Sources of evolutionary-philosophical thought of Tadeusz Garbowski in times the Empire of Austria and Hungary

Abstract

In this paper we reconstruct the first and little-known period of positivist philosophy creating by Tadeusz Garbowski, covering the years 1891–1910, when he studied and worked in Vienna. Inspired empiriocriticism, mainly in Adolph Stöhr vertion, created his own philosophical system consists of empiriocritical-evolutionary theory of knowledge, ontological and metaphysical psychomonism, eventually named homogenism, but the basics of the new science, which has become a zoopsychology. These views are presented in the following his works: „Biologie im Lichte phänomenalistischer Metaphysik“ (Wien 1894), „Einige Bemerkung über biologische und philosophische Probleme. Nach einem Vorträge bearbeitet“ (Wien und Leipzig 1906), „Die Organismen und das anorganisches Weltbild. Erkenntniskritische wissenschaftlichen Materialien zur Philosophie“ (Leipzig, 1910), and „La Philosophie de lʼHomogénisme“ (Kraków 1915). We believe that Garbowski is a precursor to the evolutionary theory of knowledge, ontological and metaphysical psychomonism, evolutionary anthropology and sociology in the scientific environment of Vienna at the turn of the XIX and XX century, which is very rarely mentioned.