Towards New Orthodoxy: Epistemology and Philosophy of Science in Jarosław Ładosz and Czesław Nowiński

This chapter recovers two overlooked Marxist philosophies of science by Polish thinkers Jarosław Ładosz and Czesław Nowiński, situating them within their broader epistemological frameworks. Both Ładosz and Nowiński abandoned the primacy of ontology characteristic of Stalinism, and rearticulated Marxist orthodoxy through Lenin’s theory of knowledge, in dialogue with Piaget’s genetic epistemology, reconceptualizing reflection as dialectical, historical, and practical. In line with Lenin’s approach, they developed their epistemological and methodological views in engagement with the history of science. Nowiński focused primarily on biology, exploring questions such as the relationship between the individual and the universal, the role of idealization, and the nature of scientific laws within evolutionary theory. Ładosz, in turn, interpreted mathematics as rooted in historically evolving forms of human cooperation.