Research Interests and Achievements

I deal with interdisciplinary issues in the field of physics, history and philosophy (methodology) of exact sciences, history of science and its methodology, history of ideas, integrated science studies and their connections with humanistic culture (philosophy and religion), as well as organizing scientific activities: developing modern scientific journals (using engineering knowledge), editing scientific publications and organizing meetings, symposia, and scientific conferences.

Copernican Studies

I am interested in a detailed analysis of the content of Copernicus’s works in the exact sciences, the genesis of these works, and the multifaceted reception of their content within the cultural landscape.

I have devoted my doctor thesis (1997, doctoral supervisor was Rev. Prof. Dr. Hab. Michał Heller, who in 2008 won the prestigious Templeton Prize, called the religious Nobel Prize) and three monographs to this topic:

an extended version of my doctoral dissertation (2001),
my habilitation dissertation (2004),
my professor’s monograph (2009, for which I was awarded theNicolaus Copernicus Scientific Award of the City of Krakow Foundation in 2010, awarded every five years by the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences).

I am the only researcher to demonstrate such an achievement. I recommend a careful analysis of the content of these monographs.

I have also published several articles and a collective monograph under my academic editorship on the critique of the thesis about the discovery of Nicolaus Copernicus’s grave and remains (in Polish and English translation). I advance a thoroughly substantiated thesis that, from the perspective of empirical research methodology, no valid evidence for the discovery of Nicolaus Copernicus’ remains has yet been presented. In other words, I claim that not only the authors of the Polish Wikipedia entry “Mikołaj Kopernik: Losy szczątków Kopernika” (“Nicolaus Copernicus: The Fate of the Remains of Copernicus”) are wrong in this matter, but above all the authors of the alleged discovery announced in the prestigious The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) themselves are wrong in this matter.

History and Philosophy of Science and the Exact Sciences

In my third master’s thesis, devoted to the philosophy of science and titled: O rozwoju Popperowskiej filozofii nauk ścisłych. Metoda archiwum, metoda syntetyczna oraz metoda przekładu (“On the Development of Popper’s Philosophy of the Exact Sciences. The Archival Method, the Synthetic Method, and the Translation Method” )(Faculty of Philosophy, Pontifical Academy of Theology, Kraków 1998), 181 pages (Supervisor: Rev. Prof. Dr. hab. Michał Heller; in 2008 he won the prestigious Templeton Prize, known as the religious Nobel Prize), I introduced three methods of receiving/interpreting philosophical views: the archival method (which involves a literal summary of views), the synthetic method (which involves selecting key ideas), and the translation method (into another philosophical language).

In the history of the exact sciences, I focused, among other things, on a detailed analysis of Władysław Natanson’s achievements in theoretical physics: generalized dynamics and quantum statistics.

Within the methodology of the history of science, I am the originator of the concepts of research hermeneutics (the set of interpretive means used in research) and textual hermeneutics (the set of interpretive means used to understand an analyzed text). I first applied these ideas in research on the work of Thomas Samuel Kuhn.

In the history and philosophy of science, I am, among others, the creator of the hypothetico-deductive method of correspondence thinking. I argue, contrary to Thomas S. Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, that there is a method of exact science, and this is precisely the method indicated above. The origins of this method date back to ancient times: elements of this method can be found in the works of Plato, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, and Archimedes, and later also in Nicolaus Copernicus. This method was used by, among others, Isaac Newton, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger.

Naukoznawstwo / Science-of-Science

I am interested, on the one hand, in the history of naukoznawstwo / science-of-science and, on the other, in its creative development.

I argue (both domestically and internationally) that science-of-science as a scientific discipline arose nowhere else but in Poland, between 1910 and 1939, thanks to the interaction of Warsaw philosophers (positivists and their critics), and members of the Lvov-Warsaw School and the Dr. Józef Mianowski Fund.

