معرفی
Robert Podkoński is a university professor at the Department of the History of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and History, University of Lodz. He has been employed at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Lodz since 2001, initially as an assistant, then as an assistant professor from 2006, and finally as a university professor since 2021.
He obtained his PhD in 2006 with a dissertation on 'Mathematics in Fourteenth-Century Philosophy and Theology. The Nature and Structure of Continuous Quantities in the Works of Richard Kilvington,' supervised by Professor Elżbieta Jung. In 2018, he completed his habilitation with the monograph 'Suisetica inania. Richard Swineshead's speculative study of local movement' (Łódź 2017), which included a critical edition of the treatise 'On Local Motion' fundamental to the 'Book of Calculations.'
Professor Podkoński's research focuses on the history of medieval philosophy and the history of European science from Aristotle to Newton and Leibniz. He specializes in the fourteenth-century Oxford School of Calculators, particularly Richard Swineshead's 'Book of Calculations,' considered the most outstanding work of this school. His current research involves preparing a critical edition of Richard Kilvington's commentary on Aristotle's 'On the Origin and Perishing' as part of the National Science Centre's 'Opus 19' project (UMO-2020/37/B/HS/00105).
His recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on medieval scientific thought, particularly examining how fourteenth-century scholars interpreted and expanded upon Aristotelian physics. His work bridges philosophy, history of science, and mathematics, revealing the sophisticated analytical methods developed by medieval scholars that anticipated later developments in physics and calculus.
Professor Podkoński teaches courses on ancient and medieval philosophy for undergraduate and graduate philosophy students, as well as seminars and English language translation workshops. He holds cyclic duty hours on Mondays from 09:30 to 11:00 in room 311 of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Lodz.
