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Bolesław Orłowski. The Polish Contribution to Scientific and Technical Civilization (outline)

Bolesław Orłowski. The Polish Contribution to Scientific and Technical Civilization (outline), Warsaw 2021

During the last three centuries, when most nations were primarily occupied with creating the foundations of material prosperity, the aware part of Polish society focused its efforts mainly on preserving national identity and striving for independence. In these circumstances, our historiography took first note of patriotic activists, protagonists fighting for a national cause and those who supported this fight with their writing. […]  Paying due respect to the fighters for the most important Polish issues, it should at the same time be emphasised that due to such an approach, the image of our national achievements has been deformed and impoverished. So, we have a biased concept of the nature of our true cultural achievements (which is not due to any conspiracy, but to circumstances). It makes us overestimate the importance of Polish literature, which was focussed to a large extent on supporting aspirations towards independence and thus not quite understandable for many readers from other countries, and not for linguistic reasons only. It also makes us not see numerous and important –often even globally – achievements in life sciences. Finally, it makes us completely disregard the Polish contribution to the development of world technology. However, our large 19th-century emigration contributed significantly to the civilisational development of a few countries, sometimes exotic (such as the Ottoman Turkey or Peru), and the Second Polish Republic, established in the inter-war period, was in many areas of technology competing with the biggest global players, which finally resulted in the epic contribution of Polish inventors to the victory of the Allies in the Second World War. […]  So, I found it useful to write this short book, presenting, against the background of our history, the most important Polish achievements –sometimes surprising in scale and significance. In order to enrich and improve the knowledge on our cultural achievements.

A fragment of  the Introduction by Prof. Bolesław Orłowski

 

 

 

The full English version coming soon.

 

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