Mistrzowie racjonalnego kompromisu

Abstract

Researchers who are able to reconcile opposing positions in a way that is not only free from dilettantism but which also takes into account the arguments of both sides and leads to creating new, original concepts (syntheses) are referred to by the author as the masters of rational compromise (or the masters of rational synthesis). The author finds contemporary examples of this mastery in Jerzy Kmita’s School, which is one of two most important components of the Poznan School of Methodology. This article discusses some of the achievements of the School’s two leading representatives, i.e., Jerzy Kmita’s and Anna Pałubicka’s, which were the result of a masterfully applied procedure of reconciling positions that had previously been viewed as impossible to synthesize. According to the author, these achievements have resolved significant disputes concerning the methodology of science between (respectively): (1) methodological antinaturalists and their adversaries over the methodological unity of sciences, (2) inductionists and hypothetists over the scientific method, (3) the proponents of the correspondence principle and those who support the incommensurability of successive scientific theories, and (4) relativists and absolutists over scientific rationality.