O tym, jaki wpływ ma ewolucja na nasze preferencje żywieniowe, opowiada prof. dr hab. Marek Konarzewski z Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, prezes Polskiej Akademii Nauk.

Efektywność posłużenia się analogią w nauce zależy od stopnia adekwatności danej analogii. Teza ta jest poddana sprawdzeniu w kontekście analogii, zarówno biologicznych, jak i informatycznych użytych w teorii memów kulturowych, jako podstawy ewolucyjnego rozwoju nauki, czy szerzej kultury. Uwidoczniony w pracy problem z wyróżnieniem kulturowego odpowiednika biologicznego osobnika ma wpływ na rodzaj ewolucji – darwinowski czy lamarckowski.

Rodzaj ludzki prowadził rękami i umysłami swoich wybitnych przedstawicieli wielką ofensywę przeciwko złu, niebezpieczeństwom, cierpieniom, trudom życia, przedwczesnej śmierci. Co było wrogiem i kto był wrogiem?

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.

Life on Earth is a process carried out by billions of organisms belonging to a huge number of species. From the beginning of life to the present day, the number of species steadily increases, but the process is interrupted by deep crises (“Great Extinctions”) as the number of species rapidly declines. However, after a relatively short period of time – millions of years – the number of species returns to their previous heights and continues to rise until the next catastrophe. When the species Homo sapiens appeared on Earth, it found the greatest biotic diversity in the history of the Earth, but in a very short time – after its rapid population growth – the diversity began to decline again. Are we witnessing the beginning of another great extinction? If so, what would be the consequences for those species that survive? Is Homo sapiens also endangered? And life on Earth? Questions easy to ask, but difficult to answer.

One of the fundamental problems in evolutionary sciences is the direction of evolution at different levels of matter organization. According to traditional teleological interpretations, the evolving systems should develop toward a final state—a goal. However, in most cases such a goal is not determinable—scientists do not know it. However, they can reveal a general tendency or a series of changes in time: a teleonomy or a directness based mainly upon an internal pattern of the evolving system although modified also by external influences. Teleonomical processes are responsible for all evolutionary processes including transitions from one level of organization to another.

This work is a contribution to understanding the philosophical dimension of the breakthrough that took place in the 20th century historical natural science as a result of the extrapolation of Darwin’s idea of evolution to the area of inanimate matter and the formulation on this basis of a number of theories of pre-biological chemical evolution. The revealed results are the inaccurate recognition of the philosophical foundations of the broadly understood science of evolution: on the one hand, for scientists-naturalists, and on the other, in a much broader, social dimension of their research.

Artykuł jest próbą prezentacji poglądów filozoficznych na pochodzenie ludzkiej zdolności interpretacji i rozumienia znaczeń. Autor inspiruje się wynikamy współczesnych nauk biologicznych, kognitywistycznych i psychologicznych, w świetle których można przeciwstawiać się koncepcjom hermeneutycznym, jakie tkwią w nowożytnej tradycji antropocentrycznej. Chciałbym zarysować wyjaśnienie statusu bytowego tzw. kompetencji hermeneutycznych w formie znaturalizowanej, która nie unika płynnego stopniowania struktur czy umiejętności podmiotowych bez popadania w trywialny redukcjonizm. Będę twierdził, że choć pełne ukształtowanie procesów rozumienia pozostaje zarezerwowane dla konkretnych grup spośród gatunku ludzkiego, to można racjonalnie uzasadnić, że u odmiennych gatunków zwierząt i bezpośrednich przodków człowieka mamy już do czynienia z elementami hermeneutycznych kompetencji, które legły u podstawy pojęcia Dasein. Jeżeli zasadniczym problemem książki Konrada Lorenza Odwrotna strona zwierciadła była próba rekonstrukcji historii naturalnej ludzkiego poznania i polemika z tradycją Kanta co do istoty poznania, to niniejsza praca stanowi zalążek refleksji nad naturalną historią ludzkiego rozumienia oraz nad polemiką z antropocentryczną hermeneutyką filozoficzną. Głównym celem pracy jest przyjrzenie się hipotezie, jakoby podmiotowe egzystencjały rozumienia, nastrojenia czy bycia-w-świecie można było ujmować w formie naturalnych adaptacji organizmów ludzkich i pozaludzkich.

Similarly to many towns in Galicia, Rzeszów has gained street planting at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the period after World War II, little attention was paid to them. It is only from the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century, that we have seen a clear breakthrough. “Modernized” forms of planting are returning to historical places, and new communication arteries are planted with numerous specimens of tree, perennial and seasonal plants, well selected in terms of habitat requirements.

