A modern take on research communication, Part I

What if we could start all over again? Knowing what we know now, about the needs for research and the opportunities to improve the human condition, about the power of the Internet, and about the importance of the global village, what would we want publishing to look like? ...

Examining Social Exchange Theory and Social Change in the Works of George Caspar Homans – Implications for the State and Global Inequalities in the World Economic Order

This paper focuses on the critical investigation of ‘Social Exchange theory’ and ‘Social Change’ in the works of George Homans. The objectives are to appropriate the interpenetrations of the twin concepts, and their implications towards the amelioration of the human condition both within the state, and within the global socio-economic relations. Thus, the paper achieves its objectives by applying a qualitative-critical descriptive method of analysis on the subject matter –with a critique from Peter Blau’s variant perspective for helpful extrapolations to explaining human condition within the state, and globally. The paper made some findings, draws conclusions, and recommendations. A few of these findings include 1) the propensities of breaching the norm of reciprocity in social exchange process are higher than the tendencies to maintain the norm; 2) at the breach of the norm of reciprocity, there are higher risks of losses than the gains, and there are immanent implications; 3).That societal progress can also emerge via resistance to an ‘apopular’ status quo. The paper concluded that, there is a semblance of order when the norm of reciprocity is observed among nations, and within nations; but moments of aggression exists with immanent crisis-tendencies that are anti-development where the norm is violated. Therefore, the paper recommends: the state should be committed to its part of the social contract with the citizenry in terms of provisions of human-centered development facilities; and where the state loses the sanctity of its legitimacy and turns to a ‘class-state’, counter-reactions and resistance from the subaltern classes (the civil society) through protests for progressive social change or for the improvement of the human condition, should not be discouraged. Additionally, the advanced nations should recognize the socioeconomic rights of the less developed nations for a fair deal in the global economic relations. Received: 29 November 2021 / Accepted: 28 December 2021 / Published: 5 January 2022

Robak i robactwo w twórczości Władysława Syrokomli

The aim of this article is to determine the frequency of occurrence of the terms “worm” and “insects” in the works of Władysław Syrokomla. An assumption is made that these themes have animportant function in the poet’s works, and that their occurrence indicates something of significance. The article considers both the functionality and repeatability criteria, which is the necessary foundationfor recording these items. The conducted analyses indicate that Syrokomla’s insects (regardless of whether they have a literal or metaphorical meaning) in most cases signal something evil. Sometimes it is an ordinary pest (insect) damaging plants, but more frequently the insect refers to the human condition, characterising it in three dimensions: as the worm of death, as the worm of internal suffering or as the worm of insignificance. In other cases, worms or insects represent curses or sin. The diversity of how such zoomorphic connotations are presented and applied deserves attention. Moreover, although the majority of them have long-established cultural and literary traditions, in Syrokomla’s works they gain a new context (for example, historical, folk or social). They indicate sensitivity to injustice and evil. The poet frequently presents the human world by analogy to the world of nature.

New sources of life: William Butler Yeats’s “The Gyres”, “Lapis Lazuli” and “Imitated From the Japanese”

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 by the Royal Swedish Academy “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation”1. The article focuses specifically on three poems from Yeats’s “modernist” period which he included in the cycle New Poems (1938): “The Gyres”, “Lapis Lazuli” and “Imitated from the Japanese”. These later writings emerge as a logical consequence of his previous engagement with philosophy and occultism, mythology and history, art and reality. Yeats’s strenuous efforts to forge mythopoeic stereotypes seem to transcend mere personal versions of myth in an attempt to discover deeper levels of meaning, and to complete the self-image he developed throughout his life. In his later works he managed to make meaningful pronouncements on key moral and philosophical issues relating to the human condition.

Assessing the Human Condition in Medical Cyber-Physical System Based on Microservices Architecture

The goal of the work is to propose architectural and information model for assessing the human condition on the basis of microservice architecture in medical cyber-physical system, which, in contrast to the known models for assessing the human condition, can simultaneously provide scaling, fault tolerance and increase the speed of human condition assessment. The theoretical substantiation and the new decision of an actual scientific problem of development and research means of an estimation of a human condition in medical cyber-physical system have been considered. These means involve the parallel processing of data on vital signs of the human condition, organizing the means of information processing into separate independent logical elements — microservices, in comparison with other existing medical cyber-physical systems. An architectural model based on microservice architecture has been proposed.

Epifania twarzy czy iluzja maski? O zmaganiu się człowieka w ujęciu filozofii dramatu Józefa Tischnera

The aim of the article is to present human issues in the context of the face and the mask as its negative. This is to bring us closer to a better diagnosis of the human condition today and the changes that can be articulated on its basis. Both the face and the mask are multi-context, and any attempt to define them encounters a number of difficulties. In Józef Tischner’s philosophy of drama, the face is a condition for the essence of the meeting. On the other hand, the mask, as an appearance and falsification of the truth of the face, is placed in the ambiguous perspective of hiding, concealing, mystifying or obscuring or obscuring the image of the face. Thanks to the face, man is somehow “at home”, and in the bonds of the mask he is somewhat “out of place”, he is lying. The face is relational and the mask is reactionary. Inquiries about whether the face brings closer and reveals the naked being of a human intensified questions about the nature of the face itself and whether it is possible to reach the pure phenomenon of the face as such. Both the face and the mask reveal important moments in the characteristics of a human being as a dramatic being, in which questions about meaning, identity, freedom and responsibility, as well as what is “between” I and You, gain in intensity and imply new attempts to reveal who is a human.

Inspiracje neostoickie w „Sylorecie” Wacława Potockiego

Classified among the short story-romance stream of Wacław Potocki’s works, Syloret occupies an important place in the poet’s epic legacy. Throughout the extensive digressive parts of this work, Lusatia-based writer spins erudite reflections on the nature of the world, the human condition, the essence of human fate, and explicates the thoughts of ancient philosophers (e.g. Seneca). Potocki turns to philosophical theories – above all to Christianised stoicism (neostoicism), which becomes the proper subject of his literary discourse. In the article the author undertakes research on the most important concepts of Stoic ethics (fortune, nature, virtue), to which the poet refers in his romance poem. An attempt is also made to answer the question of the seventeenth-century author’s use of an extensive characterisation of the principles of this philosophy.