The Courage of Doing Philosophy : Essays Presented to Leszek Nowak PDF
Preview The Courage of Doing Philosophy : Essays Presented to Leszek Nowak
The Courage of Doing Philosophy The Courage of Doing Philosophy Essays Presented to Leszek Nowak edited by Jerzy Brzeziński, Andrzej Klawiter, Theo A.F. Kuipers, Krzysztof Łastowski, Katarzyna Paprzycka & Piotr Przybysz Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2336-9 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2007 Printed in The Netherlands TABLE OF CONTENTS Andrzej Klawiter, Krzysztof (cid:224)astowski — Introduction: Originality, Courage, and Responsibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 List of Books by Leszek Nowak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Selected Bibliography of Leszek Nowak’s Writings . . . . . . . . . . . 27 SCIENCE AND IDEALIZATION Theo A. F. Kuipers — On Two Types of Idealization and Concretization: The Case of Truth Approximation. . . . . . . . 75 Ilkka Niiniluoto — Idealization, Counterfactuals, and Truthlikeness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 R. F. Hendry, Stathis Psillos — How to Do Things with Theories: An Interactive View of Language and Models in Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Izabella Nowakowa — The Method of Ideal Types versus the Method of Idealization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Igor Hanzel — Leszek Nowak on Scientific Laws and Scien- tific Explanation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Michael J. Shaffer — Idealization, Counterfactuals, and the Correspondence Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Krzysztof (cid:224)astowski — Synthetic and Neutralist Theory of Evolution: The Issue of Methodological Correlations. . . . . . 205 Adolfo García de la Sienra — Idealization in the Labor Theory of Value. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Krzysztof Brzechczyn — On the Application of the non- Marxian Historical Materialism to the Development of Non-European Societies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 6 Contents SCIENCE AND ONTOLOGY C. Ulises Moulines — Model Construction, Idealization, and Scientific Ontology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Thomas Mormann — Representations, Possible Worlds, and the Idealizational Approach to Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 Evandro Agazzi — Idealization, Intellectual Intuition, Inter- pretation, and Ontology in Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Piotr Przybysz — What does to Be Mean in Leszek Nowak’s Conception of Unitarian Metaphysics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Roberto Poli — Formal and Ontological Roundabouts . . . . . . 325 Jan Wole(cid:276)ski — Metalogic and Ontology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND VALUES Max Urchs — On the Structure of Deceptive Speech Acts: Lying as an Element of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Jerzy Perzanowski — In Praise of Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Roman Kubicki — Love: In the Search for the First Philoso- phy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 Bert Hamminga — Is the Enlightened Worldview on Re- treat?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 Martti Kuokkanen — Boxing and Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445 Katarzyna Paprzycka — On Willfully Contrarious Beliefs. . . 461 INTRODUCTION: ORIGINALITY, COURAGE, AND RESPONSIBILITY Leszek Nowak’s Ways of Doing Philosophy This introduction makes no claim to neutrality. We have no desire to write about Leszek simply as a thinker, teacher and man of upright character. We leave that task to someone else, to someone who can keep some distance from their subject. We feel as if we were his spiritual children and we find ourselves unable to stop enumerating his merits and accomplishments. We had the fortune to experience something incredible and unique: we met a master who was not only willing to teach us, work with us and become our true friend, but who, through each of his texts or seminars, filled us with admiration and sheepish embarrassment. Admiration because, after over thirty years of acquaintance, we are still unable to predict his next move. Although illness has prevented him from giving lectures and hosting seminars, he still manages to work just as hard as ever, and we, waiting for his next text, wonder what stifling habit of thought Leszek will boisterously grapple with this time, and whether he will once again come up with the kind of thought that just does not become respectable professors — those custodians of timeworn traditions and In: J. Brzezi(cid:276)ski, A. Klawiter, T.A.F. Kuipers, K. (cid:224)astowski, K. Paprzycka, P. Przybysz (eds.), The Courage of Doing Philosophy: Essays Dedicated to Leszek Nowak, pp. 7-21. Amsterdam/New York, NY: Rodopi, 2007. 