In the paper, I present the views of Alina Motycka, a Polish philosopher of science who died in 2018. I place Motycka’s scholar activity in a historical context, relative to two traditions of the philosophy of science—its historical version signed by Thomas Kuhn, and the tradition of logical reconstruction of science which in the second half of the twentieth century was revived by the thought of Karl Popper. I believe that this historical situation forms the context in which Motycka shaped her view of the philosophy of science and, because of such a particular context, she has participated in it with her own problematizations. So, what constitutes the originality of her way? Two issues come to the fore here. The first is the reconstruction of the fundamental problem of the philosophy of science, which, according to Motycka, is the question of confronting two scientific theories, of which the earlier (T1) is replaced by a later and competitive one (T2). Motycka shows the inability of the epistemology of the second half of the 20th century to adequately capture this relationship. The reason for this is the lack of intellectual means to problematize the situation T1–T2. The second area of the author's interest is the issue of creativity in science. She was inspired by the theories of Carl G. Jung. In this context, it is of interest to use the philosophy of science of terms such as archetype and myth.

In the paper the phenomenon of big data is presented. I pay my special attention to the relation of this phenomenon to research work in experimental sciences. I search for answers to two questions. First, do the research methods proposed within the paradigm big data can be applied in experimental sciences? Second, does applying the research methods subject to the big data paradigm lead, in consequence, to a new understanding of science?

Positivism is a family of philosophical views characterized by a highly favorable account of science. The characteristic theses of positivism are that science is the only valid knowledge and that philosophy does not possess a method different from science (scientism). Positivists attempted to eliminate all metaphysical components in the area of philosophy. Wolniewicz was one of the most original Polish analytical philosophers of second part of 20th century and he was a strong opponent of anti-metaphysical tendencies. The author discusses the problem of the relationship between science and philosophy and presents Wolniewicz’s arguments against positivism and scientism.

The paper presents the mainstream methodological reflection in the field of art history, shaped by the reception of Karl Popper’s philosophy of critical rationalism from the 1940s to the 1980s. A key role in this process was played by various attempts to respond to the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation. Referring to Popper’s ideas, Gombrich developed the project of deductive iconology, associated with the conventionalist approach to the principles of image representation and communication. In dialogue with Gombrich’s views, alternative and mutually contradictory versions of the adaptation of the DN model for the methodological explanation of images were put forward by Oskar Bätschmann and Michael Baxandall. Michael Fried and Norman Bryson proposed opposing versions of viewing the image as a form of response to the objective and fundamentally fixed initial conditions of contact with the viewer. The divergence and incommensurability of the methods of art history facing Popper’s methodology revealed the inherent paradox of the notion of fact, on the one hand treated realistically and opposed to theories, and on the other depending on the interpretive perspective and theoretical assumptions.

In this interview, conducted during the XXIII International Congress of Historical Sciences in Poznan, Verónica Tozzi Thompson (professor of Philosophy of History at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina) discusses historiography in Argentina and recent trends in historical theory, in particular the epistemology of the witness. She addresses important issues concerning key concepts for the philosophy and sociology of history: truth and trust. In addition, Tozzi Thompson discusses the differences and connections between analytic and narrativist philoso-phy of history and recommends some further readings.

This interview with Paul Roth was conducted after a symposium dedicated to his latest book The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation, which took place at the European Network for Philosophy of Social Sciences conference on August 30, 2019. This interview is authorised. Translation from English and all footnotes – Piotr Kowalewski Jahromi.

The text presents the view of the Polish physicist Grzegorz Białkowski on using aesthetic criteria in the practice of science, first of all in the practice of physics. Białobrzeski claims—along with Henri Poincaré, Werner Heisenberg and Paul Dirac— that aesthetic criteria are present in the creating and assessing of scientific theories; he also searches for a justification of referring to these criteria. He also draws attention to the role of aesthetic experience in scientific activity. He justifies the presence of aesthetic criteria in physics as part of his naturalistic attitude.

