According to the Russian tradition literature is something more than only literature. In the special situation, the writers take over functions of scientific disciplines such as philosophy, ethics, the press or the political parties. These trends intensify during critical periods when Russia has to solve a problem of its national identity. The aim of the present text is an attempt to present how contemporary Russian “patriotical” literature is insistently fighting to keep monopoly on spiritual leadership in democratizing Russia. Petrifying specific (...) tradition, the writers are diagnosing all signs of evil, tracing either actual or potential wrongdoers. Their wish is to realize the vision of an autarchic Russia as a special being. Literature not only supports ideology—especially conservative, right—wing ideology, but also becomes the ideology itself. (shrink)

Developing caring competences is considered to be one of the most important aims of undergraduate nursing education and the role of clinical placement is recognised as special in this regard. Students' reflection on caring, their experience and obstacles in being caring is recommended as a key strategy in the process of teaching and studying the nursing discipline. Therefore, the aim of this study was to describe the concept of caring, its manifestations and possible obstacles while caring, as perceived by first‐year (...) nursing students before and after their first clinical placement. Qualitative content analysis of 15 Polish students' narratives written before and after their clinical experience in the form of text‐diaries was undertaken. The findings revealed that students entered their nursing education with a deep humanistic vision of caring both on theoretical and practical levels and the first clinical placement has enriched this vision. Expressive caring was more appreciated by students than the instrumental one and their concept of caring was coherent with the caring behaviours as described in their narratives. Several internal and external obstacles for caring have been reported by students, indicating a specific tension between their ideal of caring and their practical experience of caring in the clinical reality. (shrink)

The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire is the most frequently used leadership measure in scholarship and organizational practice. However, so far it has not been validated in the Polish context. Therefore, the present study aimed to validate and shorten the MLQ in the Polish organizational setting. A total sample of 1,065 employees from different organizations took part in two sessions of an online study. Respondents were between 18 and 70 years old with an average job tenure of 17.00 years. In subsample 1, (...) using exploratory factor analysis, a three-factor structure of the MLQ full form was established, comprising transformational-supportive, inspirational goal-oriented, and passive-avoidant leadership. Based on qualitative and quantitative criteria, we constructed an 18-item MLQ short form. Both forms were supported by the confirmatory factor analysis in subsample 2. The MLQ-FF and MLQ-SF factors displayed acceptable to high levels of item-related parameters, as well as scale-related reliability. Both forms indicated high convergent and predictive validity examined by correlations with authentic leadership and employee's work outcomes. Our study provided the full and the short form of the MLQ as reliable and valid instruments, potentially suitable to measure leadership styles in academic research and organizational practice. (shrink)

Although we are not aware of many spontaneous sensual experiences, we learn about the surrounding world through our senses. One of the objects of sensual experience is smell. It influences our decisions, shapes social interactions and is also a carrier of social meanings. Unfortunately, long-term conviction about the domination of sight over smell led to a belief in the pictorial character of our contemporary culture. Moreover, constant fluctuations between the promotion and ignoring of olfactory data have played a role in (...) the neglect of the importance of smell in social studies. In this article I show how important the sense of smell has been through many centuries of science, and point out that the alleged linguistic and methodological difficulties of this topic, as well as the subjective interpretation of smell, should not be an obstacle in the development of research on smell in social studies. (shrink)

A similarity relation is a reflexive and symmetric binary relation between objects. Similarity is relative: it depends on the set of properties of objects used in determining their similarity or dissimilarity. A multi-modal logical language for reasoning about relative similarities is presented. The modalities correspond semantically to the upper and lower approximations of a set of objects by similarity relations corresponding to all subsets of a given set of properties of objects. A complete deduction system for the language is presented.

A code of professional conduct is a collection of norms appropriate for the nursing profession and should be the point of reference for all decisions made during the care process. Codes of ethics for nurses are formulated by members of national nurses’ organizations. These codes can be considered to specify general norms that function in the relevant society, adjusting them to the character of the profession and enriching them with rules signifying the essence of nursing professionalism. The aim of this (...) article is to present a comparative analysis of codes of ethics for nurses: the ICN’s Code of ethics for nurses, the UK’s Code of professional conduct, the Irish Code of professional conduct for each nurse and midwife, and the Polish Code of professional ethics for nurses and midwives. This analysis allows the identification of common elements in the professional ethics of nurses in these countries. (shrink)

