O łaknieniu poznawczym

Apparently, we never know what effects past formal and informal meetings or official and casual conversations have, and the flowers that blossom from them. This essay deals with the issues connected to the broad realm of human cognition, its logical or inborn premises and conceptual backgrounds, in the context of the essence of a thirst for knowledge. Selected parts of the philosophical domain of epistemology (e.g. materialistic, idealistic, realistic, Cartesian, Kantian, phenomenological) are presented, as well as cognitive perspectives (especially regarding Heidegger's three scopes of the world opening for our recognition, i.e. the thing as a physical presence, the thing as a problem to solve, and the thing as a fact remaining beyond any human empirical experience) based on some scientific branches such as the history of travelling, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and physics. Finally, the syncretic portrait of a certain scientist is shown as a structural conclusion of the text. All the reflections in the article should be read as though it were a report of a feast, which reminds one either of a common reception or an intellectual meeting for various gourmets. That would be bitter, filled-with-joy, abstemious, romantic-andrational (like that well-known collocation 'sense-and-sensibility'), postulating and, in the end, eclectic (embodying many cognitive features / scientific attitudes, namely: positivistic, exploring, connoisseur, contemplative, creative). Moreover, this paper outlines several dimensions of human cognition which are sketched as substantial conclusions crowning each chapter. To put it in a nutshell, human cognition appears to be (i) a journey, (ii) an urgent need, (iii) a sort of dialogue, (iv) a search for a context and a selection of reality, (v) an attitude and a point of view, (vi) a philosophy of life and (vii) an epistemological pretext and an ontological supporting column.