Abstract
A STUDY of the development and position of science in Poland up to the end of the sixteenth century is given by Prof. Kazimierz Dobrowolski in the recent issue of Nauka Polska (vol. 17; 1933), an annual publication devoted to the organisation and progress of science in Poland. Prof. Dobrowolski's account (132 pages) of Poland's contributions to early science is especially detailed for the sixteenth century itself and is well documented throughout. It refers not only to the natural sciences, so far as they had then developed, but includes also incursions into theology, philosophy, logic, law and history. It is evident that ‘science’ as understood in Poland, and in Europe generally for that matter, up to the seventeenth century was closely associated with alchemy, astrology and occult practices. But towards the close of the period under review, Prof. Dobrowolski points out that real scientific inquiries were being prosecuted in Polish centres of learning, so far as political upheavals permitted. The work of Copernicus is not only important in itself but also because it was followed by that of Francis Bacon, Galileo, Descartes and others. Early English and French contributions to scientific knowledge, for example, Roger Bacon's discoveries and writings and those attributed to Thomas Aquinas, had reached Poland and exerted some influence upon thought there. The same volume of Nauka Polska contains some notes by Dr. M. Wolfke on certain recent develop ments in pure and applied physics and another con tributor describes life in scientific circles at Lodz.
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Early Science in Poland. Nature 133, 491 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133491b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133491b0