Etnografia Polska vol. XXIX, 1985, book 2 ZOFIA SOKOLEWICZ THE

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Etnografia Polska vol. XXIX, 1985, book 2
ZOFIA SOKOLEWICZ
THE BASIC MODELS OF SCIENCE
AND SOME THEORETICAL PROBLEMS OF ETHNOLOGY IN POLAND
Part II
Outwardly, it might seem that ethnographers – both in the interwar period, as well as
following World War II – remained indifferent to the significant epistemological and
methodological conflict concerning the issue of whether there is one model of science or two:
one for science in the strict sense of the term, and another for the humanities. They seemed not
to notice the need for choosing one of these stances (Sokolewicz 1974: 290; Benedyktowicz
1980: 30). The fact remains that within Polish ethnography there is a lack of works which
would discuss this issue directly. Undoubtedly, such methodological confessions of faith which
such researchers as Malinowski (1931, 1944), R. A. Radcliffe-Brown (1937), and in the next
generation – R. Firth (1958) had to make in the Anglo-Saxon academic community, were not
— for reasons that I do not intend to dissect here— significant for Polish ethnography, at that,
throughout its whole history.
However, another issue is the periodical attempts at putting into order the technical
aspects of research, from the defining of the object of research, through the establishment of
the sources, terminology, methods and main problems. One such attempt occurred directly
after World War One (Frankowski; Fischer 1923; Bystroń 1923; Poniatowski 1922; Baudouin
de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutzowa 1924; Czekanowski 1922), another — at the turn of the 1940’s
and 1950’s (Moszyński 1948), a third — in the second half of the 1950’s (Dobrowolski 1957;
Kutrzeba-Pojnarowa 1959), and the final such attempt took place during the turn of the 1980’s
(Stomma 1978-1979; Etnografia, etnologia..., 1981; Metody etnologii, 1981). This last attempt
abounded with discussions and was characterised more by the form of oral transmission than a
written one. It seems as if the long publishing cycle of our periodicals did not allow for the
recording of what was really happening, and as if the ethnographers had decided to entrust their
dilemmas to the most effective form of transmission in history – the direct oral transmission.
Nevertheless, to return to our point of departure, such attempts at introducing order into
the technical aspects of research signify the existence of a dispute about the choice between art
and science in the strict sense of the term. The most heated dispute has been waged among the
proponents of scientific ethnography; humanistic ethnography rarely becomes involved in the
discussion. This latter approach has only become more visible over the last couple of years. S.
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Poniatowski, A. Fischer do not have any continuators, while K. Moszyński, B. Malinowski, K.
Dobrowolski, C. Lévi-Strauss, as well as the Soviet semioticians are proponents of so-called
scientism. Practically all of the classics of Polish ethnography were listed in the first part of
this article (“Etnografia Polska”, vol. 28: 1984, no. 2). Who thus could be listed as being a
representative of humanistic ethnography?
Humanistic ethnography was introduced in Europe by the representatives of the
culture-historical school, in Poland – primarily by S. Poniatowski, partially by A. Fischer.
They (Poniatowski n.d., a, b; 1947; Fischer 1932; 1934) referred to the proposals made by W.
Schmidt (Schmidt 1911a, b; 1937a, b). Schmidt’s works were directly influenced by the
philosophical considerations of W. Dilthey, W. Windelband and H. Rickert. Due to the further
progress of my argumentation, I will only refer to some of the generally well-known facts
which, however, are usually omitted during discussions of the culture-historical school.
Fundamentally, the culture-historical school adopted the assumptions that the reality of nature
is fundamentally different in its essence from science, and thus that various fields of science,
different in their essence, deal with appropriate spheres of research, as well as that the diverse
forms of human cognition correspond to these differentiations.
Dilthey is widely considered to be the founder of the theory of humanistic cognition.
He distinguished between cognition which works directed from the outside and is focused on
nature, and understanding which originates inside. Dilthey drew different conclusions from this
reasoning than did many of his contemporaries – he was of the opinion that the human world is
easier to investigate than the natural world, since it becomes known from the inside (we depart
from within ourselves, as we know ourselves best). Additionally, within his argumentation,
the concept of evaluative statements is introduced, alongside such terms as fact and law. Since
then, values and valuation have begun to permanently accompany cultural studies, the
interpretative humanities, interpretative sociology and interpretative ethnography.
