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Jean-Emmanuel Gilibert (1741-1814) has been the subject of few biographical works. This paper presents the results of research from unpublished documents, unknown by historians until now. The information, publishedin old sources as in Gilibert autobiographical sketches or in catalogues of natural history papers auctions, is critically analyzed here. We also tried to establish a list of documents from those cited by Gilibert biographers, but lost today. The author both presents and comments letters to Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836) and André Thouin (1747-1824), as well as a letter to an unknown receiver, in the autograph's collection of Gustave Thuret (1747-1824) and Eduard Bornet (1828-1911)--which is conserved in the collection of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Precious information about Gilibert and his stay in Lithuania was found in the letters of Antoine Gouan (1733-1821) to Philippe-Isidore Picot de Lapeyrouse (1744-1818). Research were also conducted in the Museum's herbarium in order to find Gilibert's specimens from Lithuania as well as to discover more information about the naturalist himself. The documents of Jean Hermann (1738-1800) linked with Gilibert were found in Strasbourg's National and University Libraries and in the Municipal Archives; a letter from Gilibert to Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu was also discovered in this collection. Some new and interesting data came from a register of Hermann's natural history cabinet visitors Some additional information about Gilibert's life and work was obtained as a result of the analysis of manuscripts conserved in the National Academy of Medicine in Paris, more specifically in Gilibert's correspondences from Lithuania and Lyon about illnesses and epidemics. The information obtained allowed a better knowledge of the history of Gilibert floristic works in Lithuania, his zoological research, his practice of medicine and his study of different pathologies, his way of collecting and the collection itself of natural history specimens and the history of Gouan's herbarium and Pierre Richer de Belleval's copper plates brought from France to Lithuania. Some facts about Gilibert's life unknown to his biographers were also discovered in these manuscripts. We also tried to discover to what extent the information obtained in Lithuania was used by Gilibert in France. The role of Gilibert in the description of the Alps flora and his participation in the work of Dominique Villars (1745-1814) were discussed. We tried to estimate the impact of Gilibert's experience in Lithuania on his bio-geographical conceptions, as well as on botany in the XIX century. Based on this information, the character of Gilibert was found to be representative of a typical member of the "république des savants" while still remaining very specific to his atypical life. We therefore also tried to understand to what extent Gilibert was a typical naturalist of the XVIII century.

Władysław Kretkowski was a mathematician and an engineer. He graduated Ècole Imperiale des Ponts et Chauseés in Paris and also Sorbonne. He obtained PhD from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, he was a private docent at the Polytechnic and University in Lvov. The first chapter of the paper contains a short biography of Kretkowski, including information about his education and interests. The participation of Kretkowski in the January Uprising is described here as well. In the main Chapter, i.e. Chapter 2, mathematical achievements of Kretkowski in the theory of determinants and their applications in mathematical analysis and geometry is presented. The history of his academic career is also presented in this chapter. The last chapters are devoted to the mathematical contests announced by Kretkowski (especially the most famous one on the problem which is nowadays known as the Third Hilbert Problem from 1900) and to the Dr Władysław Kretkowski Fundation.

In this presentation of the activities of Zespół Historii Matematyki (the Team of the History of Mathematics), an undertaking is made to synthesise the most important projects and events that have taken place during the eight years since its founding in 2007. The main directions of the research of the Team are outlined, which include: the exploration of the development of Polish mathematics in the late 19TH and early 20th century in relation to the major discoveries of the European mathematics of that period; the presentation of the most important achievements in the history of the study of the foundations of mathematics; the history of the Riemann zeta function and the history of the emergence of computer methods in mathematics and the study on the relationship between physics and mathematics in the historical perspective. This presentation also introduces important research projects, which emerged during the discussions at the meetings of the Team--it is particularly important to offer an analysis of the speeches of the Polish scholars at the first international congresses of mathematicians and to underline the importance of the new ideas presented there for the development of the mathematical environment in Poland. Additionally, four papers on the history of mathematics, presented in this Kwartalnik, representative for the researches conducted by the Team, are also briefly discussed here.

The aim of this paper is to present the philosophical background of Stanisław Zaremba's critique of Einstein's theory of relativity. In the 1920s, Zaremba was the most prominent Polish opponent of this theory. His papers influenced some discussions related to Einstein's theory, especially in France and in Poland. This paper takes also into account the development of Zaremba's critique. The analysis of his papers shows that he never became a follower of the Einstein's theory of relativity. Such a statement compels us to confront it with the previous interpretations of Zaremba's thought.

