Stanisław Ossowski ( Lipno, 22 May 18977 November 1963,

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

) was one of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

's most important

sociologists This is a list of sociologists. It is intended to cover those who have made substantive contributions to social theory and research, including any sociological subfield. Scientists in other fields and philosophers are not included, unless at least ...

. He held

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

ships at

Łódź University Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...

(1945–47) and

Warsaw University The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...

(1947–63).

Life

Ossowski first contributed to

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...

and

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...

before moving on to

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

. He studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw, his teachers were i.a. Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Jan Łukasiewicz and Władysław Tatarkiewicz. He also studied in Paris (Collège de France), in Rome and in London. He took part in the 1920 war. Doctorate (Analysis of the notion of a sign, 1925) wrote to Tadeusz Kotarbiński at the University of Warsaw. He took part in the September campaign. He spent the occupation in Lviv and Warsaw. He taught sociology at an underground university. He was a proponent of

humanistic sociology Humanistic sociology is a domain of sociology which originated mainly from the work of the University of Chicago Polish philosopher-turned- sociologist, Florian Znaniecki. It is a methodology which treats its objects of study and its students, t ...

and antinaturalism, differentiating between the natural sciences and the

social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...

. He believed that all phenomena of social life had a consciousness aspect. For example, a social bond, especially ethnic or national, is the result of imaginations and beliefs. Their pathological forms, such as racism or chauvinism, were strongly denounced by Ossowski, while praising positive manifestations such as patriotism ("private homeland" or "ideological homeland"). Ossowski was one of the greatest intellectual and moral authorities in post-war Poland, he has had a strong influence on Polish sociologists, including

Zygmunt Bauman Zygmunt Bauman (; 19 November 1925 – 9 January 2017) was a Polish sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrat ...

and

Jerzy Szacki Jerzy Ryszard Szacki (6 February 1929 – 25 October 2016) was a Polish sociology, sociologist and History of ideas, historian of ideas.Jerzy Szacki, Liberalism after communism, Central European University Press, 1995, back cover/ref>Nauka Polska, ...

. In 1949 Ossowski was a founding member, and from 1959 to 1962 vice-president, of the

International Sociological Association The International Sociological Association (ISA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to scientific purposes in the field of sociology and social sciences. It is an international sociological body, gathering both individuals and national sociolo ...

. In 1956 he was a founding member of the reactivated

Polish Sociological Association The Polskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne (PTS) (Polish Sociological Association) is the main professional organization of sociologists in Poland. The PTS defines its mission as "supporting the development of sociology and popularizing sociological kno ...

and became its first president (1957–63). Ossowski was married to

Maria Ossowska Maria Ossowska (''née'' Maria Niedźwiecka, 16 January 1896, Warsaw – 13 August 1974, Warsaw) was a Polish sociologist and social philosopher. Life A student of the philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbiński, she originally in 1925 received a doctorat ...

, a fellow sociologist and

social philosopher Social philosophy examines questions about the foundations of social institutions, social behavior, and interpretations of society in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations. Social philosophers emphasize understanding the social c ...

and Stanisław Ossowski are considered among the founders of the field of "science of science" due to their authorship of a seminal 1935 paper, "The Science of Science."A synonym for "science of science" is the back-formed term " logology" (

Christopher Kasparek Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Władysław ...

, " Prus' ''

Pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: '' pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the ...

'': the Creation of a Historical Novel", ''

The Polish Review ''The Polish Review'' is an English-language academic journal published quarterly in New York City by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. ''The Polish Review'' was established in 1956. Editors-in-chief The following persons hav ...

'', vol. XXXIX, no. 1, 1994, note 3, pp. 45–46; Stefan Zamecki, ''Komentarze do naukoznawczych poglądów Williama Whewella (1794–1866): studium historyczno-metodologiczne'' Logological_Views_of_William_Whewell.html" ;"title="Logology_(sociology).html" ;"title="ommentaries to the Logology (sociology)">Logological Views of William Whewell">Logology_(sociology).html" ;"title="ommentaries to the Logology (sociology)">Logological Views of William Whewell (1794–1866): A Historical-Methodological Study], Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2012, , [English-language] summary, pp. 741–43). The term " logology" provides convenient grammatical variants not available with the earlier terms, "science of science" and "sociology of science": i.e., "logologist", "to logologize", "logological", "logologically". In 1951 he was removed from teaching. He was returned to the right to conduct classes after Polish October 1956. An indication of the esteem in which he was held by certain sections of Polish society is a statue of him erected in Central Warsaw.

Important works

* ''U podstaw estetyki'' (1933) * "The Science of Science" ("''Nauka o nauce''", 1935) * ''Więź społeczna i dziedzictwo krwi'' (1939) * ''Struktura klasowa w społecznej świadomości'' (1957) * ''O osobliwościach nauk społecznych'' (1962) * ''O ojczyźnie i narodzie'' (1984)

Notes

References

*Bohdan Walentynowicz, ed., ''Polish Contributions to the Science of Science'', Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1982, .

External links

The Sociological Ideas of Stanislaw Ossowski
''Journal of Classical Sociology'', vol. 6, no. 3, 2006, pp. 283–309 (abstract)
Class Structure in the Social Consciousness
(New York, Free Press of Glencoe, 1963) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ossowski, Stanislaw 1897 births 1963 deaths Polish sociologists 20th-century Polish philosophers University of Warsaw faculty People from Lipno, Lipno County

Life

Important works

See also

Notes

References

External links