8 Andrzej Klawiter and Krzysztof (cid:224)astowski guardians of philosophical mantras. In this respect Leszek is the youngest among us. Unfortunately, this source of admiration is also a cause of embarrassment. What is an eager student to do when their master continually demonstrates, with such ease and grace, ever new and increasingly complicated figures of thought, and they — a mere apprentice to the trade — have yet to fully master the figures from the first lessons? Our frustration was made worse by the fact that Leszek refused to treat us as assistants who filled in the gaps and smoothed down any rough edges in the system created by the boss. He expected us to be as bursting with thought as he was. Presenting a new text at a seminar every week was like water off a duck’s back for him. For us, his doctoral students, with whom he had regular tutorials, this was an ordeal of fire. Once a week, at a specified time, we had to arrive at Leszek’s house with a new idea (as well as something he took for granted — our work on the task set the previous week). Time and time again each of us would come to him full of remorse, explaining that, unfortunately, that week we had not managed to meet our quotas because no new ideas whatsoever had come into our heads. Then Leszek would comfort the wrongdoer, sit them down in an armchair and steer the conversation in such a way that, as it unfolded, it became clear that the many days of wracking our brains for an interesting idea had not been in vain, not by any means. The delighted doctoral student would discover that the idea had been on its way all the time, that it was their own little brainchild, and Leszek only gave his expert help in bringing it out into the world. Leszek Nowak is such a multifaceted and productive person that it is impossible to provide an exhaustive account of his achievements to date. So we shall focus instead upon what makes him, in our opinion, one of the most original thinkers in Polish philosophy after the Second World War. We will present the main strands of his academic work and draw attention to some of the other fields he has been active in. Concentrating on the essentials, we will begin by looking at the most important — his research activity. We shall also discuss Leszek’s accomplishments as a publisher (the creator and editor-in-chief of Pozna(cid:276) Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, the first philosophy book series after the World War II that was led by Originality, Courage, and Responsibility 9 a Polish scholar and which promoted Polish philosophy among an English speaking audience), his role as organizer of academic life and teacher of young philosophers. To round off, we outline his political activities and his work as an essayist and political commentator. Biographical Note Leszek Nowak was born on the 7th of January 1943, in the town of Wi(cid:266)ckowice, which can be found in the region of Ma(cid:225)opolska, in the south of Poland. He studied law at Adam Mickiewicz University (1961- 1965), and then philosophy at Warsaw University (1966). From his student days to the present, he has been connected with Adam Mickie- wicz University in Pozna(cid:276), first in the Department of Law, and later in the Institute of Philosophy. He took part in the seminars of Czes(cid:225)aw Znamierowski, Zygmunt Ziembi(cid:276)ski and Jerzy Giedymin. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the theory of law, entitled Problems of the Meaning and Validity of Legal Norms and the Semiotic Function of Language, under the supervision of Professor Zygmunt Ziembi(cid:276)ski, in 1967. He gained his habilitation in general methodology in 1970, on the basis of the work The Methodological Foundations of Karl Marx’s Capital. He became a professor without chair in 1976 and a professor with chair in 1990. In 1985, Professor Nowak was expelled from the university for his involvement with underground publishing (the Minister Science of Higher Education who signed the decision had previously been the rector at Adam Mickiewicz University, so he effectively fired a former colleague). In 1989, he was invited back to work and took up his former position again. He has been a correspondent member of the Polish Academy of Sciences since 1994. Leszek Nowak was also: Visiting-professor in several Western universities, a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Research in Wassenaar and Berlin; the founder (in 1975) and editor-in-chief of the international book series Pozna(cid:276) Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities (Amsterdam: Rodopi; 92 volumes had been published by the end of 2006 ) as well as the series, published in
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