Innovative Agonology – Definition, Detailed Theories, Laws, and General Rule of Struggle

The idea of ‘innovative agonology’ came into being in 2016 in the Archives of Budo journal with the thematic section ‘Prophylactic and Therapeutic Agonology”. Innovative agonology (IA) is an applied science dedicated to promotion, prevention and therapy related to all dimensions of health and regarding the optimization of activities that increase the ability to survive (from micro to macro scales). The basic method of IA in the research and application sphere is a complementary approach in the broadest possible cognitive-behavioural perspective.At the essence of any particular science is the substantiation of its claims. Since any time one needs to either maintain health, survive, eliminate or slow down the effects of destructive factors, the key phenomenon is some form of combat, so the justification for these necessary actions is provided by the science of struggle. All five existing theories of struggle are published in Polish, with the terminology of Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s (1938) general theory of struggle (agonology) prevailing over the others. Kotarbiński placed military struggles on the ‘ground floor’, parliamentary and judicial disputes, commercial competition, sports fights, etc. on the ‘middle floor’, and he reserved the top floor’ for the general theory of action (praxeology), which includes agonology  but not vice versa. Since the usefulness of almost every scientific discovery is considered from a military perspective, it is not surprising that another theory (detailed one) by Józef Konieczny concerns destruction (1969). Paradoxically, Jarosław Rudniański published the theory of non-armed struggle during martial law in Poland under a camouflaged title (1983). In 1989, when Russian troops were still stationed (they left Poland on September 17, 1993), he re-issued the work (without camouflage) and supplemented it with the theory of compromise. At that time (1991) I published the theory of defensive struggle together with the theoretical basis for complementary prevention and therapy of somatic and mental health and increasing personal safety (survival). The law of the only possibility, as defined in my theory of combat sports (2000), is universal enough to be used in interpretations of even such remote phenomena as miraculous healings.Rudniański defined general rule of struggle as “an action in which a material or surrounding all the action’s time is in independent motion from an acting one, creating simultaneously strong and various resistance; act this way to be able at any moment possibly change both a plan of action and its manner”. Such a broad rule encompasses every case of human struggle with the need to overcome (fight) against factors that threaten one’s own or others’ health or life, as well as the defence of universally recognized values, nature, cultural products, technology, etc.Familiarity (by at least one member of the research or practical problem-solving team) with the languages and algorithms of detailed struggle theories, as well as with the basics of complementary research methodologies, is a prerequisite to minimize the possibility of omitting important details.