Assistant professor Tadeusz Tucholski Ph.D., murdered in Katyń, was one of the most outstanding representatives of the younger generation of Polish physical chemist scholars of the interwar period. He published over 30 scientific papers in the field of physical and chemical properties of explosions, kinetics and catalysis and also toxicology and forensics. Thesere searches were partly performed at the University of Poznań, in the period 1926-1939, at the Faculty of Medicine of the Department of Physics where Tucholski was employed as a senior assistant and was the closest associate of professor S. Kalandyk, partly at the Department of Forensic Medicine headed by professor S. Horoszkiewicz in the chemical-toxicological laboratory which Tucholski ranin the years 1931-1939, partly at the Warsaw University of Technology in the Department of Explosives Technology of the Faculty of Chemistry headed by professor T. Urbański, where he had been lecturing "On the latest theories of explosives" since 1937 and in 1934-35 in Cambridge, as a teaching fellow of the National Culture Fund, in Colloid Science Laboratory headed by professor E.K. Rideal. In 1903 Tucholski moved with his parents to Zabaykalye, in 1911--to Brazil. He returned to Poland in 1920, joined the Polish Army and with the 14th Polish Medium Regiment fought on the fronts of the Polish-Bolshevik War. He was drafted to the School of Pyrotechnics Foremen at Corps District Command number VII (Poznań). After graduating, Tucholski remained on active duty as a professional pyrotechnic: from 1921 to 1929 he was appointed the head of the Laboratory of Chemical and Pyrotechnic Ammunition Workshop No. 2 in Poznań and as an inspector of magazines of explosives. In 1927 he was transferred to the reserves, in 1932 after having graduated from the Officer Cadet School in Jarocin, Tucholski was appointed a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve, and later moved from the officers infantry corpsto the army ordnance corps. As part of his specialty, he constantly cooperated with the army. In the years 1937-1939,Tucholski was a technical adviser to the Ministry of Military Affairs and from August 1939--an independent researcher at the Institute of Armament Technology. He took part in the works of the Explosives Commission of the Military Technical Society. Tadeusz Tucholski was a self-taught man. He passed his A-level examsin course of his military service in October 1923 and began studying chemistry at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Poznań. He obtained his Master's degree in 1927, the rank and the degree of Ph.D. in the field of chemical sciences and physics in 1930. In 1936, he became the Associate Professor of physical chemistry of explosives at the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Technology in Warsaw. Tucholski invented the method of the differential thermal analysis. He is the author of the widely used differential calorimeter which records the-processes of conversion of explosives during heating, presently known as the Differential Scanning Calorimeter.

The paper is dedicated to the presentation of professor Hugo Steinhaus--co-founder of the Lwów School of Mathematics. It is indicated that had it not been for the scholar, the founding and development of the Lwów School of Mathematics would have been almost impossible. The analyses focus on his undertakings during the Lvov period in the early 1920s and those events that preceded the founding of the school (namely Steinhaus's education at the Göttingen University, various meetings and gatherings, discussions, first fascinations and mathematical dissertations). This paper, however, does not look into the scientific output of Steinhaus, only presents his method of scientific work and highlights the strategy that he chose in order to create the scientific community. An attempt has been also made to justify the effectiveness of the adopted strategy by describing the scientific atmosphere of Lvov and intellectual potential of the students of the school. Steinhaus's activities in the 1930s will be only marginally presented with an impact on particularly interesting cooperation with the alumni of the Lwów School of Mathematics--Marek Kac, Stefan Kaczmarz, Paweł Nikliborec and scholars from other fields of science (as part of the process of the application of mathematics).

In the second half of the 19th century, the economic changes, industrial development and migration of the population from rural to urban areas in Europe, there was an increasing demand for cheap foodstuffs, which contributed to the growth of mass food production, as well as to the increase in adulteration of foodstuffs. In the Kingdom of Poland, the research on this problem was conducted by a Warsaw pharmacist and chemist, Alfons Bukowski (1858-1921), the author of the first Polish textbook on bromatology Podrqcznik do badania pokarmów (1884) ("A manual for food testing"). The methods and results of his research were published in magazines, among others, in "WiadomoSci Farmaceutyczne" ("Pharmasist News"), "Zdrowie" ("The Health") and "Czasopisma Towarzystwa Aptekarskiego" ("Journals of the Pharmasist Association"). He paid attention to the social noxiousness of the adulterations, indicating that it is especially the poor people, who buy the cheapest products that are particularly vulnerable to adulteration of foodstuffs. In this paper, there have been presented selected issues related to adulteratibn of food products, issues to which Bukowski paid particular attention, and which were significantly affected by contemporary development of food chemistry, among other the development of methods of chemical and microscopic analysis and the generation of new surrogates, which replaced the natural food products.

In this paper we discuss the geometrical method for calculating the curvature of a class of curves from the third Book of Isaac Newton's Principia. The method involves any curve which is generated from an elementary curve (actually from any curve whose curvature we known of) by means of transformation increasing the polar angular coordinate in a constant ratio, but unchanging the polar radial angular coordinate.