Windelband applied a similar line of reasoning, additionally introducing two currently
significant distinctions. He claimed that it is not the object of research that differentiates the
humanities from experimental sciences, but the above-mentioned method. He also introduced
the concept of generalisations, which within the humanities corresponded to the concept of a
law within experimental sciences.
We are indebted to Rickert for the linking of the proposals of these two philosophers.
He indicated the existence of a triad: the physical, the psychological and the spiritual (the spirit
does not have an individual character). He also claimed that the path to learning about the
spirit does not lead through the soul, but it is through the spirit that we learn about the soul.
This was connected with the clear influence of platonic philosophy, in accordance with which
Rickert claimed that facts are only an external manifestation of reality, of which the essence is
the spirit.
A special place in cultural studies for the spirit was also assigned by Dilthey and
Windelband. Even though Dilthey claims that history is not repeatable, he does note the
existence of permanent elements within history, which express themselves within the spirit.
The aim of the philosopher was to understand the spirit of societies as expressed throughout
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history. In his opinion, in order to understand history, it was necessary to first understand
humans who formed it. The researcher achieves this through the comprehending of events,
treating them as a form of collective utterances. This is how these principles were transferred
to the field of ethnology by one of the pillars of the culture-historical school, W. Schmidt. He
wrote:
„Everything that a human being does is a product of the spirit, it was redone by the
spirit, it bears its character and for this reason, it becomes a cultural object. Due to the
cultural object passing through the filter of the spirit, it is shaped, but simultaneously the
soul becomes even more formed. And thus the formation of the soul, and not that which
surrounds it consisting of external goods, constitutes the proper, real culture” (Schmidt
1937b: 7).
Similar statements can be found within Poniatowski’s works. For him also, material
and spiritual culture constituted an organic whole, whose unity was expressed in the spirit.
However, it seems that both Poniatowski and Fischer, who continued to use the theses
of the culture-historical school more or less consistently, were less interested in its
philosophical assumptions and focused their attention on the technical issues of research, on
the criticism of sources, superbly developed by Schmidt (Schmidt 1937b), and on F. Graebner
and H. Ankermann’s theory of cultural circles. They were thus interested in the tools, while
neglecting or leaving in the shadows the aim for which they were constructed. Within oral
tradition we can encounter some slightly anecdotal information about the occultist séances of
Poniatowski with Ossowiecki. Poniatowski, while gazing at an object – a boomerang or
Australian churinga, was supposed to have begun telling the other about the people who had
created the object. This anecdote may testify to the fact that issues of the human being and the
spirit of culture deeply plagued Poniatowski. This does not, however, change the fact that a
reading of his works, which were devoted mainly to the issue of cultural reconstructions
(Poniatowski 1919, 1921, 1930), did not make it easy for the reader to understand where that
spirit was supposed to have been expressed.
Perhaps the thesis about the special reception in Poland of the culture-historical school,
characterized by a reduction of philosophical assumptions and an adoption of the method
itself, may be supported by a statement by E. Bulanda. Writing about the crisis of the Vienna
school, he claims that: “The actual crisis of the Vienna school pertains to cultural circles”
(Bulanda 1960: 108). Thus, there is no discussion about philosophical assumptions and only
the establishment of one, nevertheless important, theory. This would signify that for E.
Bulanda, in accordance with the definition given by Schmidt and Koppers: “Ethnology is a
discipline, which as its subject has the development of the spirit and the external activity of the
human being guided by the spirit within the life of nations” (Schmidt, Koppers 1924: 25).
Thus, the philosophical assumptions here are extremely interesting. Schmidt is aspiring to the
understanding of the particular through the spirit which expresses itself within culture.
Therefore, this is in a certain sense a similar viewpoint as that held by E. Durkheim. The
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starting point here is also the community, though not in its social dimension. The difference
lies in the fact that the individual aspect remains within Schmidt’s field of sight – through the
communal he wants to come to an understanding of the individual, while for Durkheim, the
individual, if it exists at all, it is only in order to express what is social and is not taken into
account within the research procedure.
