As early as the first half of the 19th century, attempts were made to describe the inhabitants of Carpathians (Góralszczyzny Carpacka), taking into account the existing divisions into groups (‘rods’) or ethnographic regions. According to the modernist (opesthetic-positive) paradigm of scientific knowledge, these groups/regions were treated in a ‘substance’ way, guided by the principles of subjective and methodological naturalism. The first researcher to divide the population of the northern slopes of the Carpathians, along the same lines as the mountains, into three ‘ethnographic groups, in which peoples’, was Wincenty Pol. This fairly detailed ethnographic delimitation was not represented graphically because of the lack of a map suitable for that purpose. It was only almost 120 years later that Józef Babicz carried out a detailed map showing the divisions and extent of the Polish Góralszczyzny and the ethnographic groups made by Pole and several other researchers. The differences between the different scholar boundaries of Góralszczyzny and the ranges of its groups/regions indicate that the substanceful treatment of these issues is inadequate to the social and cultural realities illustrated. Some views of the Pole can inspire the creation of an alternative concept of ethnographic diversity in general and the Polish Góralszczyzny in particular.