To oni przywrócili pamięć o Norwidzie -- W poszukiwaniu formuły Norwidowskiego poematu. Trudny przypadek Szczesnej -- Norwid oczami młodzieży szkolnej, czyli jak pracujemy nad tekstami poety w jednym z warszawskich liceów -- "Tyś nie śmierci łup!" - Krasiński o Norwidzie -- "Nadzieja jest z prawdy" - o jednym cytacie z Norwida i jego znaczeniu w myśli Józefa Tischnera -- Kobiety-władczynie, czyli rzecz o Wandzie i Kleopatrze. Norwidowska "kwestia kobieca" w perspektywie feministycznej -- Literacka i filmowa przestrzeń Norwida (wstępny rekonesans) -- (...) Tak umiera poeta. Cyprian Kamil Norwid w Domu Św. Kazimierza -- Cyprian Kamil NOrwid na plakatach -- Warszawskim szlakiem Cypriana Kamila Norwida -- Rysunki i grafiki C.K. Norwida -- Dwór w Głuchach - Muzeum Norwida. Pałac w Dębinkach - nowo utworzone Muzeum Norwida -- Norwid w muzyce. Pieśni zadumy i nostalgii Krzysztofa Pendereckiego i opera-misterium Wanda Joanny Wnuk-Nazarowej. (shrink)

The objective of the research presented in this paper was to investigate whether an association existed between the activation of the body schema and reaching adulthood among people in late adolescence. Three activities that are known to enjoy popularity among young people were analysed, namely: dancing, playing computer games that require motor involvement, and playing computer games of an educational and entertaining character. It was assumed that the chosen forms of activity correspond to three levels of activation of the body (...) schema. The following research methods have been applied to this study: the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Defence Style Questionnaire, and the Bodily Self Representation Questionnaire. The study has proven that the activation of body schema through dance is significantly related to high self-esteem and the use of mainly mature and neurotic defence mechanisms in threat situations. (shrink)

Background:The concept of conscientious objection is well described; however, because of its nature, little is known about real experiences of nursing professionals who apply objections in their practice. Extended roles in nursing indicate that clinical and value-based dilemmas are becoming increasingly common. In addition, the migration trends of the nursing workforce have increased the need for the mutual understanding of culturally based assumptions on aspects of health care delivery.Aim:To present (a) the arguments for and against conscientious objection in nursing practice, (...) (b) a description of current regulations and practice regarding conscientious objection in nursing in Poland and the United Kingdom, and (c) to offer a balanced view regarding the application of conscientious objection in clinical nursing practice.Design:Discussion paper.Ethical considerations:Ethical guidelines has been followed at each stage of this study.Findings:Strong arguments exist both for and against conscientious objection in nursing which are underpinned by empirical research from across Europe. Arguments against conscientious objection relate less to it as a concept, but rather in regard to organisational aspects of its application and different mechanisms which could be introduced in order to reach the balance between professional and patient’s rights.Discussion and conclusion:Debate regarding conscientious objection is vivid, and there is consensus that the right to objection among nurses is an important, acknowledged part of nursing practice. Regulation in the United Kingdom is limited to reproductive health, while in Poland, there are no specific procedures to which nurses can apply an objection. The same obligations of those who express conscientious objection apply in both countries, including the requirement to share information with a line manager, the patient, documentation of the objection and necessity to indicate the possibility of receiving care from other nurses. Using Poland and the United Kingdom as case study countries, this article offers a balanced view regarding the application of conscientious objection in clinical nursing practice. (shrink)

Due to the increased interest in ecology, global warming and numerous environmental problems, ecological issues are becoming extremely important in education. Many researchers and thinkers believe that solutions to environmental problems are affected by the environmental ethics adopted. This article identifies which of the three branches of environmental ethics are present in formal environmental education in Poland. This has been achieved by analysing the content of textbooks used by science teachers in the fourth grade of elementary schools. The results show (...) that anthropocentric ethics is dominant in the content of formal environmental education, while biocentric ethics is less frequent and there is also some focus on holistic ethics and the declaration that man is part of nature. (shrink)

The major thesis developed in Sartre's L'imaginaire is that all imaginary acts can be subsumed under the heading of one "image family" and, therefore, that imagination as a whole can be theorized in terms of pictorial representation. Yet this theory fails to meet the objective of Sartre's study, to demonstrate that imaginary activity is not a derivative of perception but an attitude with a character and dignity of its own. The subsidiary account of imagination in terms of neutralization of belief (...) has the advantage of not being constrained by the requirement that imaginary activity serve a purely reproductive function of bringing an absent "original" into a quasi presence and, thus, leaves room for free creativity and fiction. It also points to a concrete lived experience of alterity at the heart of subjective life where the subject stages its life as if it were the life of an other, putting pressure onto Sartre's contention that the cogito defines subjectivity. (shrink)