The issue of the Vienna school and the entire culture-historical orientation, as well as
its reception in Poland, has not really been researched by Polish historians of ethnography.
Thus, there is frequent misunderstanding of various concepts or labels wrongly assigned to
researchers, etc. Attention should be drawn to the fact that both Poniatowski and Czekanowski
studied in Germany during the same period of time when F. Graebner and H. Ankermann were
announcing their theories of cultural circles and when L. Frobenius had already begun writing.
However, Czekanowski did not become fascinated with the concept of cultural circles. His
interest in historical and cultural issues was connected, most probably due to being inspired by
British analytical philosophy, with the use of procedures of the inductive probability type, as
has already been discussed (Czekanowski 1927). From among his students, S. Klimek also
adopted the method (Klimek 1934, 1935).
This line of tradition was not taken up after World War II, and this was due to both
philosophical and methodological reasons. The existing interest at that time in the individual
and in the spirit had a completely different character, as will be discussed below. It can only
come as a surprise that at the point in time of the dynamic development of Polish Africanist
studies in the 1960’s, the researchers did not become fascinated with L. Frobenius and his
works, whose search for the spirit of the continent (der Geist Her Kontinent) was continued
throughout his whole prolific career as an Africanist. His materials laid their seeds within the
mind of R. Caillois, resulting in his study of the praying mantis, now considered a classical
work (Frobenius 1933; Caillois 1967). Nothing similar has occurred in Poland.
The second moment within the history of Polish ethnography, from which we can trace the
beginnings of the humanistic tradition, are the ideas of the currently little-known daughter of
Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, Cezaria Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz-Jędrzejewiczowa.
She has gone down on the pages of the history of ethnography thanks to a small amount of
very interesting, concise and precisely written works, which stand out from the works of the
rest of the ethnographers of her time (Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz 1922, 1923, 1936).
For us currently, she is known primarily as the author of Św. Cecylia and Formy dramatyczne
obrzędu weselnego. Her works are read primarily by those who make a turn towards
hermeneutics and phenomenology. The first to raise the issue of the philosophical views of C.
Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz-Jędrzejewiczowa was A. Zadrożyńska (Zadrożyńska
1968). The pregnant in meaning shift within the formulation of the definition of the object of
ethnology, conducted as early as 1923 by Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz, seemed to have
escaped the attention of her contemporaries. Perhaps this resulted from the issue that a
theoretical thought not translated into the language of the specifics of a given discipline
remains lifeless. Its existence is dependent on its use within research, and – as we are well
aware – she wrote a number of important works but they remained unnoticed. They were
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written according to a completely different convention, not too large in size. Somehow no-one
attempted to interpret that when she named cultural products as being exponents of the creative
relationship of society to life (Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz 1924: 2-3), something else
was meant than by the ideas of K. Moszyński, who defined cultural products as “the solution to
the task which has been placed before humans” (Moszyński 1929: 5). I think that the
argumentation of Zadrożyńska (1968), and later of Benedyktowicz (1980), must be agreed with
that C. Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz-Jędrzejewiczowa should be considered as being
the precursor of phenomenology within Polish ethnography. Admittedly, her ideas were not
always coherent and consistent in these regards, while elements of phenomenology coexisted
within her works with a number of structuralist ideas undoubtedly inherited from her father, as
well as with positivistic statements popular at the time. Perhaps she was not noticed precisely
due to the fact that her ideas were not consistently phenomenological— and additionally, that
she presented them so peacefully, without opposing anyone, as if she did not have to or want to
convince anyone about whether she was right or perhaps due to the time not yet being ripe
enough for phenomenology to enter ethnology. Interest should have been sparked by the
protests of positivistically-minded ethnographers and by the following sentence:
„Thus, I consider the subject of science to be a product of scientific activities [...]
within ethnology, time and the environment do not constitute a problem, because within its
research material not only the area, but also the chronology and human groupings from
which the researched products originate, are known in advance. However – as I have
already stated above – every cultural product which belongs to the field of ethnological
research is only the last link of the preceding series of forms, transmitted by tradition, the
final exponent of this tradition. We do not know the forms which precede it, nor do we
know its origins on a given territory and in the given society (Baudouin de CourtenayEhrenkreutz 1923: 8).
