Mr. Jacek

 

A week ago, Mr. Jacek noticed that his eyesight was hurting. Not the eye as an organ, but the sense itself. Apparently, vision had become redundant for him, or he had exhausted his predetermined quantitative norm of objects he could perceive through observation. However, not giving in to these nihilistic thoughts, he decided to call this phenomenon the first symptoms of myopia (which, by the way, he could have inherited), excessive poring over books and the computer (which, truth be told, was true), and a lack of some strange vitamins necessary for seeing (which could be true if proven).

Trying to overcome his own psyche's resistance to using his painful sense, he decided to look further. He discovered that things closer were more comfortable and natural for him. So, he limited himself to the blackboard, his notebook, a nearby door, shorter corridors, elevators, a table in a milk bar, and his own four tables.

The next day, however, he noticed that the process was progressing. Former buildings became fragments of walls, trees became two-meter-long stumps, the book collection halved, and the keyboard lost its letters. On the positive side, he only had two tables left in the room, which made navigating the place much easier.

This phenomenon, however, continued, deepening, and by no means encouraged Mr. Jacek to be optimistic about the future. Especially since his nose was smeared with printer's ink, which he wiped off the books he read. His forehead had turned blue from nervously pacing back and forth from wall to wall. Furthermore, he had fractured his pelvis while clipping his toenails.

However, every limitation creates a new quality {see the books: "Man and Human Situations" (1970), "An Attempt at the Social Characterization of Cognition" (1973), "Hidden Transitions of Values" (1976), "Everyday Imagination" (1976), "Cognition and Society" (1977) (*)} so Mr. Jacek spent the day before yesterday studying his fingerprints, the invisible phytoplankton in the sink cavity, and the internal architecture of the 486DX2 processor.

The joy of this new quality did not last long. He spent yesterday idly staring at the inside of his own eyelid, where thousands of blood cells danced, swimming in thin veins.

Today, however, the long-awaited deterioration in his vision occurred. Around 10:31 a.m., he noticed his own charmingly round pupil, the color described on his ID as "blue," which, however, from within appeared dark greenish-turquoise (and indeed it was). Between 12:07 and 2:25 p.m., he saw only the colorlessness of the vitreous humor filling the interior of his eyes. However, around 4:14 p.m., he began to notice the outlines of his own eye's interior. Slowly, blurred cones, rods, blood vessels, and the infamous blind spot emerged. Looking more closely, Mr. Jacek noticed their extraordinary complexity and began to ponder the power of evolution. Fascinatingly, these formations responded to light by sending signals via nerves to the brain. Thanks to their innate intelligence and ability to adapt to new conditions, our hero learned to distinguish first light from dark areas, then shapes, and finally colors. Around 6:23 p.m., he was already able to read individual letters and follow moving objects with his eyes. However, it was only at 1:33 a.m. that he found the courage, or rather the courage, to describe his own improbable story.

(*) This book is a reconstruction of the fundamental problems of Marxist epistemology.

A reconstruction—that is, not a passive re-creation...

Building on the assumptions of Marxist anti-individualism, I would like to explain how human cognition, especially scientific cognition, proceeds in the historical process, as a social phenomenon entangled in material practice, and how the role of the scientist presents itself against this background