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All papers of this edition give an opportunity for reflection on the chances, challenges and difficulties associated with the long-term transformation of higher education and scientific activities. Therefore, the concept of “scientific excellence” has been perceived as a guiding idea in the academics'efforts. On the other hand, it seems to be an ideal that can never be achieved but towards which one ought to strive persistently. Furthermore, the pursuit of excellence is accompanied by contradictions which have been pointed out many times in the history of academia in Poland. This publishing series embodies the belief in the existence of the so-called invisible college, i.e., the research community, exemplified by young scientists starting their academic path inspired by recognized professors.

Modern philosophy has benefited immensely from the intelligence, and sensitivity, the creative and critical energies, and the lucidity of Polish scholars. Their investigations into the logical and methodological foundations of mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, ethics and esthetics, psychology, linguistics, economics and jurisprudence, and the social science- all are marked by profound and imaginative work. To the centers of empiricist philosophy of science in Vienna, Berlin and Cambridge during the first half of this century, one always added the great school of analytic and methodol­ ogical studies in Warsaw and Lwow. To the world centers of Marxist theoretical practice in Berlin, Moscow, Paris, Rome and elsewhere, one must add the Poland of the same era, from Ludwik Krzywicki (1859-1941) onward. American socialists and economists will remember the careful work of Oscar Lange, working among us for many years and then after 1945 in Warsaw, always humane, logical, objective. In this volume, our friend and colleague, Jerzy J. Wiatr, has assembled a representative set of recent essays by Polish social scientists and philosophers. Each of these might lead the reader far beyond this book, to look into the Polish Sociological Bulletin which has been publishing Polish sociological studies in English for several decades, to study other translations of books and papers by these authors, and to reflect upon the interplay of logical, phenomenological, Marxist, empiricist and historical learning in modern Polish social understanding.