Perhaps if the statement was formulated a little more pointedly, or if this was the
sentence which was at a slightly later point in time stated by M. Merleau-Ponty: “Within such
an approach, history is perceived as uninterrupted tradition, as the gradual taking shape of
sense, meaning, and not as the empirical succession of facts”” (Merleau-Ponty 1945), then
some reaction on the part of ethnographers would have occurred. However, this did not
happen. The views of Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz were not even shared by her
students (Dynowski), and it was not until the 1970’s that she was re-discovered by the
youngest generation (Zadrożyńska, Benedyktowicz), in connection with the growing interest in
phenomenology within the entire academia, including ethnography.
This interest among ethnographers in phenomenology has many reasons. I believe,
however, that primarily for ethnographers it is motivated by a need to break with
impersonality, with judgements based purely on empirical evidence, with the external view of
culture as being similar to the natural world, with the reduction of inner experiences to being
psychological issues, with the neglect shown towards inner experience and inner cognition by
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those with an empirical approach. However, it does not do justice to positivistic ethnography to
perceive it purely as insensate and negligent towards people, as it has become viewed by
subsequent generations of young ethnographers (Etnografia, etnologia…, 1981; Stomma
1979). Moszyński attempted to solve this issue at one point by placing humans within the
developmental perspective – as being the purpose of culture, and simultaneously – as the
source of every cultural product. In his opinion, culture was created as a solution to a task, the
consequence of reasoning and thinking. It was simultaneously supposed to serve human beings
as a means to adapt faster and to achieve a more complete development (Moszyński 1939: 4).
However, only the cultural product counted within the analytical procedure. It was dissected,
measured, defined temporally and spatially, compared to other products (Moszyński 1958).
Moszyński’s approach also raised objections among his contemporaries. W. Dynowski’s
question, concerning what it means that two products meet each other, should be seen as
directed at Moszyński. Dynowski raised doubts as to the validity of the analyses of the spatial
range of products, isolated from specific societies, landscapes, pathways. After all – reasons
Dynowski – the path taken by a cultural product is the path taken by a human, thus without
historical data this pathway cannot be reconstructed. Within his works on the Vilnius and
Nowogród regions, Dynowski confirmed this viewpoint (Dynowski 1935).
K. Zawistowicz-Adamska, S. Poniatowski’s assistant, reacts similarly to the reduction
of ethnography to the study of cultural products. Her most beautiful book, entitled Społeczność
wiejska. Doświadczenia i rozważania z badań terenowych w Zaborowie, written as if on the
margins of her research on emigration, commissioned by the Institute of Social Economics.
However, from almost the first words of the author, we can infer that she is not capable of
approaching the researched countryside as an object. In her observations about the people she
meets for the first time, she says to herself silently: “Before I state anything, I must know
something about these people. I begin observing them” (1948: 15). Additionally, in order to
strengthen this subjective element, I will add my own personal memories of an anniversary
jubilee in honour of Professor Zawistowicz-Adamska. She seemed almost embittered or
anxious and criticised young structuralists in spe for their treatment of informants as machines
for answering questions, for neglecting the factor of their individuality, personality: “and yet
during an interview between an informant and a researcher a bond is created, something new
comes into existence”.
Many respectful words directed towards informants from the countryside can be found
within Moszyński’s Kultura ludowa Słowian. They are especially abundant in part 2, vol. II,
dedicated to art. I have already written that it was precisely in his approach to art, to which he
was especially sensitive, that Moszyński’s somewhat pedantic ideas of showing the entirety of
culture “as if it were a collection of products” (Moszyński, 1929: 8) fell apart. Within his
general interpretations of the meaning of art for human beings, he brings to his aid a
philosopher whose views are in fact opposite to his own – those of Bergson. The description of
a work of art as a cultural product results in it no longer being itself. Moszyński felt this to be
so and this is what his philosophical acrobatics must have resulted from (and which at this
point in time must be acknowledged to have been their greatest quality – I cannot deny myself
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a certain digression that such scruples were not present among the Polish ethnographers who
wrote after World War II about art – their works, though generally being correct, are written as
if they do not concern art) (Sokolewicz 1979).
