Marian Smoluchowski was a prominent Polish physicist whose greatest achievement was the development – independently of Albert Einstein – of the mathematical theory of Brownian motion. In his theoretical view of the problem of Brownian motion Smoluchowski employed the concept of causal relevance, which was never analysed in numerous publications devoted to his scientific achievement. In this article I am attempting to demonstrate that the concept of causal relevance which Smoluchowski employed in his works devoted to the issue of Brownian motion may be interpreted as analogous to the concept of causal relevance articulated by Max Kistler. I present a number of arguments which demonstrate that just such a concept of causal relevance was established by Smoluchowski. Since the explanation of the phenomenon of Brownian motion presented by Smoluchowski has been universally accepted, so in the same way the physicalistic concept of causal relevance has been widely propagated. In this I detect Smoluchowski’s contribution to the philosophy of causality. 

Discovered in August 1922 by the Count of Saint–Périer and given to the laboratory of Paleontology in the National Museum of Natural History of Paris a few months later, the Venus of Lespugue can be seen as a major Palaeolithic work. A lot of theories have tried to explain its meaning and function in Palaeolithic society, but its biography within the museum still remained to be done. This biography will help to examine the situation of the whole of Prehistory within the National Museum of Natural History, to understand the evolution of this institution during the last century, and to reevaluate the rank of masterpiece that has been attributed to the Venus in the new Musée de l’Homme.

Scientific networks played an important role in the construction of Belgian prehistory. Among the emblematic figures of the European prehistoric scene was Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet. In the years that followed his return from exile, the relations which the French prehistorian wove with the Belgian intelligentsia developed continuously. It reached its climax during the organization of the Congrès d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie préhistoriques held in Brussels in 1872. Indeed, the latter placed Belgian prehistoric researches at the front of international science. Afterward the relations of Gabriel de Mortillet with Belgium continued on a permanent basis. In 1891, during his trip to Belgium with his students of the École d’Anthropologie de Paris, he met a large part of the Belgian prehistorians. Therefore, this article aims to seek the construction of Gabriel de Mortillet’s Belgian network and its impact on the young prehistoric science of Belgium. 

Based on a case study, this paper aims to examine the scientific, industrial and political interests that intertwine at the 1878 Paris World’s Fair. We will focus on a graphic composition that was elaborated from various copies of rock art presented in several pavilions of the Exhibition and published by a science magazine. This figure was composed to compare the artistic capacities of European prehistoric and African contemporary primitives, all belonging, in the discourse of the French anthropologists, to the same race. The article considers the construction of anthropology in public space as a science claiming to be capable of analysing racial relationships in their environment and therefore capable of scientifically directing the French colonial project.

The inheritance of acquired characteristics seems to be a trendy hypothesis in the fields of biological and cultural evolution, despite the fact that it has already been refuted many times, and has been shown inconsistent with all the available knowledge accumulated. This paper presents its failure, and its logical and factual inferiority to multilevel selection, offering new hypotheses explaining its attractive power. The argumentation aims to prove that the biological variations (genetic mutations) and cultural variations (intellectual innovations) are certainly not changes directed by the environment, but are analogous to stochastic changes which are closely channeled by many selective screens, according to the synergic theory of evolution and the synergic theory of the human sciences and their core, multilevel selection.

This paper presents and discusses the main ideas of August Cieszkowski set forth in his Ojcze–Nasz [Our Father]. This treatise, presently known only to historians of Polish philosophy and historians of ideas, is one of the best examples worldwide of messianic consciousness and approach and, simultaneously, an original attempt to unite philosophy (social philosophy and the dialectical method) with religion. One of the tasks of historians of Polish philosophy is to disseminate the most significant works of older Polish thinkers and make them known internationally. Such then is the aim of this paper. The final sections additionally present contemporary disputes emerging in Poland as to the interpretation of Our Father and my position in these disputes as one of its active participants.

This paper offers an outline of practical and theoretical relations between truth and rhetoric. A point of departure for considerations to follow are philosophical theories of the sophists, Plato, and Aristotle as well as modern commentators of political rhetoric. I argue that the predominantly rhetorical nature of contemporary culture is inextricably bound up with the controversial issue of political deception, its definition and function. I refer to the theories of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Derrida pertaining to the following issues: a relation between acting and lying, mass deception, and self–deception in totalitarian states. I further propose that classical ethics developing from Plato, Aristotle and Kant fails as a basis for the analysis of political and social processes in democratic societies. Key to grasping these processes is rhetoric – as an art of persuasion – which has nothing to do with the traditional true–false dichotomy.

The paper is a reconsideration of the second part of the chariot allegory (Phdr. 253e5–255a1). After presenting a rationale and status quæstionis I analyse what Plato says about the lover’s soul when he meets his beloved. As a result a new interpretation is offered. It departs from orthodox and common read- ings because I suggest that (i) the charioteer, the good horse and the bad horse stand not only for, respectively, reason, spirit and appetite, and that (ii) thinking, feeling and desiring should be ascribed not only to, respectively, the charioteer, the good and the bad horse. It is rather that each element of the psyche con- tains a kind of rationality, a kind of affectivity, and a kind of appetite, and, each of the three functions belongs to each of the three elements of the soul. The inward differentiation of kinds of functions should be understood by means of hierarchy.