I develop the idea of integrated science-of-science (combining the advantages of various science disciplines) and from this perspective, I criticize the ideologies/pathologies of citations, scoriosis, and grantosis, based on a naive, uncritical, and unscientific belief in citations, bibliometrics, and scientometrics.

I am the author of the Model of the University of New Humanism, whose ideological core is George Sarton’s new humanism (combining the attributes of old humanism and the exact sciences) and the idea of integrated science-of-science.

I am developing a transparent model for evaluating scientific journals, which I have dubbed the Journal Evaluation Model of the Pracownia Naukoznawstwa IHN PAN (Unit of Science-of-Science, Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences). I have formulated the principles of this model and am continually implementing minor modifications to them (depending on the current status of various journal databases). I have also evaluated journals on the history of science (both Polish and international) and Polish journals on history (in collaboration with Dorota Kozłowska, M.A.).

Scientific Journals

Since 2013, I have been developing the scientific journal of the Commission on the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2013 to 2015, it was “Prace Komisji Historii Nauki PAU” (Proceedings of the Commission on the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences), and since 2016, it has been “Studia Historiae Scientiarum,” currently indexed in DOAJ, Scopus, WoS, Pereef and the “Ranking czasopism Pracowni Naukoznawstwa IHN PAN” (“Ranking of Journals of the Pracownia Naukoznawstwa IHN PAN).”

This work has resulted in research on measuring the quality of scientific journals using numerical indicators.

I argue that using bibliometrics/numerical indicators:

1) it is impossible to objectively measure the quality of the content of scientific publications (this involves the author’s own criticism the ideology/pathology of citations, scoriosis, and grantosis),

2) it is possible to objectively measure the technical quality of scientific publications.

This latter idea became the basis for my development of the “Transparent Model for Evaluating Journals of the Pracownia Naukoznawstwa IHN PAN,” which was applied to the evaluation of foreign and Polish journals on the history of science, as well as Polish journals on history. The results achieved are reported in detail in scholarly articles. See the bibliography.

Theoretical Physics

My research in theoretical physics is related to my second master’s thesis in physics (specialization: solid-state physics): “Heavy Fermions as Strongly Correlated Narrow-Band Systems.” Institute of Physics, Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, Jagiellonian University, Kraków 1987 (Supervisor: Associate Professor Józef Spałek [in 2016, he was awarded the Foundation for Polish Science Prize, the so-called Polish Nobel Prize]).

Continued research on this topic in the Polish-American team culminated in two articles:

Spałek, J; Kokowski, M; Data, A.J.; Honig, J.M. 1989: Low-Temperature Properties of an Almost Localized Fermi Liquid. Solid State Communications 70(9), pp. 911–914. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0038-1098(89)90294-9.

Spałek, J; Kokowski, M.; Honig, J.M. 1989: Low-temperature properties of an almost localized Fermi liquid. Physical Review B 39(7), pp. 4175–4185. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.39.4175.

This gave me the opportunity to learn about modernly managed scientific journals at the beginning of my professional career and influenced my interests years later: developing modern peer-reviewed scientific journals (published in the open free access mode) and developing a transparent model for the evaluation of scientific journals.

Computer Simulations

My first academic work was a master’s thesis on fundamental problems of technology (degree: M.Sc. Eng.): “Interpretation of the results of computer simulations of molecular dynamics in the AgJ crystal.” Institute of Computer Science, Faculty of Electrical and Control Engineering, AGH University of Science and Technology, Kraków 1986 (supervisor: Prof. Dr. DSc. Eng. Jacek Mościński).

In this work, I proved – by applying analytical methods to the equation of so-called higher-order diffusion, and then numerical methods (through the use of simulations), that the authors of the simulation (describing the phenomenon of ion diffusion in the AgJ crystal) simulated not only simple diffusion (described by Fick’s laws), which was their original intention, but also so-called higher-order diffusions (described by higher derivatives than Fick’s second law).