Podstawowe pojęcia darwinowskiej teorii ewolucji to: „ewolucja”, „populacja” i „dobór naturalny”. Wszystkie te terminy mają aspekty filozoficzne i – dla jasności teorii – warto zadbać o ich poprawne definicje. W literaturze jednak są one definiowane w różny, nieprecyzyjny sposób. Artykuł zawiera krytyczną analizę niektórych z tych sformułowań, wykazując, że spełniają one tylko w niskim stopniu kryteria jasności i jednoznaczności. Na przykład: ewolucja musi być ewolucją czegoś, a istnieje bardzo dużo propozycji na temat tego, co ewoluuje: człowiek, wszechświat, gatunek, życie itd. Czy istnieje i czy jest możliwa taka definicja ewolucji, która obejmowałaby wszystkie te byty? Najczęściej traktuje się teorię ewolucji jako teorię ewolucji populacji. Co to jest jednak populacja i czy może trwać dłużej niżżycie jednego organizmu z tej populacji? Podobnie, „dobór naturalny” jest definiowany jako „przeżycie najlepiej przystosowanych”, a zarazem przez analogię do doboru sztucznego, który jest decyzją człowieka. Dobór naturalny jest więc zjawiskiem czy decyzją? Jeśli jest zjawiskiem, to na jakiej podstawie używa się zwrotu, że dobór naturalny jakąś cechę „faworyzuje”? Podsumowując, można stwierdzić, że podstawowe terminy teorii ewolucji nie są jasne i jednoznaczne. Być może dlatego, że teoria ewolucji – choćby według T. Nagela – jest bardziej projektem badawczym niż opisem rzeczywistości.

The article attempts to prove that Darwinism in popular culture plays a role of a theory of everything. Bestselling authors of popular science such as Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins and Bill Bryson have acquainted general public with the theory of evolution, and its newest facet — the Modern Synthesis. Darwinian paradigms, as defined by Thomas Kuhn, are also used in popular books on cosmology, sociobiology, psychology, and religious studies. Moreover, the Darwinian grand narrative of evolutional history shapes the way in which contemporary mass culture presents the history of our planet in numerous educational TV series. Last but not least, Charles Darwin himself has recently become a popular icon and the story of his life is remade in a growing number of fiction and non-fiction books and movies.

The article presents an analysis of the concept of the art instinct. This is a notion introduced by Denis Dutton in his concept of the evolution of art. The autor analyses the internal coherency of Dutton’s concept and its implications, with investigations in the context of evolutionary biology and biological anthropogenesis. The article’s conclusions are that: (1) the idea of art instinct is incoherent and difficult to uphold in the light of contemporary knowledge of the mechanisms of evolution and the course of anthropogenesis; (2) it is, however, a notion that is convenient and explanatorily efficient, as long as one accepts—among other things—the reservation about the non-teleological course of evolution; (3) the art instinct and the phenomenon of art cannot be explained without referring to social processes.

Prawo ochrony środowiska, czy też prawo środowiska, przechodziło i przechodzi ewolucję. Jest ona wyrazem wzrastającej samoświadomości społecznej związanej ze stanem środowiska i zagrożeniami dla niego. Wzrastająca świadomość obejmuje też płaszczyzny konfliktów, które się w związku z tym pojawiają: antropocentryzm czy biocentryzm, oddziaływanie i pozyskiwanie zasobów czy też zakaz? Konflikty te nie są obecnie rozwiązywalne, co oznacza, że prawo środowiska musi zmierzać nie w stronę konfrontacyjną, lecz w stronę kooperacyjną. Należy się pogodzić z istnieniem uświadomionych konfliktów, jednak trzeba zmierzać do ich łagodzenia i zapewnienia urzeczywistniania wszystkich wartości, a nie koncentrować się jedynie na rozwiązywaniu tych konfliktów w systemie 0:1. Kierunek rozwoju prawa środowiska, u podstaw którego leży zasada zrównoważonego rozwoju, godząca skonfliktowane wartości, jest najwłaściwszym sposobem prawnej ochrony środowiska i stanowić będzie o jej przyszłości

This article questions the consensus view of The Invincible (Niezwyciężony) as one of Lem’s classical sci-fi fictions. The author contends that in this novel the familiar conventions (later rejected in His Master’s Voice) coexist with a structural design characteristic of his late novels. An analysis of two pieces of the world of The Invincible, usually disregarded by the critics because of their sketchiness, i.e. the story of the extinct Lyrans and the account of the ancient biosphere of Regis III, reveals that in either case Lem no longer cares for the realist credentials of his fiction and does not put the two planets on the astronomical map (which is no doubt deliberate choice). Moreover, in contrast to his earlier novels, his outline histories of the two biospheres contain hidden (but nonetheless unmistakable) parallels to the prehistory of the biosphere of the Earth (though he was no believer in evolutionary repeatability). As this article tries to demonstrate the two peripheral facets of the world depicted in the novel are clearly related and subordinated to the central story line (concerned with the ‘necrosphere’ and humanity). This structural dependence as well as the way in which key aspects of the world depicted in the novel seem to illustrate the theses articulated in Lem’s essays justifi es the conclusion that The Invincible should be treated as the first novel of his late phase, represented – on account of its form – by His Master’s Voice.

