The Brain as Economy: Intellectual Labor and Mental Efficiency in Twentieth-Century Poland

The Brain as Economy: Intellectual Labor and Mental Efficiency in Twentieth-Century Poland

by Marek Maj In mid-twentieth-century Poland, two philosophers—Stefan Rudniański and his son Jarosław—devoted themselves to spreading ideas and techniques of mental productivity and efficiency among the country’s students and growing class of white-collar workers. Their intellectual projects showed a remarkable degree of continuity, beginning from the same basic premise that cognitive processes are an ‘economy’: a complex, optimizable system. Ja…