It seems the specific character of the work of an ethnographer, the contact with an
informant, sensitised the researcher to certain types of cognition which it would be difficult to
call empirical. Sensitivity to this kind of cognition also often results from the fact of
participation in the lives of a community and the possibility of observing all forms of human
activities – not as a word, sound, gesture as divided in a description, but as experiences as a
whole, within events. Undoubtedly, this sensitivity, even for the most scientifically-minded
ethnographer, could not allow him/her to completely forget about the humanistic coefficient,
an essential particle of F. Znaniecki’s theory (Znaniecki 1971; Kłoskowska 1981). It is also
astonishing why the reception of Znaniecki within the ethnographic community was so feeble.
This “sensitivity” to humans must also have been the reason that statistical methods
generally have not caught on within Polish ethnography and were only sporadically used after
World War II (Zambrzycka-Kunachowicz 1974). Additionally, it must have been the reason
why ethnographers did not become infected by sociologists with their survey methods and with
what so-called empirical sociology entails. On the one hand, science understood in the sense
given by the humanities was not especially accepted, on the other – it is possible to observe an
unwillingness towards more scientific, formalised methods, etc. Surely, it is one thing to be
sensitive, to experience and consider as important information that which is difficult to define
empirically, such as beauty, goodness, fear, safety, trust, respect; while it is quite another thing
to adopt a specific philosophical orientation or model of science, understood as science in the
strict sense (experimental) or else to opt for its humanistic expression.
It can be clearly concluded from my considerations thus far how model of science
within the humanities should be characterised, irrelevant of the philosophical orientation. In
“Etnografia Polska”, Grahard Kloska (1975) described the principles adopted by Max Weber,
the classical representative of interpretative sociology – a humanistic discipline which refers to
Dilthey’s philosophical school.
Generally speaking, by adopting the model of the humanistic disciplines the researcher
makes the assumptions of the dissimilarity between various objects of research (differentiating
the natural world from the world of culture) or between different methods of research
(cognition versus understanding), while sometimes adopting both of these assumptions of
dissimilarity. The basis for conclusions does not consist only of empirical data, but also of
states of consciousness, sensations, etc. (this aspect has already been mentioned during the
characterization of C. Baudouin de Courtenay’s ideas). A value statement should be added,
despite this having been the subject of a long-standing dispute within academic circles
(Zadrożyńska 1968; Kloska 1975). Ipso facto, the empirical criterion of truth is dropped.
However, the researcher is still burdened with the responsibility to collect all the available
sources on the topic and to refer to the opinions of all of the experts within a given field in
order to prove the validity of his/her attained results. It can thus be inferred that source
criticism holds a huge significance, much the same as do the precision of statements made and
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the respect shown towards statements made by others. It is only the statements made by others
which can constitute the basis for the understanding of a person’s state of being or of the
events he/she participated in, etc.
Such a model of science is currently being put forward by the representatives of cultural
phenomenology, the phenomenology of religion, and hermeneutics. C. G. Jung also comes
close to such an approach within his version of psychoanalysis, even though he considers
himself to be a clinician and a representative of experimental sciences.
The weakness of tradition in this scope, and the fact that it has remained unnoticed by
most of the ethnographers, have led to a situation in which the impulse for the development of
humanistic ethnography has come from foreign works. The sources of these inspirations are
quite numerous. The following should be listed – not necessarily in the order of their
significance: the representative of the Marburgian school – E. Cassirer, from among the
phenomenologists - E. Husserl and R. Ingarden, next M. Merleau-Ponty, the hermeneutic – P.
Ricoeur, finally the phenomenologists of religion – M. Eliade and his students, as well as the
representatives of the Utrecht school of the phenomenology of religion – R. Otto and G. van
der Leeuw. The psychoanalysis of C. G. Jung, despite the aforementioned reservation, should
also be added here, as well as the whole of the quickly developing discipline of so-called
humanistic psychology. The turn towards interpretative science was also influenced by the
criticism of semiotics and structuralism, as well as the incapability of explaining various
phenomena within modern culture using the methods of scientific ethnography.
A certain role in the spreading of the idea of interpretative science was played by the
appearance of Polish publications towards the end of the 1960’s and in the 1970’s of over a
dozen texts written by the above-mentioned authors. Too few were published in order to
conduct an in-depth study of them, but enough to expand academic horizons into new areas.
