevon). The speculative philosophy presents the modern world as the source of cosmological horror for the human being. In my analysis, I focus on two anxiety-provoking motifs present both in speculative philosophy and Andrevon’s novel: the end of the anthropocentric world and the beginning of a new, inhuman world, dominated by nature.

The aim of this paper is to explain the meaning of two mural fragments housed in the Central Asian Collection of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The two mural fragments under discussion, nos. III 9023a and III 9023b–c (Pl. 1, Fig. 1), were brought to Berlin by the 4th Turfan Expedition in the year 1914 from the Buddhist cave monasteries in Kizil in the area of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road, today’s Province Xinjiang, an autonomous region of the Peoples Republic of China. The murals show peculiar waterscape with persons trying to cross it; they can be compare with similar representations from the area of Kucha.