Artur Wołyński (1844-1893) was, undoubtedly, one of the most interesting personages of Polish émigrés after January Uprising. He belonged to these circles of Polish émigrés, who were able to reconcile their patriotic aspirations with realities and interest of the countries that entertained them. As far as Wołyński is concerned, it found its expression in the efforts that were made in order to assimilate two nations--Polish and Italian people--appealing to the common history and familiar cultural traditions. An important element of integrating all the above-discussed actions was his scientific activity. The mentioned activity included, first of all, his studies on Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei. In the article were analyzed more comprehensive scientific descriptions dedicated to Copernicus and Galileo prepared by Wołyński, and their significance and opinions on them of the learned, whose works treated on Copernicus and Galileo as well. Secondly, in the field of scientific activity of Wołyńiski, one can also observe his researches and the process of elaborating sources for Polish and Italian his tory, particularly concerning the 17th century. However, most of his attention Wołyński paid to collecting and working out the materials concerning January Uprising. Speaking a modern language, one can say that Wołyński in a way polled the insurgents of January Uprising sending to them an appropriate list of questions, additionally allowing for their biographies. In the paper was also included a detailed description of this broad initiative together with its results. Up till now, not much attention has been paid to this significant scientific activity and its contexts. So, the present article is to remind of meritorious personage of Wołyński, and particularly of his output within the realm of history of science, history of Polish and Italian relationships, and of the role he played in bequeathing memory of January Uprising.

Josef Armin Knapp (1843-1899) as Austrian botanist was interested in development of botanical knowledge of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy--his maternal country. Monarchy, during the long regency of emperor Franz Josef I, was multinational, very much diversified geographically territory. This large empire had included, among others, such countries as present Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Ukraine, Romania and the southern part of present Poland--previously known as Galicia. J. A. Knapp was interested in studying these parts of empire which were considered peripheries and less-known. It seems to have met the requirements of science, economy and administration of Vienna. J. A. Knapp in his large floristic researches had included explorations of considerable part of the Monarchy and had left an interesting scientific legacy. His research papers were results of botanical explorations in selected areas of the Monarchy--area of Nitra (currently a city in Slovakia), Slavonia (presently a land in Croatia) and Galicia (the historical area in the south of Poland). This article refers to the botanical journey of J. A. Knapp in Galicia in summer 1868. The main purpose of his journey was to visit and explore selected places in Galicia--the surroundings of Jaslo and Sanok towns and some specific areas within the Bieszczady Mountains, which are part of the Carpathians Mountains. Botanical researches in the Bieszczady Mountains provided by J. A. Knapp can be considered nowadays as very important and pioneering in that area. In the second part of XIX century this area was highly populated and the observed anthropogenic pressure applied to the nature was strong. Now, the area is considered a very valuable natural territory--since 1973 it has been occupied by the Bieszczady National Park--one of Polish national parks. J. A. Knapp had spent more than two months in Galicia thanks to the great hospitality of Polish people, especially botanists: A. Rehmann, I. R. Czerwiakowski, W. Jabłoński. Floristic data from Galicia were popularized by J. A. Knapp in a research paper Przyczynek do flory obwodów jasielskiego i sanockiego (Flora of Jaslo and Sanok area) translated from German to Polish by W. Jabloński and published in well known scientific magazine Sprawozdania Komisji Fizjograficznej (Reports of Physiographic Commission), edited in Cracow in 1869. The great part of this paper was occupied by a large floristic list, which included 800 species of vascular plants collected in Galicia by the author himself or sometimes by other botanists. The results of J. A. Knapp's studies were also published in his book Die bisher bekannten Pflanzen Galiziens und der Bukowina, edited in Vienna 3 years later. In the publication in question the author proved to have possessed a profound knowledge of the flora of Galicia and Bukovina (now it's a region in Romania and Ukraine), thanks to the experience based on his own results obtained during the journey to Galicia, and based on others botanical data collected in the scientific literature by various botanists. Studies made by J. A. Knapp in Jaslo and Sanok towns and in the Bieszczady Mountains and his complete lists of plants collected in areas of Galicia and Bukovina could be very useful for contemporary botanists and ecologists as the basis for comparisons and evaluation of the flora changes in the natural environment over centuries.

