Szkoła speleologiczna: "Později na Školy začali zvát špičkový vědce ze Západu." Československo-polské vědecké kontakty po roce 1968 (materiálová studie a rozhovor s geologem prof. Pavlem Bosákem)

This material study dedicated to scientific contacts of researchers in the natural sciences in the postwar period mediates the memories the geologist Pavel Bosák had of his contacts in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s. It focuses on the significance of cooperation created from below, which historiographies of scientific institutions generally don’t reflect. The purpose is to show similar processes in the scientific networks of mathematicians, astronomers, geographers, and geologists, which the histories of the individual disciplines overlook. The central theme is the Speleological School (Speleologická škola in Czech; Szkoła Speleologiczna in Polish), a regularly-convened symposium organized in Poland since 1975. This study recapitulates the contacts that Pavel Bosák established at the annual symposium and their significance for his professional activities in Czechoslovakia. The analysis of an interview conducted using the oral history method shows how the geologists resisted the reduction of the significance of their expert culture to the tasks provided in the state-planned economy and how, starting in the 1970s, they transformed the transfer of knowledge and the establishing of international contacts, the implementation of new methods, and of interdisciplinary cooperation in the fields of geology, speleology, geography, geomorphology, and hydrogeology.