Branislav Petroniević, a Yugoslav philosopher and paleontologist, was born in Sovljak, Serbia. He taught as a professor of philosophy at the University of Belgrade and was a member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts. In paleontology, Petroniević was the first to distinguish between the genera Archaeopteryx and Archaeornis; he also discovered new characteristics of the genera Tritylodon and Moeritherium.

Petroniević systematically treated many problems, both in pure philosophy and in scientific methodology. He considered himself a "born metaphysician" and devoted himself to constructing his own metaphysical system. But, although original, it grew out of the nineteenth-century empirical metaphysics of Hermann Lotze, Eduard von Hartmann, and Petroniević's teacher, Johannes Volkelt.

Petroniević's epistemological theory of empiriorationalism claimed that all contents of consciousness are absolutely real in the same sense as things per se. Thus there can be no absolute or...