The author of the present article proves the veracity of the postulate, which was formulated by Bogdan Suchodolski and concerned the necessity of popularizing the history of science. The stipulation is still greatly important for many fields of human activity. Bogdan Suchodolski was not the first and the only thinker, who revealed the unquestionable significance of disseminating the history of science as scientific branch: For the first time the problem was noticed in 1900 during International Congress of Comparative History in Paris and in 1903 during International Congress of Historical Sciences in Rome, when the idea of universalizing the history of science was put forward, among others, by: Paul Tannery, Carre de Vaux, Gino Ioria and Karl Sudhoff. All the mentioned participants declared then the necessity of teaching the history of science both in the secondary schools and in the universities. In the article was also included a detailed description of conceptions formulated by Paul Tannery and Michel Lhéritier in the inter-war period that concerned popularizing the history of science, and differed much from each other. Unlike Paul Tannery, Michel Lhéritier advised against separating history of science from the whole of history. On the occasion of describing the inter-war period the author is paying a special attention to the role, which was played by International Conference of Teaching History in Hague in 1932. In that time a representative of International Committee on the History of Sciences and International Academy of the History of Sciences--Aldo Mieli--presented the idea of disseminating the history of science, which resulted in a resolution saying that the discussed branch should be taught in the primary and secondary schools, and in the universities as well. Further, the paper includes the description of the detailed conceptions that were put forward after World War II by the members of Committee on Teaching within International Academy of the History of Science and the participants of International Congress of the History of Science in 1965 and in 1968, and concerned the idea of introducing compulsory lectures on the history of science for prospective teachers and lecturers, and the ways of universalizing the discussed branch. The author is also presenting American conceptions of popularizing the history of science that were created by George Sarton, Derek J. de Solla Price and by Committee on University Education that was established in the 1970s. In the article one can find a specific reflection of Bogdan Suchodolski on popularizing the history of science through admitting its social role, making it the main element of educating 'the modern man' and teaching the branch in Poland. The author describes the above-mentioned stipulations in detail. At the same time, the last part of the paper reveals Polish thought in the field of disseminating the history of science in the inter-war period, so in times, when Bogdan Suchodolski was on the point of building his own idea. The author makes an attempt at showing to what extent Bogdan Suchodolski was inspired by one of the most famous Polish originators and precursors of a new branch 'science of science'--Florian Znaniecki. On this occasion the author draws definite conclusions concerning similarities and differences between the conception created by Bogdan Suchodolski, and the ideas that were put forward by his predecessor.

An attempt has been made in the current paper to dispel two myths concerning Peter Simon Pallas, myths which have led historians of biology to distort the picture of some of the general biological ideas developed by that eminent naturalist of the Age of Enlightenment. The first point dealt with in the paper involves the myth that Pallas had allegedly drafted a 'tree of life' diagram, one of the many graphic representations of this kind to appear in later times, illustrating the structure of the organic world. The tree, of which Pallas merely left a short description (but not a depiction), took--in the articles of authors who wrote about it--a variety of graphic forms (largely dependent on the authors' pictorial inventiveness), with all the authors assuring the readers that they illustrated their reasoning with the help of Pallas's tree of life, but never mentioning that it was they themseIves who had drawn it. The current paper presents a juxtaposition of a number of such diagrams, drawn by different authors: the great diversity of the diagrams is sufficient proof that the existence of one, original 'Pallas tree' is just a myth. Another aspect of the myth has to do with the view that the tree supposedly illustrated phylogenetic dependencies - in fact, Pallas described affinity relationships between groups in the animal world. The present paper investigates how the 'tree of life' myth has developed, and reveals the mechanism that has most likely led to the myth being perpetuated in writings on the history of biology. The second issue discussed in the current paper relates to the myth of how Pallas's general views on biology allegedly evolved. The naturalist was supposed to have moved from transformism (characteristic of early stages of his work) to the idea of the immutability of species, formed in the period of his full scientific maturity. The current paper proves, inter alia on the basis of little known and not easily accessible writings by the scholar, that Pallas espoused the Age of Enlightenment's deism, an important element of which was the idea of the immutability of species, to which Pallas steadfastly subscribed. On the other hand, the analysis presented in the paper has revealed that Pallas seemed to consider the problem of species on two planes: that of free-roaming wild species, which remained absolutely immutable, and that of domesticated species, which did manifest some mutability, largely sustained by human effort but never transgressing species boundaries. It was also--and only--under domestication that monsters appeared. Pallas did contemplate, not without much hesitation, teratogenesis as a possible mechanism behind speciation, but--given the lethal character of monstrous modifications--he did not treat it as the real mechanism of speciation.

In the article was presented a development of Polish medical press in the years 1945-1949. A special attention is drawn by time turning point, which was set up by the Author. A year 1945 is not only the time of the end of World War II and the beginning of consecutive stage of the history, but also is the moment of establishing new scientific institutions, among others--Scientific and Publishing Department at Ministry of Health, which was to protect the remaining scientific output and develop it. A final time turning point--a year 1949--is not only a period of slow elimination of relative democratic privileges, but also is the time of decadent publishing activity of several medical periodicals that were independent of health department. Finally, it is also the beginning of edition 'Słuzba Zdrowia' ['Health Service']--a popular medical weekly magazine, the limb of ZZPSZ, a journal, which was completely subordinated to dictatorship of contemporary political system. In the paper was included an analysis of 9 titles of popular medical periodicals that were issued in the above-mentioned period. A choice of them was intended, because in this kind of magazines the Author could find the answers for the following questions--to what extent in the columns of medical journals one could observe the liberty of authors' opinions and what views concerned the freedom, what one can say about the development of scientific section and the subject matter of discussed issues, how the problems were presented and what said about contacts and cooperation of Polish doctors with foreign countries. Therefore, in the article were discussed first projects and publishing programs prepared by Scientific and Publishing Department. There was also presented chronologically an origin, development and--often--decline of succeeding popular medical periodicals' titles. A special attention was paid to the social issues of medical circles that can turn out to be extremely interesting for the present-day reader and to the scientific section, in which one could find a review of medical bibliography that in those days made it possible to publish the summaries of Western scientific bibliography.