This paper attempts to demonstrate that the conviction about the harmony and order of the world was a fundamental metaphysical principle of the Pythagoreans. This harmony and order were primarily sought in the structures of arithmetics, yet following the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes (irrational numbers, as we now call them), the Pythagoreans began to see geometrical structure as a fundamental part of the world. On the example of the Pythagoreans’ metaphysics and science, the paper shows the mutual relations between metaphysics and science. It demonstrates— on the one hand—the necessity of the first as a guide for the latter, and—on the other—how our scientific research can change its basic metaphysical principles when these are found to be inappropriate. The paper also tries to show the need for a realistic approach in our scientific research by means of the same example of the Pythagoreans, that is, the need to discern something which is below the surface appearance.

The new edition in Italian of the articles by the Polish microbiologist and philosopher Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961) edited by Francesco Coniglione offers the opportunity for some considerations around this significant scholar. Fleck anticipates Kuhn’s ideas as well as those of the sociology of science. For him, any epistemology that does not take psychological and sociological methods into account, or that does not concern itself with economics, technology, art, and even politics, is an epistemology imaginabilis. Here we discuss some key points of the essays collected in the book, some observations taken from the rich introduction of the editor, and an inevitable question: Why has Fleck been neglected for so long?

I give arguments supporting the claim that one of the most prominent methodological results of French conventionalism – rejection of the possibility of a crucial experiment in mature empirical sciences – was formulated simultaneously by Pierre Duhem and Gaston Milhaud in 1894. Thus, I attempt to question the standard approach in philosophy and methodology of science, which attributes the said result exclusively to Duhem. I am building my case of Milhaud’s true contribution to the debate on the rejection of the existence of the experimentum crucis, made in his PhD thesis Essai sur les conditions et les limites de la certitude logique.

The end of the nineteenth century was the period when revolutionary scientific discoveries challenged well-established theories, forcing both philosophers and scientists to ask questions about the nature and certainty of scientific knowledge. A group of French scientists not only performed a thorough critique of contemporary science and its history but proposed a new model that adequately described the development of scientific knowledge. Gaston Milhaud made a significant contribution to this new description of knowledge creation. He is however rarely mentioned in the context of the theory of knowledge and remains overshadowed by his famous colleagues. Despite the fact that more than a hundred years have passed since the conventionalist philosophy of science was formulated, H. Poincaré’s, P. Duhem’s and G. Milhaud’s positions have not gained much popularity beyond the circle of philosophers of science. This article briefly outlines personal relationships within French conventionalist circle, presents important results of Milhaud’s analysis, and the reasons why philosophers do not recognize the role he played in creating a new model for the development of scientific knowledge.

In the article I indicate and synthetically discuss issues that can be found in the achievements of Bertrand Russell, and which can be included in the domain of metaphilosophy. I point to Russell’s philosophical inspirations and to his views on philosophy. His views are intertwined with the threads of the traditional understanding of philosophy and innovative elements. These innovative elements include assigning a special role to mathematical logic, of which Russell is one of the founders, and emphasizing the role of analysis in philosophical research. It is also characteristic of him to emphasize the role of science for philosophical reflection. At the same time, however, Russell rejects the radical slogans of logical positivism. This justifies the thesis that in his oeuvre there are threads of both traditional and innovative understanding of philosophy and its tasks.

Roman Ingarden was an eminent philosopher who worked in various fields of philosophy, especially in the areas of ontology, aesthetics and ethics. In addition to his systematic analyses, we find in his work remarkable statements regarding the nature of philosophy, its relation to science, or the specificity of its methods. These metaphilosophical remarks were formulated in systematic works as well as in texts of more disputable nature. In this paper Ingarden’s metaphilosophy is presented in the context of thought of Franz Brentano and Tadeusz Kotarbiński. It is also discussed against the background of metaphilosophical assumptions of the logical positivists from the Vienna Circle.