I examine the role of mutual gaze in social cognition. I start by discussing recent studies of joint visual attention in order to show that social cognition is operative in infancy prior to the emergence of theoretical skills required to make judgments about other people's states of mind. Such social cognition depends on the communicative potential inherent in human bodies. I proceed to examine this embodied social cognition in the context of Merleau-Ponty's views on vision. I expose some inner difficulties (...) within Merleau-Ponty's position as well as to point out the ways of resolving them by means of combined insights from developmental psychology and the analyses of self-other relations from philosophies of dialogue. (shrink)

This book draws on recent developments in research on Ferdinand de Saussure's general linguistics to challenge the structuralist doctrine associated with the Course in General Linguistics and to propose a phenomenological interpretation of Saussure's study of language.

Classical phenomenology -- The transcendental tradition -- The logical investigations of the I -- From the I to the ego -- The grammar of the transcendental ego -- Strawson on the primacy of personhood -- Wittgenstein on the lure of words -- The grammar of the transcendental ego -- Zahavi on transcendental subjectivity as intersubjectivity -- Contemporary arguments for the transcendental ego : Marbach, Soffer -- Schutz, Theunissen on social phenomenology -- Husserl's later thought -- The multidiscipline of dialogical phenomenology (...) -- Sociolinguistics -- Personal pronouns : reconsidering the traditional view -- Egocentrism and polycentrism -- Person deixis and polycentrism -- Anscombe -- Wittgenstein -- Personal pronouns : reconsidering the traditional view -- I and we : a relational community -- Benveniste and I : you connectedness -- Objectification in the third person -- Castaneda's phenomeno-logic of the I -- Developmental perspectives -- Piaget's legacy -- Recent research on the sociality of children -- Proto-conversations in infancy -- The dialogic model of Jaffe and Feldstein -- From proto-conversation to conversation -- Perspectives from blindness and autism -- Polycentrism and personal pronoun acquisition: loveland and others -- An egocentric model of personal pronoun acquisition : Charney and others -- Philosophical implications and directions for future research -- Philosophy of dialogue -- Rosenstock-Huessy's grammatical method of social research -- Rosenzweig's speech-thinking -- Buber's I and you -- The primordial duality in Buber, Humboldt, Plato -- Buber and his critics -- Rosenstock-Huessy -- Levinas -- Dialogical phenomenology -- The dialogic dimension of meaning and experience -- The practice of phenomenology -- Implications for politics and feminism. (shrink)

The article offers analyses of the phenomenon of copying (plagiarism) in higher education. The analyses were based on a quantitative survey using questionnaires, conducted in 2019 at one of the Polish universities. Plagiarism is discussed here both as an element of the learning process and a subject of public practices. The article presents students’ definitions of plagiarism, their strategies for unclear or difficult situations, their experiences with plagiarism and their opinions on how serious and widespread this phenomenon is. Focusing on (...) the non-plagiarism norm, that is the rule that students are not allowed to plagiarize, and in order to redefine it we have determined two strategies adopted by students. The first is withdrawing in fear of making a mistake (omitting the norm), which means not using referencing in unclear situations, e.g. when the data about the source of information are absent. The second is reducing the scope of the norm applicability (limiting the norm), characterized by the fact that there are areas where the non-plagiarism norm must be observed more closely and those where it is not so important, e.g. respondents classify works as credit-level and diploma-level texts, as in the credit-level work they “can” sometimes plagiarize since the detection rate is poor and consequences are not severe. The presented results are particularly significant for interpreting plagiarism in an international context (no uniform definition of plagiarism) and for policies aimed at limiting the scale of the phenomenon (plagiarism detection systems 1 ). (shrink)

The paper explores the assertion about multi-faceted tools of impact used by large corporations that they aim to limit the subjectivity of consumers. It is based on the concept of ‘deep capture’ developed by Jon Hanson and David Yosifon. According to this concept consumers have only the idea of their own subjectivity. The authors’ basic assumption is that human behaviour is largely (but not completely) dependent on external situational factors rather than the individual dispositions of individuals. In this context we (...) analyse the role of large corporations in shaping the image of LGBT people in Poland. Noteworthy seems to be the consideration to build and strengthen the belief that LGBT people are a group which suffers discrimination, to which anyone should make gestures of support throughout consumer decisions. An overview of the activities of business entities for LGBT groups in Poland lets us say that they cannot be called large scale actions. The actions of Polish companies can be recognised as not very intensive. Western transnational corporations have huge experience in actions for LGBT people, but this is not necessarily the case in Poland. (shrink)