The author of the paper has made an attempt to prove that a teleological interpretation of Lamarck's theory is false. It is unwarranted to attribute to Lamarck the idea that a living organism has an internal tendency to complicate its organization and to improve its mode of functioning; such a concept is not confirmed by existing textual evidence, and it is also in direct conflict with Lamarck's undisputed mechanicism. The proof presented in the paper begins with an outline of the history of this false interpretation, including the opinions of Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. As the tendency is ascribed also to nature itself, the next phase of the proof has involved reconstructing the fully ateleological notion of nature to which Lamarck subscribed. Supposed evidence for the tendency is said to be provided by the existence of a series in which the organization of a living body grows from the simplest to the most complex. That is why the author of the current paper has analysed the concept of série animale used by Lamarck in some detail, in order to demonstrate that it is typological in character, and has nothing to do with the tendency that is allegedly inherent in the nature of an organism. Also presented in the paper, in connection with the construction of the series, is the problem of spontaneous generation, which was made complicated by Lamarck. Finally, the very notion of tendency is analysed and confronted with Lamarck's text; the latter in fact does not contain any explanations that would be teleological in the strict sense of the word. The analysis has enabled the author of the current paper to conduct an exegesis of the fragment of Lamarck's text which might give grounds to it being construed in terms of an explanation resorting to the notion of tendency, and possible interpretations of that fragment have been presented. The paper ends with a description of the mechanism which, according to Lamarck, is responsible for the rise in complexity of an organism that has the nature of a machine; such a mechanism leaves no place for any tendency to be in operation.

Władysław Szumowski is said to be one of the most eminent Polish historians of medicine. The present text is an attempt of describing Szumowski's ideas of the essence of the history of medicine, its place among sciences and a role it should play in education of future doctors. The paper presents both the definition and the methodology, which in Szumowski's opinion should result from the philosophy, and particularly from the logic. Szumowski is referring to these research inspirations, scientists and conceptions that had a significant influence on him. At the same time the author of the article is willing to extract an original thought of Szumowski and divide it from adopted ideas of other people's conceptions.