One characteristic aspect is that these texts were also read by school students, often regardless
of their scholarly failures. My university experience has shown that these works were the
motivation behind the choice of ethnography as the field of studies for many young
ethnographers. These young people were all characterized by the fact that they formulated
different questions than the ones to which they received answers during the course of their
studies. The method of presenting the problems of ethnology and of ethnological material at
universities did not take into account (aside from a few exceptions) the ideas of the
phenomenology of religion and culture, psychoanalysis and hermeneutics.
The interest in hermeneutics has been expressed – thus far – by an enormous demand
for such texts in the publishing market, by the animation of philosophical discussions and by
the appearance of M. A. dissertations on the topic (Benedyktowicz 1974). More such
dissertations are soon to appear, even though the interest in phenomenology has resulted
mainly in discussions of the ideas, which however are of huge significance for our whole
ethnographic community.
One of the authors – a phenomenologist who was concerned primarily with
ethnographic issues – is the theologian, T. Dajczer (1976, 1977, 1979a, b), the author of a
number of significant and profound works on myths and mythical thinking.
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What do ethnographers expect from phenomenology? The answer can be found
primarily within the works of Husserl himself, and also in those by Eliade. Thus, they hold the
expectation of the rehabilitation of the significance of humans as the one and only multidimensional subject of history. They are inclined towards the statement made by Husserl that
“Merely fact-minded sciences make merely fact-minded people”* (Husserl 1976: 95). Even
though he asked the following question many years ago, they also agree with him that:
“this science has nothing to say to us. It excludes in principle precisely the questions which
man, given over in our unhappy times to the most portentous upheavals, finds the most
burning: questions of the meaning or meaninglessness of the whole of this human existence
[…]. But can the world, and human existence in it, truthfully have a meaning if the sciences
recognize as true only what is established in this fashion, and if history has nothing more to
teach us than that all the shapes of the spiritual world, all the conditions of life, ideals,
norms upon which man relies, form and dissolve themselves like fleeting waves, than it
always was and ever will be so, that again and again reason must turn into nonsense, and
well-being into misery? (ibidem)
This thought was as if continued by Eliade, another source of our fascination. He
writes: “the logic of human existence leads to the awarding of meaning to that existence which
surpasses the fate of the individual” (Eliade 1980). He is fighting for the acknowledgment of
facts spawned by the imagination as the basis for scientific deduction. This idea was to a
certain extent taken up by Propokopiuk (1982), who proposed the adoption of the paradigm of
the imagination - in use in contemporary science. Eliade writes on the subject as follows:
“Worlds spawned from the imagination, similarly as religious worlds, are autonomous
worlds. One cannot, of course, imagine the cargo cult in isolation to colonialism, but it
can also not be imagined in isolation to the mythology which existed before the colonial
period, to the original myth of the hero, i.e. one who was to come and free his people”
(Eliade 1980).
Both Husserl and Eliade express concern about the relationship between Man and the
sacred, broadly understood. They consider this relationship to be very significant for the
essence of humanity, and thus for the survival of humans as a species. This is what Eliade
writes on the subject:
“Usually the term «religion» is used for the defining of the great oriental polytheisms
or the monotheisms which are derived from the Old Testament. In my opinion, this
word should be given a broader meaning: all symbolism, all rituals, all mythological
*
This and the next quotation come from The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.
Evanston Illinois 1970 – translator’s note.
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characters have a certain religious value. As I have often emphasized, the experience of
the sacrum is a structure of the consciousness. It is connected with the concept of the
being, of meaning, of truth. Even within the most archaic structures, we can find a
distinction between that which is real, meaningful, and thus «sacred», and that which is
death, chaos, absurdity. For example, for the indigenous Australians sexual activeness,
feeding oneself, hunting are real activities, full of meaning. Devoting oneself to these
activities, one must follow the patterns revealed or taught by the mystical ancestors. In
any case, primitive peoples do everything in accordance with a certain religious model”
(Eliade 1980).