Rediscoveries are not rare in biology. A recent example is the re-birth of the "fluctuation fit" concept developed by F. B. Straub and G. Szabolcsi in the sixties of the last century, under various names, the most popular of which is the "conformational selection". This theory offers an alternative to the "induced fit" concept by Koshland for the interpretation of the mechanism of protein—ligand interactions. A central question is whether the ligand induces a conformational change (as described by the induced (...) fit model) or rather selects and stabilizes a complementary conformation from a pre-existing equilibrium of various states of the protein (according to the fluctuation fit/conformational selection model). Straub and Szabolcsi’s role and the factors hindering the spread of the fluctuation fit theory are discussed in the context of the history of the Hungarian biology in the 1950s and 1960s. (shrink)

A formal language of two-valued logic is developed, whose terms are formulas of the language of Kleene's three-valued logic. The atomic formulas of the former language are pairs of formulas of the latter language joined by consequence operators. These operators correspond to the three sensible types of consequence (strong-strong, strong-weak and weak-weak) in Kleene's logic in analogous way as the implication connective in the classical logic corresponds to the classical consequence relation. The composed formulas of the considered language are built (...) from the atomic ones by means of the classical connectives and quantifiers.A deduction system for the developed language is given, consisting of a set of decomposition rules for sequences of formulas. It is shown that the deduction system is sound and complete. (shrink)

In _The distinctive terminology in Šarḥ al-Kāfiya by Raḍī l-Dīn al-ʾAstarābāḏī_ Beata Sheyhatovitch offers a comprehensive and systematic study of terminology used by a highly perceptive and original Arab grammarian from 13th century C.E.

This study investigated the relationship between disorders of the body self and personality defence mechanisms of women with bulimia nervosa. It was hypothesized that women with bulimia nervosa would not form a homogeneous group in terms of the body self disorder and that the extent of this disorder would be significantly related to personality functioning in terms of the defence styles adopted. The hypothesis was investigated with the aid of two questionnaires: the Body Self Questionnaire and the Defence Style Questionnaire (...) by Andrews, Singh and Bond. 36 women aged between 15 and 25 years, who fulfilled the DSM IV criteria for bulimia nervosa participated in the study. Conclusions from the study were that: the body self of bulimic women is differentially disordered at three levels: profound, moderate and minimal. the degree to which the body self was found to be disordered is significant in psychological terms as it is related to the defence style adopted by the bulimic personality. The profound and moderate levels of body self disorder related to immature defence styles, while minimal levels of disruption to body self were associated with neurotic and mature styles. (shrink)

Review of Oksala's 2016 Feminist Experiences: Foucauldian and Phenomenological Investigations.

The paper discusses a four-valued propositional logic FOUR≤, similar to Belnap's logic, which can be used to describe incomplete or inconsistent knowledge. In addition to the two classical logical values tt, ff, FOUR≤ features also two nonclassical values: ⊥, representing incomplete information, and ⊤, representing inconsistency. The nonclassical values are incomparable, and together with the classical ones they form a diamond-shaped lattice L4 known from Belnap's logic, which underlies the semantics of FOUR≤. The set of connectives contains those of Belnap's (...) logic, together with an additional operator representing the lattice order, which decisively increases the expressive power of the logic. In the paper we develop a complete decompositional deduction system in Rasiowa-Sikorski style for FOUR≤. (shrink)

The major thesis developed in Sartre's L'imaginaire is that all imaginary acts can be subsumed under the heading of one "image family" and, therefore, that imagination as a whole can be theorized in terms of pictorial representation. Yet this theory fails to meet the objective of Sartre's study, to demonstrate that imaginary activity is not a derivative of perception but an attitude with a character and dignity of its own. The subsidiary account of imagination in terms of neutralization of belief (...) has the advantage of not being constrained by the requirement that imaginary activity serve a purely reproductive function of bringing an absent "original" into a quasi presence and, thus, leaves room for free creativity and fiction. It also points to a concrete lived experience of alterity at the heart of subjective life where the subject stages its life as if it were the life of an other, putting pressure onto Sartre's contention that the cogito defines subjectivity. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the concept of translation competence as seen from the perspective of translational hermeneutics. The first part of the article provides a short survey of how translation competence and its develop- ment has been described so far, with a particular focus on the legal translator’s skills and abilities. The second part of the paper briefly presents the notion of translational hermeneutics together with its main concepts. The aim of this part of the article is also to (...) show similarities between the translation phenomenon and hermeneutical studies. Finally, building on Stolze’s hermeneutical model of translation, the last part of the paper presents the main features of a hermeneutical model of legal translation competence. (shrink)

