Roczniki Filozoficzne

In our limes there are distinguished several kinds of information, among them the following should be listed:1) intellectual information − which is generated in human brain and oriented towards social use,2) biological and cybernetic information − which is carried by specific signals and received by living organisms or technical devices,3) cosmic information − which, as a fundamental element, together with mass and energy, constitues reality; an elementary unit of this kind of information is named an infon.The following axioms are accepted:a) An infon is a photon with an infinite wave-length.b) A photon is an infon moving with the light speed.c) When this velocity differs from the light speed, an energy quantum transforms into an information quantum, i.e. into an infon.4) Owing to gathered data we can expect „information” to evolve towards becoming a philosophical category because it begins to function as „a medium of understanding” when philosophical problems are taken into consideration and worked-out.

The paper sought to present one trend of the debate carried on within the confines of 20th-century history of science, i.e. the genesis of science. Among various trends of this debate we shall distinguish one that concerns the evaluation of the significance of the main traditions in Greek philosophy (Ionian, Pythagorean-Platonic) in the precess of the constitution of science.The paper shows some solutions to this question that appear in the main trends of 20th-century history of science (externalism, internalism).

The genesis of plate tectonics was the beginning of the scientific revolution in geology. Due to the analysis in Kuhn’s terminology some elements in this revolution are able to be shown. The stabilist paradigm was replaced by the mobilist one as a consequence of changing ontological presuppositions assumed in geology. Essential new information was provided by scientific discoveries in oceanography and paleomagnetism. In connection with that a growing crisis in the stabilist paradigm took place. The explaining hypotheses, for instance the hypothesis of sea-spreading and Vine-Matthews hypothesis, came into being. Next they were united into plate tectonics. The consensus among geologists appeared also indispensable. It included a reception of the new theory in the late 1960s and an acceptance of the scientific change that was revolutionary in its character.

The evolution-creation controversy concerns the origin of life and its main forms. In practice, however, it exists on a completely different level, a philosophical and methodological one. As a rule, proponents of both positions quarrel about whether creationism is a scientific position. Evolutionists claim that creationist conceptions are incompatible with fundamental criteria identifying science. The main criterion is the principle of naturalism: in scientific explanations we cannot resort to causes from outside the material world. The paper analyzes some arguments of both sides and supports the idea that if recognizing intelligent design is a legitimate task of many scientific enterprises then there is no good reason to exclude this possibility in biology. In the author’s opinion scientists rather than philosophers of science should be engaged in the controversy.

Protobiology as a science about the origin of life is based on the idea of chemical evolution. The bioelectronics conception, however, that life is a form of electromagnetic information suggests that it is not „chemical evolution” but „evolution of information” that can be accepted as a more basic one. The paper sought to develop, within the context of biosystemogenesis, the idea of a chemical-electronic coupling in organisms (the so-called quantum seam of life).The „quantum seam of life” is a thermodynamically optimal and open quantum system in which chemical and electronic process come about. It exists owing to electromagnetic information and manifests self-synchronization, metastable energetic state, and constant properties independent of evolution. From the point of view of the electromagnetic conception of the nature of life, the category of genesis (i.e. the genesis of life or biosystems) may be understood in a broader manner than it has been done up to now. First of all, it can be understood as electromagnetic biosystemogenesis. The life of earth would originate in information whose bearer was the electromagnetic field. Philosophical implications of this statement are discussed in the paper.It is suggested that nanotechnology and quantum optoelectronics may provide new possibilities of how to empirically test electromagnetic biosystemogenesis and the idea of the evolution of information. The significance of the concept of genesis may be of key importance for the models suggesting new, more adequate scenarios of the processes of the origin of life.

