The foundations of logistics were created by logic. The foundations of logic were given to us by philosophy. Developing logistics as an area of interdisciplinary activities, we seek the foundations of its development in the roots of science – philosophy.
The interview conducted with me (“Logistyka” 1/2004) by editor-in-chief Iwo Nowak contains a number of mental shortcuts. Such a fundamental topic as the philosophy of logistics requires multi-layered illumination, and even then, it will always raise numerous concerns and reservations for many. The problem was very fruitfully supplemented (No. 2/2004 of “Logistyka”) by Prof. Bernard Rzeczyński, who, in concluding, encourages the community to discuss: “it should be an impetus for a broader analysis of the problem of the philosophy of logistics in this journal.” Provoked, and not wanting to be misunderstood, I feel obliged to provide a little more information about my interests in this area. As a mechanic, co-author of 80 types of working machines, should I be doing this?
Fields of knowledge, like subjects in school, have entrenched themselves in their own territories. However, practice proves that the development of civilization is most cheaply and quickly realized through the use of interdisciplinary areas. It is not fashion but regularity and real demand that create the development of logistics as knowledge that utilizes research from many fields. Hence, in my old age, my interest in less formalized fields, such as philosophy and economics, which create a broad approach to issues.
Initiatives are being born, such as the University of Bielsko-Biała, where the mutual coexistence of such divergent disciplines in the same area may create threads of interdisciplinary connections. The integration of fields, in my opinion, constitutes a fundamental element of our transformation towards the knowledge age and towards Europe, where the division of fields is not as sharp as it is here.
Subject plus research methods provide the basis for a field of knowledge. I focus my interest on research methods useful in logistics. Their unambiguous understanding requires ordering and assigning normative meanings to terms commonly used in didactics and applications. The development of any field in which we anticipate starting a discussion, in my opinion, should begin with sorting and cleaning up the foreground, especially if we want to analyze the perspective of their development. This is what point 3 of the article is intended for.
We are different, and everyone, especially when we touch upon metaphysics, has the right to assign different meanings to words – provided, however, that the semiotics and semantics of that language are known.
Scientific papers, according to a “Logistyka” survey, arouse the interest of 2% of readers. I tried to edit my article in a popular-scientific form, hoping that it might interest a slightly wider group of readers, even though it concerns philosophy, which is commonly neglected by technicians.
The area of knowledge – philosophy – logistics – action – related to inanimate and living objects, including people, has been discussed in many publications. My attempt at synthesis and axiology on this subject in one article is a Herculean undertaking. I try to remedy this by operating basically with key sentences and schematic drawings.
My article concerns the human-world paradigm. Is man in the world an object or a subject? In science, trivializing the paradigm since Hellenic times, there has been a dispute between abstractionism and concretism. In the article, I promote abstractionism in defiance of the generally prevailing determinism, behaviorism, and concretism.
Philosophy of logistics
Action should result from wisdom and knowledge. In Greek, philosophia means love of wisdom
and constitutes the most general, fundamental, rational, and critical knowledge about everything that exists. I accept in the source meaning that philosophy is the love of wisdom – hence my parallel in the interview “Logistics should have its own philosophy” – and it cannot be reduced to a quantified algorithm of action.
In philosophy, three departments can be distinguished. The first concerns the theory of being and metaphysics.
The article comes from the journal “Logistyka” 6/2004.