I examine the ordinary-language use of deictic terms, notably the personal, spatial and temporal markers 'I' and 'you', 'here' and 'now', in order to make manifest that their meaning is inextricably embedded within a pragmatic, perceptual and interpersonal situation. This inextricable embeddedness of deixis within the shared natural and social world suggests, I contend, an I-you connectedness at the heart of meaning and experience. The thesis of I-you connectedness extends to the larger claim about the situatedness of embodied perceivers within (...) a shared perspectivally configured milieu. This claim can be cast in terms of a polycentric orientation to the natural and social world, which provides a robust alternative to an egocentric conception of experience. I develop this claim via a renewed phenomenological reflection on speech, assisted by ordinary-language philosophy, as well as relevant contributions from empirical sociolinguistic studies and developmental psychology. These reflective and empirical perspectives help make a case for the primacy of socially and spatially situated experience, which departs from the received notion of an asocial and uprooted mind. (shrink)

D. Wulff developed a notion of post-critical beliefs as a proposal for the description of religion in the light of the progress of secularization and socio-cultural changes. According to his theory, we can situate potential attitudes toward religion in a two-dimensional space. The vertical dimension stands for Inclusion vs. Exclusion of Transcendence, and the horizontal one-for the way an individual interprets religious content: Literal vs. Symbolic. In this way, the two dimensions determine four quadrants, each reflecting a potential attitude towards (...) religion, operationalized by D. Hutsebaut in the Post-Critical Belief Scale as: Orthodoxy, External Critique, Relativism and Second Naiveté. The research presented in this paper is our attempt at fi n ding an answer to the question whether the religious attitudes determined by Wulff are related to self-consciousness types. We tested 159 adult individuals by means of the PCBS scale by D. Hutsebaut and the Self-consciousness scale by Z. Zaborowski and Z. Oleszkiewicz. The results of these tests are that the refl ective type of self-consciousness correlated positively with Orthodoxy and Second Naiveté and negatively with External Critique and Relativism. (shrink)

Historia kłamstwa zaczyna się tam, gdzie historia prawdy. Na przestrzeni wieków zmieniają się jego definicje i oceny moralne. Warunki historyczne, polityczne, społeczne ujawniają jego nowe konteksty. W niniejszym artykule przedstawiam trzy charakterystyki kłamstwa: ze względu naprawdę, w odniesieniu do języka i jego rolę w sztuce. Różnorodność znaczeń implikuje oceny moralne tego zjawiska. Filozoficzna refleksja jest o tyle istotna, o ile stanowi bazę dla innych nauk, np. dla psychologii lub socjologii. Historia kłamstwa wskazuje na niejednoznaczność rozumienia tego pojęcia i konieczność ciągłej (...) refleksji nad jego konsekwencjami. Ta wieloaspektowość sprawia, że mamy do czynienia z relatywizmem, na który jednak nie wszyscy filozofowie się zgadzają. Arystoteles, Aureliusz Augustyn czy Kant bezwzględnie kłamstwo potępiali. Na współczesne postrzeganie kłamstwa składa się więc szereg często niezgodnych ze sobą określeń. (shrink)

In the prospectus for his later work pronounced in 1952, Merleau-Ponty announced that his move beyond the phenomenological to the ontological level of analysis is motivated by issues of sociality, notably communication with others.' I propose to interrogate this priority attributed by the author to this interpersonal bond in his reflections on corporeality in general, marking a departure from The Structure of Behavior and The Phenomenology of Perception, which privileged the starting point of consciousness and the body proper. My interest (...) lies particularly in exposing the psychological sources of Merleau-Ponty's thinking about the primacy of sociality. Referring to his lectures on Child Psychology and Pedagogy, which he delivered as Professor at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1949-52,2 I will develop the contention that the developmental psychology of child sociality significantly informed his understanding of relations between self and other laid out in the later texts, and henceforth informed also his conception of the flesh. Specifically, the psychological hypotheses about the anonymous and fusional form initially taken by human sociality appears to play a determining role in his conception of interpersonal life formulated on the ontological plane. I will then point to the internal tensions involved in the theory of sociality based on the thesis of anonymity and disclose an alternative theoretical account, which has the merit of preserving the advantages of the anonymity thesis while avoiding its drawbacks; it also facilitates continued dialogue between Merleau-Ponty's philosophy and recent developmental psychology. (shrink)

