Focusing on the period of unprecedented infl uence of popular science in Yugoslavia following the Second World War, the article examines a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to linking science and Marxist philosophy of science against the backdrop of the dramatic political and cultural changes that were taking place in early socialist Yugoslavia.

The text was created on the basis of interviews with Caltech scholars (Pasadena, USA) in 2018. The talks concerned various contemporary theories of biogenesis and the role of their philosophical premises. The researchers also addressed the issue of popularizing science. The worldview is shaped (and established) by popularizing publications. They also answered the questions how their personal beliefs influenced on research.

Popular science magazines published in Poland between 1758 and 1939 are an important resource for all kinds of research including interdisciplinary analysis as well testing new methodological approaches. They provide insights into the changing understanding of science and its social functions, the status of the scientist, models of popularization of science, the channels and forms of communications, techniques of construction of the popular science text enhanced with graphics and illustrations.

The article attempts to prove that Darwinism in popular culture plays a role of a theory of everything. Bestselling authors of popular science such as Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins and Bill Bryson have acquainted general public with the theory of evolution, and its newest facet — the Modern Synthesis. Darwinian paradigms, as defined by Thomas Kuhn, are also used in popular books on cosmology, sociobiology, psychology, and religious studies. Moreover, the Darwinian grand narrative of evolutional history shapes the way in which contemporary mass culture presents the history of our planet in numerous educational TV series. Last but not least, Charles Darwin himself has recently become a popular icon and the story of his life is remade in a growing number of fiction and non-fiction books and movies.

This article outlines the rise and development of popular science periodicals in Poland from the 18th century until 1939. Their history begins in 1758 with the publication of Nowe Wiadomości Ekonomiczne i Uczone [Latest Economic and Learned News]. Our corpus includes 128 periodicals representing a great diversity of formats and content.

Polish popular-science periodicals have not yet been researched in terms of their overall graphic design and layout. Undertaking an in-depth assessment of this particular aspect was intended to follow the development of graphic design in the periodicals published on the Polish lands throughout the period spanning 1758–1939, with a view to identifying the most characteristic components that stood for overall visual appeal of specific publications, whilst pondering overall aesthetic and educational value of diverse illustrative material they offered to their readership. The article presents an outline of research into the graphic design of fifty such periodicals, highly representative of a popular-science genre. Comprehensive research results along with the accompanying factual material and tabularised data, which might well prove of some consequence in further comparative research, are available in a book format.

This article examines three aborted publishing projects involving popular science magazines from the early 19th century, two of them in Cracow, one in Kalisz. Their history has been reconstructed thanks to the publishers' prospectuses found in collections of the Jagiellonian Library.