The above question can be answered briefly: the human zygote is a person, for man is a person. Thus formulated question is not a question that is asked by the biologist who does research on the origins of human life. Its answer is involved in the philosophical debate on the very concept of person. Here we deal with two separate scientific disciplines: philosophy (philosophical anthropology, to be precise) and biology (especially embryology). The discussion on the status of the human zygote demands respect for the competencies of either science. Otherwise, we might neutralize the concept of person, or demand of the biologist (as a biologist) to transcend the empirical character of his discipline towards philosophical abstraction. Let us add that the concept of person functions also in theology and law.Therefore the question about the personal status of the human zygote transcends the competencies of biology. The biologist, precisely speaking embryologist, will not dwell on the antropological disputes about the concept of the human person. Rather, he will ask whether the human zygote is a man, that is a representative of the homo sapiens species, according to generic category. Respectively, we have two questions referring to the same zygote, or the primary stadium of our human existence: the questions about its human and personal status. Do they in fact concern the same, or we are dealing here with two, equal dimensions of human existence? The large number of answers giventoday to the question about the status of the zygote and successive developmental stages of man arouse doubts as to the unambiguous status of the zygote. One thing is certain in this discussion: we were all zygotes in the beginning. The way to answer them is, as it seems, first to make the concept of person more accurate, and then to answer how for we can refer this concept to the human zygote.

In der vorliegenden Analysen wurde festgestellt, daß die Aufnahme von Aristoteles des Problems der Unendlichkeit von ihm eine Stellungsnahme zu der Problemlage war, welche in der antiken Mathematik und Philosophie zumindest ein Jahrhundert vorher entstanden ist. Die Unendlichkeit in der Mathematik erschien im Zusammenhang mit der Entdeckung der Inkommensurabilität und der Einführung der Unendlichkeitsverfahren. Auf diese Angelegenheit haben die Pythagoreer ihre Aufmerksamkeit gelenkt. In einem anderen intellektuellen Medium des Großen Griechenlands, unter den Eleaten, ist das Problem der Unendlichkeit im Zusammenhang mit den ontologischen und physikalischen Proben der Verneinung des Effekts der Bewegung aufgetreten. Die bekannten Aporien von Zeno zeigten die Paradoxe, die mit dem Begriff der Unendlichkeit und der Stetigkeit verbunden sind. Aristoteles, mit Hilfe Eudoxios, bemühte sich den Schwerigkeiten, die mit der Unendlichkeit verbunden sind, zu entgehen. Deshalb, trotzdem er die Begriffsbestimmung der Unendlichkeit (der unendlichen Mengen) nicht angegeben hat, führte er die Dichotomie der aktuellen und potentiellen Unendlichkeit ein. Er selbst erklärte sich für das Dasein der potentiellen Unendlichkeit. Das war die Äusserung der antiken „Furcht vor der Unendlichkeit”. Die mit dem Begriff der Unendlichkeit verbundenen antiken Probleme wurden erst im XIX. Jahrhundert gelöst, als die Theorie der unendlichen Mengen (Mengenlehre) entstanden ist. Das war aber im Zusammenhang mit der Ablehnung des altertümliches Axioms, welches feststellt, daß „die Ganzheit größer als ein Teil ist”.Die aristotelische Unterscheidung auf potentielle und aktuelle Unendlichkeit hat einen beständigen Platz im Instrumentarium der Philosophen und der philosophierenden Mathematiker gefunden. Bis zum heutigen Tag herrscht unter ihnen keine Einigkeit, ob das Dasein der aktuellunendlichen Mengen akzeptiert sein soll. Eins ist sicher. Die Mathematik braucht seit der altertümlichen Zeiten irgendeine Form der Unendlichkeit.

Gewöhnlich wird es behauptet, daß die natürlichen Zahlen zum ersten Male von G. Frege (1884) und unabhängig davon, von B. Russell (1903) definiert wurden. Dieser Artikel, welcher auf den Wahrnehmungen des berühmten Forschers des Lebenswerks von B. Bolzano, J. Berg, basiert, erweist, daß der Philosoph und Mathematiker aus Prag, schon in der dreißiger Jahren des XIX. Jahrhunderts über seine Definition der natürlichen Zahlen − der sogenannten abstrakten, unbenannten Zahlen − verfügt hat. Die Begriffsbestimmung von B. Bolzano steht auf derselben Entwicklungslinie wie die Konzeption von G. Frege und B. Russell, weil sie auf dem Begriff der Gleichzähligkeit der Mengen basiert. Die Konzeption von B. Bolzano, bezüglich der natürlichen Zahlen, ist aber unbekannt geblieben, weil er seine Arithmetik nicht auf dem Begriff der abstrakten unbenannten Zahlen gestützt hat. Außerdem wurde das Manuskript Reine Zahlenlehre bis zum Jahre 1976 nicht publiziert.