The main idea of this article claims that the dominance of modern media technologies over the contemporary sphere of intersubjectivity reveals certain phenomena in the human world that did not exist in the pre-Internet epochs. One of them is technoratiomorphism. I use this term to define a hybrid operating in accordance with biological ratiomorphic mechanisms and overlapping with technological rationality. I also indicate some effects which are brought into social and individual existence by the presence of technoratiomorphism in communication. In my consideration I refer to Konrad Lorenz’s position and evolutionary epistemology, in general. I also interweave them with certain themes found in Stanisław Lem’s works.

Two formal types of models of living processes, especially evolutionary ones, may be distinguished: the well-known mathematical type and the less-known logical one. The latter applies the terms “class” or “set”; both the terms are understood either in a collective sense (in mereology) or in a distributive sense (in set theory). These formal terms may be used among others to such organic multiplicities as populations or species of organisms, and to organic constituents (molecules, cells, organs) of living organism. Collective concepts refer to objects existing in nature, whereas distributive concepts refer to the linguistic and research constructions of models of natural objects, developed to cognitively grasp natural regularities.

W pracy charakteryzujemy swoistość, tj. wyjątkowość kosmologii współczesnej rozumianej jako fizyka Wszechświata. Swoistość ta przejawia się w stosunku do samego przedmiotu badań oraz w stosunku do sposobów zdobywania wiedzy o Wszechświecie, w tym także metod stosowanych do rozwiązywania problemów. Twierdzimy, że kosmologia jest odmienna od standardowej praktyki badawczej fizyki współczesnej (odmienność metodologiczna). Odmienność przedmiotowometodologiczna współczesnej kosmologii jest źródłem kontrowersyjności kosmologii (twierdzi tak Helge Kragh (1996)). W pracy wskazujemy brak uzasadnienia takiej jej oceny. Odmienność przedmiotowo-metodologiczna kosmologii nie jest dla nas kontrowersyjna. Identyfikujemy tę odmienność między innymi ze swoistością predykcji (asymetria między retrognozą a prognozą), temporalnością kosmologii związanej z rozwojem technik obserwacyjnych, problemem horyzontu oraz specyfiką problemu warunków początkowych. Wskazujemy na niedookreśloność modelu czasoprzestrzennego w kosmologii w dwóch aspektach: a) problemu warunków początkowych dla ewolucji Wszechświata oraz b) problemu topologicznej niedookreśloności modelu geometrycznego czasoprzestrzeni.

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 paper presents historical concepts and paradigms of the institution of university as well as its present and future models.

As a starting point, the origin, structure and function of the medieval university are discussed; then, four basic concepts of university formed in the 19th century are given, namely the German model of Wilhelm Humboldt and Johann Fichte, the English model of Cardinal Newman, the American model formed aft er foundation of the John Hopkins University and the French model – the Napoleonic model ofuniversity.

What follows is an analysis of the changes and evolution of universities in the 20th century. It is indicated that the essence of today’s university is composed of the following activities: didactics, research and professional training. A great significance of general and formal education is also emphasized. Th e priority is given to practising basic disciplines at universities and the significance of the humanities for general education of students, including philosophy, theology and ethics is stressed.

The author is warning us against single-discipline education in a situation when all contemporary problems, whether economic, political, social, ethical or technical, can only be solved on the interdisciplinary basis via cooperation of experts in different fields. The gap between visions of the world shaped by natural sciences and the humanities should be gradually bridged. To this end, a paradigm of the future university is put forward. The paradigm should provide for cultivation of the values derived from the Classical University rooted in the Greco-Roman and Christian tradition, mathematical exactness of scientific research and quality professional training of the Positivist University, as well as the ecological and holistic vision and education of the youth, in a spirit of tolerance of the Postmodern University.

The paradigm of the university of the future should encompass three significant elements, i.e. the mission of a contemporary academic school, the conditions in which it is functioning and the rules it should follow. The paper indicates that, though destined to an ongoing change, the mission of universities for centuries has featured the same components, namely intellectual and ethical education of the youth and scientific research. The contemporary university should act as “the eyes of the world” that perceive its main problems and provide guidance in solving them.

The contemporary university must duly take into account the external conditions, namely globalisation, multiculturalism, ecological threats, rapid communications and technological progress, a growth of negative social phenomena such crime, moral degradation and terrorism; a growing infl uence of the media on life of societies, anti-intellectualism, relativism and radical individualism triggered by the Post-modem era. The rules that a contemporary academic school should act in accordance with are given as follows: a quest for the highest standards in didactics, research and other activities; full freedom of scientifi c research; a focus on discovering the truth and sharing it with others; ethical responsibility of scholars and university professors; the spirit of duty in education; forming amicable and stable academic communities; partnership in cooperation with other scholars and universities; aiming at the integration of Christian knowledge and faith.

The paper ends with a citation from Pope John Paul’s II. address to the chancellors of all Polish academic schools in 1997, in which he stressed the role of ethical sensitivity of scholars today, owing to which the bond may be maintained both between the True and the Good and the freedom of scientific research and ethical responsibility for its outcomes.