Tadeusz Kotarbiński was born on 31 March 1886 in Warsaw, then Congress Poland, Russian Empire, into an artist's family. His father, Miłosz Kotarbiński, was a painter his mother, Ewa Koskowska, was a pianist and composer. His uncles were Józef Kotarbiński, an important figure in Polish theater circles, and Wilhelm Kotarbiński, a talented painter. Expelled from secondary school in 1905 for participating in a strike, Kotarbiński managed to graduate two years later. He studied first as an unenrolled student at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, attending mostly lectures on mathematics and physics; then architecture in Lviv and Darmstadt, to finally settle for studies in philosophy and classical philology at the University of Lviv. His professors were some of the most esteemed philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of his time: Kazimierz Twardowski, Jan Łukasiewicz, Władysław Witwicki and philologistStanisław Witkowski. He received his PhD with the thesis Utilitarianism in the Ethics of Mill and Spencer in 1912. After graduation, he taught classical languages at Warsaw's Mikołaj Rey Gymnasium. In 1918 he began a lecturing career in philosophy at Warsaw University; from 1929 to 1930 he was dean of humanities. After World War II, along with other eminent men of learning, he helped create a state university in Łódź. In 1945 Kotarbiński became the first rector of the University of Łódź, holding this post until 1949 while simultaneously working at the University of Warsaw. His model of work became a benchmark for future generations of scholars at the University of Łódź.
Philosophy
Reism
is a pansomatism ontology as well as semantic theory developed by Kotarbiński and most extensively exposed in his major work: Elements of the Theory of Knowledge, Formal Logic and Methodology of the Sciences, first published in 1929. Kotarbiński was the creator of the term reism, a word derived from Latinres 'thing'.
Ontological reism
Kotarbiński's ontological reism approach assumes that the only things that exist, and thus the only ontological category to be used, are individual, concrete objects in opposition to doctrines allowing for the existence of such categories as universals, states of affairs, properties, relations, sets, classes, mental constructs, etc.
Semantic reism
In its semantic formulation Kotarbiński postulated that meaningful sentences have to contain so-called genuine names as opposed to abstract objects' names or non-genuine names. He also distinguished onomatoids from empty names, which he considered to be reistic. Sentences with onomatoids only were in his view meaningless, whereas those with empty names meaningful. Reism has been anticipated by philosophers preceding Kotarbiński, but it was Kotarbiński who developed it to the complete, systematic exposition and gave it its name. In 1958 in Philosophical Studies 4 Kotarbiński published Developmental Stages of Concretism, an essay in which he discussed the construction and evolution of his theory starting from the early concretism or nominalism, passing through seven stages of re-elaboration and finally culminating in pansomatism. Kotarbiński used terms: reism, pansomatism and concretism as equivalents to some extent throughout his works.
Praxiology
Kotarbiński was the most prominent representative and promoter of the science of efficient action, called praxiology – a close relative of praxeology. Praxiology differs from praxeology mainly by its more philosophical objectives. Scholars consider Kotarbiński's works in praxiology as the most systematic exposition of the foundations of this young science, particularly in his Traktat o dobrej robocie and, to some extent, his earlier publication called Szkice praktyczne. Kotarbiński posited that praxiology is a science that is broader than the science of work as it contains philosophical elaboration of the concept of action, especially in the context of human work process, including the recommendations and general solutions for human activities in different fields. His position is considered partially descriptive in the sense that its aim is to understand relevant features of actions, but that the classifications it produces have normative objectives. Kotarbiński's contribution to the understanding of the nature of action is considered foundational for action theory Three years after publishing A Treatise on Good Work, Kotarbiński persuaded the Polish Academy of Sciences to establish a Laboratory for General Questions of Work Organization, later upgraded into a Department of Praxiology. Starting in 1962, it published a periodical, Materiały Prakseologiczne, later renamed Prakseologia.
Works
Szkice praktyczne
Elementy teorii poznania, logiki formalnej i metodologii nauk. Lvov Ossolineum ; second revised edition 1961
Traktat o dobrej robocie ; English translation: Praxiology. An Introduction to the Science of Efficient Action, New York: Pergamon Press, 1965.