The works of C. G. Jung show a surprising concordance with these statements. It
should be emphasized that ethnographic excursions played an extremely significant role in the
creation of the theory. This is what the brilliant biographer of Jung, Laurens van der Post,
wrote about Jung’s views on the issue of interest to us:
„Theologians always strongly believed that all people are equal in their dignity before
God. This pattern within the collective unconscious has such a huge significance for the
human spirit, because all people are equal as to their dignity and within it, in the
understanding that in this field everyone was created and endowed with equal
impartiality”.
Jung laid this out not in the form of a proof, but as experience. Experience is before and
outside of the argument. One of the most severe accusations of the intellectualism of his and
our times is the strange determination which denies human beings the significance and dignity
of their own experience and allows it to succumb to external, previously conceptualized
devaluation. Jung referred to the experience of all patterns within the collective unconscious as
vital points of departure. When asked publically whether he believes in God, he said: “I do not
believe […] and after hesitating a moment: I know” (Van der Post 1975: 215).
In this way, I have touched upon an extremely significant issue for ethnographers – which I
will return to in part III of this article – concerning how to use criteria of truth and which
should be used towards sentences discussing someone’s state of consciousness, imagination,
experiences, which are states that refer to the situation of the entire community and only
through reference to this community can they be interpreted.
The above-mentioned opinions are in concordance with the portended collective work
entitled Studenckie zeszyty naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Szkice i próby etnologiczne
(materiały z sesji naukowych studentów Katedr Etnografii i Antropologii Kulturowej
Uniwersytetów Jagiellońskiego i Warszawskiego 1982-1983). The content of this publication
confirms my opinion about the slow but steady crystallisation of the model of the
interpretative humanities also in Poland.
In this (the second) part of the article, I have wanted mainly to draw attention to the
features of the academic activities as practiced by Husserl, Eliade or Jung, who have been
21
especially attractive to Polish ethnographers – the readers of this article must refer to their
works in order to understand their theories. I should add at the end of this part of my article
that the huge interest in Eastern philosophies, the crisis of world science as organized
according to the model derived from the 19th century as well as many additional factors have
caused that increasing circles of researchers have become inclined towards comprehension
which opposes cognition (Mulkay 1979). It seems that this way of thinking has also not
omitted the representatives of the experimental sciences and has made an appearance within
physics in the form of the so-called gnosis from Princeton.
The third part of my article will be devoted to these contemporary disputes concerning
the nature of science.
Translated by LINGUA LAB, www.lingualab.pl, Miłosława Stępień
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24
ZOFIA SOKOLEWICZ
THE BASIC MODELS OF SCIENCE AND SOME THEORETICAL PROBLEMS OF
ETHNOLOGY IN POLAND. PART II
Summary
In this part of the paper (for part I see "Etnografia Polska" vol. ХХIХ-1), the author
presents the models of science in which their authors assume that, due to the fundamental unity
of the world, there is an essential difference between the object of science (in the strict sense of
this last term) and the object of the humanities (the arts, lettres) or, that the difference lies in
the methods applied in these various disciplines. The models of the humanities are derived
from the philosophies of W. Windelband, H. Rickert and J. Dilthey, as well as those of E.
Cassirer and E. Husserl. In ethnology, such assumptions have been presented in the diffusionist
approach in all its varieties (L. Frobenius, F. Graebner, H. Ankermann, W. Koppers, W.
Schmidt, W. Jensen), while in Poland primarily by S. Poniatowski, E. Bulanda, and, to some
extent, by A. Fischer. Polish ethnologists of the younger generation have been inspired by E.
Cassirer – actually the effects of this fascination appear in numerous interesting discussions.
Husserl’s phenomenology, which influenced the views of C. Baudouin de Courtenay
Ehrenkreutz-Jędrzejewiczowa, have recently become fairly popular, owing to the works of M.
Eliade and the Utrecht school (R. Otto, G. van der Leeuw), and some works have already been
published within this vein (Zadrożyńska, Benedyktowicz). Whereas no meaningful influence
of M. Weber's or F. Znaniecki's “interpretative sociology” can be noted to have occurred in
Polish ethnology. The model most often applied in our ethnology is the scientistic one.
Abstract translated by Anna Kuczyńska-Skrzypek; Revised by Miłosława Stępień
This project is financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education as part of the National
Program for Development of Humanities, 2012-2014.