The title of the paper harks back to Schopenhauerian ‘der Positivitȁt des Schmerzens’, a formulation which, stripped of its broader philosophical context, reads to most of us paradoxical if not overtly contradictory. The folk (non-medical) perception of pain may be evaluatively negative, but there are also pain conceptualizations which reveal that humans infrequently think about this phenomenon along more positive lines. Thus, being predominantly construed as an ‘evil-doer’, pain does not preclude more positive construals, both in medical and non-medical fi elds. ‘Positivity of pain’, then, is often explored within literary, anthropological, psychological, theological, social, therapeutic and utilitarian realms, and, as Sussex puts it, “in its interdisciplinary span, pain language is a prototypical example of a problem of applied linguistics” (2009: 4). With this in mind, I take a closer look at some verbal as well as verbo-pictorial manifestations of pain. The focus of the present study is specifi cally on the overarching metaphor +PAIN as ‘GOOD-DOER’+ (naturally contrasted with the previously hinted +PAIN as ‘EVIL-DOER’+), further broken into more specifi c sub-metaphors. An attempt at capturing and describing some of these apparently counter-intuitive pain metaphorizations reveals their ‘positive potential’, a potential of tools with which to obtain control over pain and, in many cases, re-forge it into something ‘better’, something evaluatively positive.

In the course of his pontifi cate John Paul II delivered over 200 speeches to research workers, students, senates and chancellors of universities on various forums. As the research worker he always cared about the good of the university which he regarded as the masterpiece of culture for the sake of research efforts undertaken by it which include particular aspects of the reality and the didactic and educational activity which serves the entire mankind and the future of the young generation.

Indeed John Paul II addressed his speeches, letters and proclamations to Catholic universities but the subjects touched by him have an universal character, that is to say they relate to all universities. In the present study it has been treated of the most important aspects of the activity of the university. First of all the university ought to serve the truth. The pope considers the truth to be the greatest value from which all other values originate and to which they aim; every truth comes from God who is the Highest Truth.

John Paul II insists strongly on the ethical dimension of scientific research, especially in the subject of biogenetics and bioethics, since all scientific researches have to serve the good of the man and his development and also the respect of dignity of the human. As according to John Paul II modern universities become more and more dehumanised, therefore he insists on the restitution of their humanistic visage since the man and his good have to be the fundamentals of all knowledge. Two further arguments exposed by the pope refer to the neccessity of interdisciplinary research for the sake of fragmentation of particular scientific areas and their results, as well as the need of their synthesis and high qualifications of the professor’s staff who on the one hand have to deepen their specialistic knowledge and have to be the real authority for the young people. The university not only teaches but also educates.

The aim of this article is to present opportunities and barriers to scientific development in the West Pomeranian scientific communities. The authors (representing various scientific centres) identify the specificity of opportunities for scientific development in the West Pomeranian Region. Starting from more general diagnoses, they focus on selected indicators of scientific development. They then attempt to characterise them in more detail. The article is also an invitation to discuss the determinants of scientific development on a regional scale.

In this text is taken the issue of doctoral studies as the highest level of formal education as well as the first stage of their research careers. Use the category of “critical mass” I put questions about the PhD program in the discipline of Pedagogy. One of the context of analysis of “critical mass” is the number of the pedagogy students I and II degree and the social contexts of education as well as employability qualified pedagogs. Then, I ask, who and why needs a PhD in pedagogy. At the end I discuss the European trends in doctoral education with comparing it to the dominance the administrative and bureaucratic approach to doctoral studies in Poland.

Multiple historians as well as sociologists gradually recognize the multiple parallels joining their disciplines. This is a reason for the Authors of the paper to launch a concept of the "History-Sociology" as a new, matrix discipline in humanities.