Poniższy artykuł stanowi refleksję nad zastosowaniem teoretycznej kategorii symboli politycznych w ujęciu Erica Voegelina do badań politologicznych oraz praktycznych problemów współczesnego prawa i polityki. Oryginalny wkład badawczy tego tekstu stanowi przy tym prześledzenie rozwoju koncepcji symboli politycznych u Voegelina i skupienie się na wczesnych, rzadko opisywanych tekstach tegoż autora. Konkluzją jest obserwacja, iż voegelinowska kategoria symboli politycznych to narzędzie znacznie powiększające nasze możliwości poznawcze i otwierające nowe pola dialogu społecznego. Kategoria ta przezwycięża bowiem nieprzystający już w pełni do współczesnej polityki podział na religie i ideologie, a równocześnie unika problemów charakterystycznych dla myśli politycznej Carla Schmitta i pozwala na bardziej szczegółową analizę niż upraszczające huntingtonowskie pojęcie cywilizacji.

This study mainly focused on the relationship between number sense and algebraic thinking. Previous studies have provided evidence that number sense plays an important role in developing algebraic thinking. The role of symbol and pattern sense are yet to discover in relation to number sense and algebraic thinking. The purpose of this study was to identify the mediating effects of symbol sense and pattern sense in year five pupils’ relationship between number sense and algebraic thinking. To do so, two mathematics tests were carried out among 720 year five pupils in the district of Malacca, Malaysia. The collected data were analysed using a partial least squares-structural equation modeling approach. The data collected were analysed using SPSS 22.0 and SmartPLS 3.0. Results demonstrated that symbol sense and pattern sense are good mediators between year five pupils’ number sense and algebraic thinking. This result of the study supports the past studies related to the role of number sense, symbol and pattern sense in developing algebraic thinking. The presented study provides suggestions as intervention to increase students’ making sense ability in numbers, symbols and patterns to develop algebraic thinking.

Does the Wawel Dragon prefer sushi? The semiosphere of the vision of a multicultural city in the 21st century in the artistic works of school students from Krakow

In this text, a semiotic perspective was used to analyze the artistic works of students from Krakow schools submitted to the competition entitled “A multicultural city in the 21st century”. Assuming that the condition for the semiotics of the city are social processes leading to the recognition of objects in urban space as signs, the text is aimed to answer the question: what signs and codes constitute the semiosphere of works taking part in the competition? The analysis shows that the participants creatively used signs rooted in the tradition of Krakow, modifying their meaning by placing them in new syntagmatic systems with signs from other cultural codes. These works also show that the impact of cultural interactions is related to an exchange of signs and the dynamic process of reassigning their meanings. They also illustrate other sociocultural mechanisms taking place in the conditions of multi – and interculturalism. One of them is the simple multiplication of various “cultural packages”, and another – the diverse and dynamic interactions and the interweaving of the multiple elements that make up the entire intercultural space.

The aim of the article is to present some aesthetic and ideological relationships between different cultural texts - the painting of Józef Chełmoński entitled Babie lato (Indian Summer, 1875) and its poetic ekphrasis with the same title written by Michalina Chełmońska-Szczepankowka (1937). The article describes cultural axiology and poetic sense of the perception of the painting which focuses on the visual theme of Indian summer. The presented interpretation demonstrates that the ideological message of the poem comprises the symbols of the Indian summer inspired by the poetics of the painting, namely praise of freedom, imagination and creative artistic thrust, which people derive directly from both the beauty of their native land and the truth about the order of life imposed by the natural law of the motherland, irrespective of its social and economic situation as well as its historical conditions.

The politics of memory is a sociotechnical operation of altering collective memory through the redefinition or removal of issues relating to history and to the image of social components, existing within it, or through the consolidation of such issues as its new, vital parts. This type of politics involves the promotion of those sets of information and interpretations of facts which suit the vision of the state shared by the nation and the ruling elite. The goal of the politics of memory is the integration of the society around the values commonly considered supreme in a given country. The additional goal is the strengthening of the legitimization of power and a subsequent gain of as much acceptance of the existing political order as possible. The tools used in the politics of memory can be categorized into three groups: aural, verbal and visual tools. Sounds and words (written, spoken and sung) constitute symbols which are commonly used in the politics of memory. Symbols, as well as myths, serve as the basis for rituals which, in the politics of memory, serve as key tools aimed at shaping the collective emotions. As a result of sociotechnical operations, symbols become both signifiers of identification and markers of integrity of the social structure. Rituals integrate and mobilize the community, but also serve as means of demonstrating the ruling elite’s power and the enforced social and political order. Music has been emphasized as particularly influential on the general mood of different societies, as this particular tool of the politics of memory has a strong emotional impact on its recipients. In addition, music is highly abstract, which allows it to signify (symbolize) any given content. Th e natural qualities and influence of music, as well as the variety of its styles and genres, combined with the knowledge and experience of the ruling elite, makes it a highly effective tool of the politics of memory.

Symbols as language signs of the expression of Fedor Patushnyak’s world perception

The article considers symbols as linguistic signs of expression of Fedor Potushnyak’s perception. The focus is on the fact that the symbol preserves a huge amount of information and is the key to understanding many mental and culturalhistorical phenomena. In fact, the symbols in a way «encode» the life of the people, forming its corresponding linguistic and cultural picture of the world. Every nation retains the richness of its traditions, which have been formed for centuries and which in today’s pragmatic world, unfortunately, are so easy to lose, especially if you seek a common cultural space. And this national and cultural code is fixed in the language; it is thanks to symbols that the cultural phenomenon is «objectified». Of course, not every cultural reality becomes a symbol, and not every token that names cultural reality has a symbolic meaning. A symbol «grows» only when reality acquires special significance in the life not only of a particular person, but also of society, religious community or cultural community, and the verbal symbol also needs traditions of word usage. A verbal symbol is a multifaceted open semantic structure that has the ability to detect several symbolic meanings in one context. The problem of determining the semantics of the symbol is due to its complex internal nature, ambiguity of interpretation, the dependence of interpretation on the individual reading of the text and the symbol in it. Each new reading of even the same or another text will evoke new associations and new interpretations, will involve other texts and symbols in this process. One of the links of Ukrainian symbolism of the 1930-s was the poetic work of F. Potushnyak, which absorbed the experience of Ukrainian and Western European modern culture. F. Potushnyak’s poetry is a holistic artistic system with produced key images-symbols, the lost aesthetic code of which must be rediscovered. Based on the symbolization of images of the sea, boats, distant, unknown pier, changes in nature, the poet models various existential situations of individual and universal existence in the infinity of living space, creates a paradigm of endless movement of humanity into the unknown , into the whirlpool of passions, impulses, dangers, dreams. Means of the latest poetic technique, contrasts of sounds and colors, polysemantism of images-symbols give the chance to recreate all the complexity of a person’s spiritual life.