Memory is a privileged context for inquiry into subjective life; no wonder that the way philosophers theorize memory is indicative of their conception of subjectivity as a whole. In this essay, I turn to Sartre and Husserl with the aim of unveiling how their accounts of recollection resolve the question of identity and difference within the temporality of one's life. Tracing Sartre's arguments against Husserl's, as well as Husserl's and Sartre's own presentations of recollection, I inquire into the reasons that (...) incited them to bring either the aspect of sameness or otherness at the heart of subjective life into view. (shrink)

The essay traces the double, phenomenological and psychological, background of Sartre’s theory of the imagination. Insofar as these two phenomenological and psychological currents are equally influential for Sartre’s theory of the imagination, his intellectual project is situated in an inter-disciplinary research area which combines the descriptive analyses of Edmund Husserl with the clinical reports and psychological theories of Pierre Janet. While Husserl provides the foundation for the prevailing theory of imagination as pictorial representation, Janet’s findings on obsessive behavior enrich an (...) alternative current in Sartre’s thinking about imagination as spontaneous and self-determined creativity. (shrink)

Stawarska considers the ambiguities surrounding the antagonism between the phenomenological and the structuralist traditions by pointing out that the supposed foundation of structuralism, the Course in General Linguistics, was ghostwritten posthumously by two editors who projected a dogmatic doctrine onto Saussure’s lectures, while the authentic materials related to Saussure’s linguistics are teeming with phenomenological references. She then narrows the focus to Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with Saussure’s linguistics and argues that it offers an unusual, if not an uncanny, reading of the Course, (...) in that it identifies a phenomenological dimension within the text, against the grain of the dominant structuralist claim. This phenomenological dimension is corroborated by the authentic sources of Saussure’s linguistics, even though the latter were beyond the philosopher’s own power to know. Merleau-Ponty’s unorthodox reading of the Course as being broadly compatible with the tradition of Husserlian phenomenology has been dismissed as an error and a contresens , but Stawarska proposes that such deviant appropriations of foundational texts are the ones to cherish the most, since they effectively dismantle the received dogmas and official doctrines stuffing the cabinets of canonical philosophy. She argues specifically that Merleau-Ponty’s contested distinction between “a synchronic linguistics of speech ” and “a diachronic linguistics of language ” , which gives primacy to la parole over la langue, and raises the possibility of a systematic study of la parole, contains a more faithful response to Saussure’s own project than the received structuralist view that la langue alone constitutes the proper object of linguistic study. (shrink)

Cancer is an evolutionary and ecological process in which complex interactions between tumour cells and their environment share many similarities with organismal evolution. Tumour cells with highest adaptive potential have a selective advantage over less fit cells. Naturally occurring transmissible cancers provide an ideal model system for investigating the evolutionary arms race between cancer cells and their surrounding micro‐environment and macro‐environment. However, the evolutionary landscapes in which contagious cancers reside have not been subjected to comprehensive investigation. Here, we provide a (...) multifocal analysis of transmissible tumour progression and discuss the selection forces that shape it. We demonstrate that transmissible cancers adapt to both their micro‐environment and macro‐environment, and evolutionary theories applied to organisms are also relevant to these unique diseases. The three naturally occurring transmissible cancers, canine transmissible venereal tumour (CTVT) and Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) and the recently discovered clam leukaemia, exhibit different evolutionary phases: (i) CTVT, the oldest naturally occurring cell line is remarkably stable; (ii) DFTD exhibits the signs of stepwise cancer evolution; and (iii) clam leukaemia shows genetic instability. While all three contagious cancers carry the signature of ongoing and fairly recent adaptations to selective forces, CTVT appears to have reached an evolutionary stalemate with its host, while DFTD and the clam leukaemia appear to be still at a more dynamic phase of their evolution. Parallel investigation of contagious cancer genomes and transcriptomes and of their micro‐environment and macro‐environment could shed light on the selective forces shaping tumour development at different time points: during the progressive phase and at the endpoint. A greater understanding of transmissible cancers from an evolutionary ecology perspective will provide novel avenues for the prevention and treatment of both contagious and non‐communicable cancers. (shrink)