Lysenkoism in Poland was never an autonomous phenomenon. The whole array of reasons for which it appeared in Polish science would require a separate study--here it only needs to be pointed out that the major reasons included terror on the part of the security service, lawlessness, the ubiquitous atmosphere of intimidation and terror, censorship, the diminishing sphere of civil liberties, political show trials, propaganda and denunciations. An important role in facilitating the introduction of Lysenkoism was played also by the reorganization of science after World War Two, the isolation of Polish science from science in the West, as well as the damage it had suffered during the war. At first, Lysenkoism was promoted in Poland by a small group of enthusiastic and uncritical proponents. A overview of the events connected with the ten years of Lysenkoism in Poland (end of 1948--beginning of 1958) shows a two-tier picture of how the 'idea' was propagated. The first tier consisted in the activities of the Association of Marxist Naturalists [Koło Przyrodników-Marksistów], which it engaged in since the end of 1948. The Association was later transformed into a Union of Marxist Naturalists, and this in turn merged, in 1952, with the Copernican Society of Polish Naturalists [Polskie Towarzystwo Przyrodników im. Kopernika]. It was that society which promoted Lysenkoism longest, until the end of 1956. The propaganda and training activities of the circle and the society prepared ground for analogous activities of the newly formed Polish Academy of Science (PAN), which--since its very establishment in 1952--engaged in promoting Lysenkoism through its Second Division. These activities were aimed at naturalists, initially at those who were prominent scientists (eg. the conference at Kuźnice, 1950/1951), and then at those who were only starting their academic career (including national courses in new biology at Dziwnów, 1952, or Kortowo, 1953 and 1955). The end to promoting Lysenkoism by PAN came with the Sixth General Assembly of its members on June 11-12, 1956. The second tier of propagating Lysenkoism consisted in activities aimed at the general public, including the teaching of creative Darwinism (obligatory for pupils of various levels of education), in the school years 1949/50-1956/57. There were few botanists who published studies in Lysenkoism: only 55 persons did so. Among them, there were only a few botanists who could boast of significant previous scientific achievements--they included Stefan Białobok (1909-1992), Władysław Kunicki-Goldfinger (1916-1995), Edmund Malinowski (1885-1979), Konstanty Moldenhawer (1889-1962), Józef Motyka (1900-1984), Szczepan Pieniazek. A majority of the authors of publication in Lysenkoism were young scientists or people who did publish anything later on. Basing on the available bibliographies, it is possible to ascertain that there were ca. 140 Lysenkoist botanical publications (out of the total of 3410), i.e. 4.1% (fig. 1) of all the botanist publications in Poland in that period. Their number in the years 1949-1953 was higher than in the next period, and oscillated between 15 and 24 publications annually (fig. 2). The percentage of Lysenkoist studies among all publications in botany published each year was highest in 1949 (11.5%), and decreased systematically in the following years (fig. 3). Lysenkoism was a marginal phenomenon in Polish botany. Among the Lysenkoist publications, most summarized papers delivered at successive conferences, or consisted in reprints of Soviet studies. A significant group was made up of publications popularizing the principles and achievements of Lysenkoism (on the basis of Soviet publications). There were relatively studies presenting the results of research conducted in Poland on the basis of Lysenko's theory. Botanists who remember those times recollect that topics connected with Michurinian-Lysenkoist biology were avoided. It is symptomatic that not a single Lysenkoist study was published in Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae, the scientific journal of the Polish Botanical Society (out of the total of 359 articles published in the years 1948-1958). The attitudes of Polish botanists towards Lysenkoism varied. A great majority, i.e. ca. 96% of all botanists, dealt with research topics that did not require direct references to Lysenkoism and did not publish any Lysenkoist studies. A few botanists did publish studies based on the tenets of Lysenkoism. Some did so in a sincere belief in the validity of the theory (e.g. Aniela Makarewicz (1905-1990) or Szczepan Pieniazek). A number of botanists, who did not want to be exposed to harassment, avoided explicit endorsements of the theory or, whenever possible, used the "shield" of Soviet science. This consisted in using quotations from the classics of Marxism and Lysenkoism , both in papers delivered at conferences and in written publications. These references were a kind of levy paid in order to put vigilance of the censorship to sleep or to avoid non-substantive criticism. Other botanists (very few in number) took a hostile stand on Lysenkoism, which was a thing that required courage. The consequences for a university professor included being deprived of one's chair and being banned from publishing (this was, for instance, the case Prof. Wacław Gajewski (1911-1997)). The role of censorship should not be underestimated--it may be due to its activities that only isolated studies engaging in polemic with Lysenkoism, or trying to show the fallaciousness of its tenets, appeared in the first half of the 1950s. The content of publications was also affected by editors and editorial boards: as a result of their intervention, authors were forced to include obligatory quotations from the classics of Marxism and Lysenkoism in their articles. Since the current paper is based predominantly on publications, the strength of the opposition to Lysenkoism may be undervalued. It is well-known, not only from oral testimony, that the times of Lysenkoism were a terrible period in Polish botany, with all kinds of pressures exerted on botanists who did not adopt it. Fortunately, no Polish botanists lost their lives. The Lysenkoist period in Polish botany retarded the development of many of its branches. In the last fifty years many of the setbacks have been made up for, but it is in the biological education of the general public that Lysenkoism has had a more serious effect. Several generations of young people failed to be introduced to genetics, or at least its foundations, at any level of schooling. Instead they were inculcated with the erroneous belief of man's limitless possibilities in transforming nature, including the view that species can be shaped freely in line with economic needs. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)

The aim of the paper is construct an outline of G. L. Buffon's ontology, epistemology and theoretical foundations of biology, using the general ideas recovered from and revealed in the voluminous text of Buffon's Histoire naturelle, which underpinned his biology and the natural science of the Age of Enlightenment, and which Buffon never expounded in a separate work. It was deism that Buffon used as a theoretical assumption that could facilitate explaining of where to look for the origin of the uniformity and order that prevailed in nature, and for the source of the natural laws that were being discovered. It was naturalism, a common cognitive attitude among the natural scientists of the Age of Enlightenment, that Buffon expressed in his view that the created and embodied nature was the only object of cognition within whose bounds the cognizant should remain in the process of cognition, by explaining it through itself. Indeed, Buffon made the notion of nature, which sometimes reveals pantheistic overtones, his main theoretical category. The naturalist Buffon was also a universalist in that he conceived of nature as the infinite universe and entered into it cognitively. He proved his universalist stance by (i) propounding the cosmogonic hypothesis, (ii) formulating the concept of life dispersed throughout the universe, and (iii) viewing the process of Earth's formation as one of the many occurring in the universe, and of life on Earth as one of the many biospheres. Buffon was also a determinist, which can be seen in his belief that the object of nature show stability in their mutability, and unity in their variability, which is the effect of immutable laws which belong to the nature of the world. This determinism showed in Buffon's views in three varieties: causal determinism, co-existential (or morphological) determinism and statistical determinism; he did not accept finalism. Buffon was the author of the principle of the conservation of life, according to which the amount of life in the universe is constant, life is an autonomous quality, and animate matter is as ancient as inanimate matter. This principle forms part of the concept of organic corpuscles, a concept which is not without its internal contradictions. Prominent in this concept, the best known among Buffon's theoretical concepts, is the idea of corpuscularism, and ancient concept, related to that of atomism, which found an application in the biology of the Age of Enlightenment in its qualitative variety. Continualism, an idea opposed to that of corpuscularism, manifested itself in Buffon's philosophy in the form of the concept of the chain of being, which Buffon devised basing on one morphological type which was subject to modification. Connected with this latter, specific way of modelling the structure of nature is the notion of species. Species, discovered by Buffon in nature and viewed as existing in nature in a real way, had a physiological character (in that species were formed by individuals that produced a fertile offspring) and endured in an immutable way (irrespective of the suggestion formulated by historians of biology that species were mutable). As a natural scientist, Buffon was an empiric, or even an empiricist. His attempts at experiments, such as the model experiment in trying to develop the cosmogonic hypothesis, are among the rare exceptions. It was this hypothesis, and the history of the Earth that was intertwined in it, that led Buffon to adopt the concept of geological time and to postulate that irreversible events occurred within it, thus discovering something that was reminiscent of the history of human society. Although Buffon used many very general theoretical notions and hypothetical concepts, this broad view of nature cannot be said-- in spite of the opinions of numerous historians--to have formed a system. It does, however, remain a comprehensive vision of nature, an attempt at an ambitious synthesis in the field of natural science.

