DESCRIPTION: Czesław Białobrzeski (1878-1953) was a Polish theoretical physicist, astrophysicist and philosopher of science, author of about 100 works on thermodynamics, relativity theory, quantum theory, the theory of the structure and evolution of stars, spectrography, astrophysics and the philosophy of physics. He drew attention to the role of radiation pressure in maintaining the internal equilibrium of stars. His work on this subject, published in 1911, brought him worldwide recognition. In the field of philosophy of science, he considered issues of indeterminism. He studied at the University of Kiev. He continued his studies in Paris at the Collège de France. In 1914, he became a professor at Kiev University. In 1919, he came to the reborn Poland and took up a chair at the Jagiellonian University. Two years later, he moved to Warsaw, where he took up a chair at the University of Warsaw. For more information, see S. Olszewski, Czesław Białobrzeski: fizyk i filozof (Czesław Białobrzeski: Physicist and Philosopher) (SPCh 39(2003)2, 377-379). In 1972, the SPCh published his text, which contains the last two chapters (27 and 28) of the book Podstawy poznawcze fizyki świata atomowego (Cognitive Foundations of Atomic Physics). The book was first published in 1956, but the censors at the time did not allow it to be published. Thanks to the kindness of the scholar's sister, Antonina Nowakowska, they appeared for the first time in SPCh (the full version of Białobrzeski's book with a new preface by Roman Ingarden was not published until 1984). In chapter 27, the author presents his theory of potentiality generalised for all of nature. The author assumes that the interaction of different things is understandable only ‘within a specific whole’. From this, he concludes that there is only one Being that possesses full ownership. Individual beings are derived from this one Being. Białobrzeski claims that his monism conceals the pluralism of the diversity of forms of nature. In chapter 28, he discusses this diversity by presenting a theory of the stratification of reality. He critically evaluates the views of N. Hartmann and G.W. Leibniz, taking his own position on the coexistence of different layers. He discusses the analogy between such concepts as possibility and probability, necessity and the laws of nature. ‘(...) if we consider the psychic layer of reality as a sphere of various possibilities that realise acts of will by making choices between them, then the concept of possibility creates a new link between the lower and higher layers, for the state of the atomic system is, as we have seen, in a sense a system of possibilities’ (p. 22).
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