Progress in Ecology: Fact or Fiction?

The paper focuses on the criteria for the assessment of the progress in ecology and attempts to respond to the question - how to achieve the progress in ecological research? As regards the first issue, the author suggests two criteria, which he finds an easy to determine measure of progress. They include the following: a number of resolved issues and the existing progress in perfecting the ecological terms. With respect to the latter issue, the author specifies six critical recommendations on the basis of literature data and cited opinions of several researchers. According to him, their application would make it possible to achieve an unquestionable progress in ecology

How Many Times Can One Die? The Death of Art

The article deals with the problem of death and the end of art. The discourse on the subject is still going only due to the authority of Hegel, several contemporary authors and above all – this is my main thesis – a metaphorical projection inscribed in our language and the concept of art itself, which allows us to perceive organic features in art, thus contributing to the ease with which one can formulate the thesis on death. However, as I am trying to point out, these categories become highly problematic when any artistic phenomenon is described.This article deals with the problem of death and the end of art. The discourse on the subject is still ongoing only due to the authority of Hegel, several contemporary authors and above all – this is my main thesis – a metaphorical projection inscribed in our language and the concept of art itself. This allows us to perceive organic features in art, thus contributing to the ease with which one can formulate a thesis on end or death. However, as I point out, these categories become highly problematic when any artistic phenomenon is described. The aim of the paper is to shed the light on these metaphors

Models and modelling

When searching for nature rules we encounter a fundamental difficulty: for technical reasons we are not able to investigate the whole Nature - we have to explore its sections i.e. empirical systems (structures). However, even then it might happen that the system is too complex and its comprehensive, direct investigation is impossible. In this case we can study the system by means of its abstract model e.g. a mathematical model.Abstract models of empirical systems usually present simplified modelled systems, where simplification depends on different reasons, e.g. on the purpose of model construction or the state of our knowledge on a modelled system. As a rule we also exclude from the model those independent variables, whose influence on a dependent variable is insignificant. Simplification does not have to mean that the validity of the simplified heuristic model is lower than the validity of the same model before its simplification.Some remarks refer to certain methodological problems associated with models and modelling, as well as scientific research performed with those tools

Ecological Art and Its Main Thesis

The article deals with the topic of ecological art, the thesis of which is the necessity to protect the planet from climate and ecological disaster. The question the author poses in the study is: why, despite the great significance of the problem and its place in public (at least Western) debate, eco-art seems to occupy a rather mediocre place? The difficulty of ecological art is, among others, that it must convince its recipients that the future fate of the world is, after all, their own, although the effects of the creeping ecological disaster which takes place in our time will be felt only by future generations. One of the important reasons for the disproportion between the importance of the issue, which is the threat of ecological disaster, the huge financial resources and political efforts undertaken to reduce the devastation, as well as the fairly marginal position of eco-art is a certain paradox (the author refers to it as Nietzschean paradox) – eco-art, on the one hand, shifts the focus from human subject matter to the environment, in which man is only one of the actors, on the other hand, like every type of art, it must remain human. For only the special position of homo sapiens can justify denying and inhibiting man’s aspirations in the name of their “leadership” and species chauvinism

Sztuka zakłóceń: awangarda transformatywna i idekompozycja publicznej przestrzeni symboli

This article presents the concept of transformative art, a genre whose subject matter and very artistic fabric challenges the communication structure within public spaces. The existence of privilege officially bestowed upon certain communication structures creates a dilemma for transformative artists. This officially sanctioned privilege muzzles competing ideas and creates the impression amongst the general public that other, alternative ideas are strange, awkward and embarrassing. Transformative artists, dealing within the division of communicative roles, see their art as the voice of minorities, whose suppressed message they convey. Artistic projects within the category of transformative art possess three vital features: firstly, they diagnose the state of minority groups whose social communications are underprivileged. Secondly, they make this group noticeable in the public sphere and thirdly, they create situations in which, at least for a time, they deconstruct, interfere with and reorganize the semiotic practices of the hegemonic power

Tragiczna świadomość czy odwieczny problem istnienia? : krytyka Wolfganga Welscha ontologii „sztucznych rajów”

The article raises the issue of existence in the context of the ontology of an electronic media proposed by Wolfgang Welsch. Welsch makes a diagnosis concerning a contemporary change of the paradigm of understanding the world according to which a transition from a logocentric to an aisthetic way of thinking is the effect of the appearance of electronic media. At the same time, aesthetics widely understood as a general theory of experiences, becomes the first philosophy. Deriving from a generalization of experiences of a constructive nature of media realities, the author of “artificial paradises” notices a familiarization of the conviction that each reality, also the non-electronic reality of an every-day life, being a kind of creation, is to some extent artificial. The consequence of the paradigm change is also the lack of correspondence of the category of a traditional ontology to a description of the virtual reality. The article shows that this non-correspondence results from Welsch’s analogical application of the notions of the nature and phenomenon to digital realities rather than the actual uselessness of these traditional categories. Therefore, the sense of alienation in the worlds of artificial constructions, this “tragic” awareness, being the starting point for Welsch’s considerations, turns out to be the sense of the non-obviousness of being for the first known philosophers

Kantowskie inspiracje filozofii sztuki Stanisława Ignacego Witkiewicza

Związki wielokrotnie omawianej filozofii sztuki Witkiewicza z Kantowską estetyką z trzeciej Krytyki nie dają się opisać ani jako zależność, ani jako kontynuacja, ani tym bardziej jako nawiązanie Witkiewicza do Kanta. Krótko mówiąc, przynajmniej na pierwszy rzut oka, na powierzchni obu koncepcji trudno odnaleźć jakiekolwiek relacje. Niemniej jednak gdy przyjrzeć się wnikliwiej, nie sposób oprzeć się wrażeniu, że osławiona teoria Czystej Formy Witkacego zawdzięcza swe istnienie lekturze Kanta. Nie oznacza to koniecznie, że Witkacy świadomie korzystał z myśli królewieckiego filozofa, lecz że filozofia Kanta pozwala wyjaśnić i zrozumieć nieprecyzyjną i niejednokrotnie sprzeczną teorię Czystej Formy