The paper deals with the issue of Polish intelligentsia in the inter-war period (1918-1939). In the introduction, the author presents various approaches that can be adopted in investigating this problem, approaches that focus on the analysis of the social awareness of that social stratum and on its transformations form the perspective of social structure. Further on in the paper, the author points to the image of Polish intelligentsia of that period as it emerges from an analysis of the feature writing of the period, i.e. to the image of the intelligentsia's self-awareness, and to the image that is revealed in the writings of historians of the inter-war period. Finally, in the main section of the paper, the author presents the views of four sociologists who lived and worked in the interwar period who dealt with the issue of the Polish intelligentsia: Florian Znaniecki (1882-1958), Aleksander Hertz (1895-1983), Stanisław Rychliński (1903-1944) and Józef Chałasiński (1904-1979). The views of those sociologists are juxtaposed with opinions of journalists and historians, to see how valuable and original such views were. Their views on the intelligentsia are also analysed against the background of the developments in sociology of that period, of the areas or interest of the sociologists involved, and of the theoretical frameworks which they followed. The sociologists' research on the intelligentsia can be seen as part of a wider range of studies on transformations in culture (Znaniecki, Hertz) and social structure (Rychliński, Chałasiński). All four sociologists pointed to the changes that the Polish intelligentsia was subject to and to the problems involved in implementing its leadership role. Apart from Chałasiński, the sociologists appreciated the positive role of the intelligentsia in Polish society and indicated the need to take measures aimed at reconstructing the paths of advancement into the social elite, a great role in which was attributed to educational institutions. The issues of social advancement, and especially the discussions concerning the social elite, were well in tune with debates that were to be found in magazines and journals, but they were characterized by a different, sociological perspective, which took account of the transformations in social structure and in culture, and of the achievements of the rapidly developing sub-discipline of sociology, namely the sociology of education.

The link between the notion of epigenesis and that of spontaneous generation does not seem complicated when it is viewed in theoretical terms or when it is approached in a pure model form. However, once any of its particular manifestations in the history of biology is analysed, the interrelationship between the two notions ceases to be unequivocal. One example of that comes with the first fully-fledged concept of epigenesis, based on careful observation of embryonic development, presented by Caspar Friedrich Wolff in the 18th century. The process of development that an act of spontaneous generation has given rise to cannot, of course, be anything else but one of epigenesis. In this sense, epigenesis constitutes a necessary condition for spontaneous generation, but is not a sufficient condition, i.e. not every process of development through epigenesis has at its source an act of spontaneous generation. Evidence that Wolff was inclined towards the concept of spontaneous generation comes from the presence in his works of a notion described by the Latin term ortus (emergence). That notion--together with that of an organic body--is subject to detailed analysis in the current paper. If the process of spontaneous generation is understood as a process of emergence in nature of what is animate and organic, from what is inanimate and non-organic, and as a process in which living beings are not involved, but a living being is its outcome, then the notion of ortus is close in meaning to the notion of spontaneous generation. However, the deistic and theological philosophical foundation of Wolff's concept of epigenesis is in conflict with the notion of spontaneous generation. It seems that Wolff's notion of ortus can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, it can be interpreted as as result of the theoretical extrapolation in time applied by Wolff to the usual way in which organic bodies emerge (the process is always given rise to by a nonorganic body, supplied by another organic body), all the way back to that the distant moment when the first organic body in time was to emerge; this extrapolation has been reconstructed in detail in the current paper. Secondly, the notion of ortus can be also interpreted as a special kind of heterogenesis, a process which is given rise to by an organic body, but which produces living beings that do not deserve the name of organic bodies--beings that are poorly differentiated in terms of morphology and organization, and thus devoid of distinct species membership, such as simple algae, moulds, internal parasites etc. If that is a correct interpretation, then in neither case would Wolff's ideas have anything to do with real spontaneous generation in the strict sense.

The current paper constitutes an attempt to identify the algae, fungi, lichens and liverworts mentioned in the extensive Herbal by Syreniusz, published in Cracow in 1613. All four algae mentioned are maritime species. As for fungi, Syreniusz described the fungus Fomitopsis officinalis, which was then used in medicine, and he listed several Polish names of edible and poisonous macromycetes, and also mentioned rust on wheat. The lichen that has been identified is the species Lobaria pulmonaria, and the liverwort is Marchantia polymorpha, both used in medicine.

The end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries saw the emergence and intensive development of many disciplines in the technical sciences, and the laying of a groundwork for those disciplines in their current form. In Poland, a country deprived of independent statehood until 1918, this was additionally a period when native research centres and scientific schools came into being, and when Polish-language specialist literatures emerged as well. Many of the eminent personages whose activities contributed to those trends have already been described in biographical notes and articles. There are still, however, not enough studies dealing with the substance of their scientific and professional achievements. One of the personages in question was Wacława Moszyński, professor of the Warsaw Technical University, a pioneer of machine construction and mechanism theory, author of the first academic textbook in the field to be published in Poland. The current article discusses Moszyński's contribution to the development of mechanism and machine theory. The first part of the article gives an outline of the history of the discipline until 1945, presents the context of the after-war activities of the author, and evaluates his influence on the development of machine and mechanism theory in Poland; it also carries a short biography of Moszyński. The rest of the article is devoted to Moszyński's scientific achievements, and describes his approach to matters of structure, kinematics and dynamics, with special focus on those of his formulations and solution to problems that appear particularly innovative and original. The article also points out those proposals by Moszyński which made him a precursor of other disciplines, such as vibroacoustics, biomechanics and ergonomics. The paper also presents the role of Moszyński's work as a foundation for the development of the Warsaw research-and-teching centre in the field. The achievements and methods of the Warsaw school combined with the those of other centres in Poland, which based on the earlier Lwów tradition, thus leading to very significant research and educational accomplishments.

The current paper forms the second part of the article entitled "We are and want to be". On the organization and statistics of congresses of Polish scientific and socio-professional milieus from all the lands of partitioned Poland, 1869-1914", published in the 3-4/2004 issue of "Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki". The first part of the publication presented the conditions in which congresses and meetings of medical and naturalist milieus from all the lands of partitioned Poland were organized. The second part deals with contacts among the remaining scientific and professional groups. The aim of the study was to show the development of ties between scientific and socio-professional milieus from the different lands of partitioned Poland. It has been ascertained that the congresses became a major and permanent meeting place for scientists and specialists in different fields from all over Poland, as well as a forum for the exchange of professional experiences and the presentation of achievements in the respective domains. This is corroborated by the cyclical nature of the majority of such meetings (apart from physicians and naturalists, regular meetings were held by technicians, lawyers and economists, as well as historians and historians of literature), by the ample participation in such meeting by representatives from all the three partitions and by emigres, and finally also by the subject-matter raised at the meetings.

The paper presents a rather little known problem connected with the history of Polish herbalism, namely the collecting of medicinal plants growing in the wild during World War One. The plants were collected by members of the poorest and least educated social groups, who had little knowledge about the plants they collected and were interested mainly in easy gain. This led to the depletion of many stands of medicinal plants. Scientists, like Wladyslaw Szafer, supported the collecting of medicinal plants at first, but once they realised its wasteful effects, they began to make efforts to protect the natural resources of medicinal plants. In the 1930s the collecting of plants growing in the wild was being gradually replaced by the cultivation of such plants. At the same time, herb collectors were being registered and trained. The 1934 act on the protection of nature also contributed to preserving medicinal plants in the wild.

Ever since its publication in the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), the conception developed by T.S. Kuhn has been the subject of much discussion in the works of philosophers and historians of science. The present author has attempted to look at Kuhn's conception, as presented in his 1962 book and in a number of additional papers contained in the volume The Essential Tension (Polish translation published in 1985 under the title Dwa bieguny. Tradycja i nowatorstwo w badaniach naukowych), from the point of view of its usefulness in studies on the history of medicine. Among the elements of Kuhn's model which could be used in the historiography of medicine, the author includes the concept of the history of science focused on reconstructing its real history. She discusses Kuhn's research directives and his views on the nature of scientific explanation. She finds Kuhn's concept of a crisis in science to be particularly useful in interpreting the changes in medical thought and practice. The author also believes that historians of medicine could draw in their research on Kuhn's views concerning the problem of choice of theory in scientific communities.

"The major aim of the present paper is to disclose the magnitude of immigration from Central-Eastern Europe, to selected European and overseas countries of immigration and the changes those flows underwent over the period 1950-1989. The analysis focuses on the late 1980s.... It follows from the analysis that there were no regular and uniform trends, and the intensity of immigration depended on [the] political cycle in particular countries of Central-Eastern Europe...." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

"In this paper two methods of calculation of the net probability were analysed thoroughly--[the] Schwartz-Lazar method and [the] Chiang method--in consideration of [the inherent assumptions] in these methods...in reference to examined distributions, and [the] effect of these assumptions on calculated net probability...." (SUMMARY IN ENG AND RUS), (excerpt)