The Geometria Culmensis was written around 1400 and is one of the first known mathematical treatises in German. A textbook on land surveying, it not only uses the Hindu‐Arabic numerals throughout the text but also frequently refers to the most influential treatise on these new numbers, the Algorism. Roughly a hundred years before the first German arithmetic books, the Geometria Culmensis tries to educate

In the German Weimar Republic of the 1920s, the field of economic science found itself in a crisis environment beyond the limits of its understanding. Very few contributions from academia found their way into practice, and thus the limited interplay between the two was of little consequence. During this era, universities responded by introducing various new approaches to make the teaching of economics

Current attempts by historians of science to revise the narrative of the Scientific Revolution by using the concept of the Baroque have important implications for art history. Correspondences between baroque art and baroque science gain new complexity when the rational, epistemologically optimistic image of the New Science is put in doubt. Rather than a method of objective observation, early seventeenth‐century

In this note, we point attention to and briefly discuss a curious manuscript of Einstein, composed in 1938 and entitled “Unified Field Theory,” the only such writing, published or unpublished, carrying this title without any further specification. Apparently never intended for publication, the manuscript sheds light both on Einstein′s modus operandi as well as on the public role of Einstein′s later

Early modern medicine was much more dependent on the senses than its contemporary counterpart. Although a comprehensive medical theory existed that assigned great value to taste and odor of medicaments, historical descriptions of taste and odor appears imprecise and inconsistent to modern eyes. How did historical actors move from subjective experience of taste and odor to culturally stable agreements

Performative methods have been part of history of science research and education for at least three decades. Understood broadly, they cover every methodology in which a historian or philosopher of science engages in embodied interaction with sources, tools and materials that do not traditionally belong to historical research, with the aim of answering a historical research question. The question no

The present contribution analyses the nervousness and neurasthenia discourse in the early Soviet Union. Its focus is on psycho‐hygienic plays staged by the Moscow Theatre for Sanitary Culture. It asks in which images, figures and actions a knowledge about the nervous disorder was presented on stage, which genre traditions and communicative instruments were used and on which changing political implications

Perfumes embody a chemical record of style and technology. Blurring the boundary between what counts as natural and artificial in both a material and a perceptual sense, perfumery presents us with a domain of multiple disciplinary identities relevant to social studies: art, craft, and techno‐science. Despite its profound impact as a cultural practice, perfume has seldom featured in historical scholarship

This essay discusses imitation coral reconstruction workshops based on a recipe from a sixteenth‐century “book of secrets” that took place in three different educational contexts: Columbia University, Nunavut Arctic College, and Universität Hamburg. It reflects on the utility of reconstruction and material literacy as present‐day history of science methodologies in which scholarly textual interpretation

This article discusses the (re)construction and use of an Early modern instrument, better known as Herman Boerhaave's (1668–1738) little furnace. We investigate the origins, history and materiality of this furnace, and examine the dynamic relationship between historical study and reconstructing and handling an object. We argue that combining textual analysis with performative methods allows us to gain

What are historians doing in the laboratory? Looking back over six years of collaborative work, researchers of the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University discuss their experience with hands‐on reconstruction as a historical method. This work engages practical forms of knowledge—from pigment‐making to metal casting—recorded in the BnF Ms. Fr. 640, an anonymous French manuscript compiled in

From his arrival in Italy in 1755, Winckelmann's work is infused throughout by a fundamental antinomy: reading versus seeing. This antinomy possesses for him a decidedly epistemological significance: it allows him to present himself as the father of a discipline deserving of its name, i.e., the history of art. In Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), he claims to break with a long tradition of

Since Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition published in 1759 the concept of original genius has been at the centre of considerations concerning creative processes. And George Frideric Handel's compositions were regarded not only by his contemporaries, but also by subsequent generations as an epitome of the creative power of a sublime artistic personality individualized in every sense

In his "Méthode nouvelle," an anonymous article in the Bibliothèque universelle of 1686, John Locke described his way of collecting excerpts in notebooks and retrieving relevant entries. The well-known practice of entering textual passages in commonplace books sits uneasily with Locke's criticism of received opinion and authority. Is it possible that he used any of these notes to think with? I suggest

In the history of scholarly practice, Voltaire stands out among eighteenth-century authors for his critical attitude towards erudite reading habits. His contempt for the "compilateurs" is a radical expression of the Enlightenment desire to write free of the traditions and burdens of the past. His famous interventions in Ancien Régime court cases are also emblematic of the action-oriented philosophy

Georg Simon Ohm's work in the field of electricity led to what is now considered to be the most fundamental law of electrical circuits, Ohm's Law. Much less known is that only months earlier, Ohm had published another law-one that differed significantly from the now accepted one. The latter entailed a logarithmic relation between the length of the conductor and a parameter that Ohm called "loss of

The article explores deployment of the Darwinian narrative of the "natural history of humanity" in Russian physical anthropology in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. It traces two narratives developed by the leading Russian school of physical anthropology: one narrative advanced a universalist vision of collective scholarly enterprise working toward clarifying the missing links in

At the beginning of the 20th century, research on material substances such as blood and metals was in high demand, as is apparent from the successful careers of the serologist Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884-1954) and the metallurgist Jan Czochralski (1885-1953). Both were leading experts of their time, their transnational biographies - spanning the German-speaking countries and Poland - were remarkably similar

Im Zuge der archäologischen Erschließung Ägyptens und des Vorderen Orients im 19. Jahrhundert kamen zahlreiche Menschendarstellungen aus den Kulturen des Altertums zum Vorschein, die auch jenseits der Altertums- und Kunstwissenschaften große Faszination auszuüben vermochten. Dabei wurden insbesondere altägyptische Statuen und Reliefs weniger als ästhetische Repräsentationen, sondern als mimetisch-typologische

The paper explores the significance of rhetorical argumentation in Petr Kropotkin's treatise Mutual Aid. A Factor of Evolution (1902). It argues that Kropotkin's work is steeped in the tradition of a rhetoric of science that is profoundly Darwinian and in which various forms of analogic reasoning play a central role. After explaining the epistemic function of the metaphors "struggle for existence"

Ever since Thomas Kuhn's influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), textbooks have suffered a bad reputation. They have been accused of distorting-at times purportedly-history and of feeding students with an unacceptably simplified and optimistic view of science. This attitude started to change only in recent times. With the increase of attention paid not only to how theories are conceived

In this paper we consider the prehistory of quantum gravity (1916-1930) from two perspectives. First, we investigate how this research field constituted itself and we propose for the first time a red thread to trace its evolution in this earliest period. Second, we focus on a case study: the earliest work of Léon Rosenfeld. In 1927 he tried to merge wave mechanics with general relativity in the context

This paper is a preliminary exploration of the connections between the statistical style of reasoning and the research practices of statistical mechanics in the early period of the long quantum revolution. It suggests that before 1925 the instantiations of the statistical style in physics went through two phases. The first phase consisted of the formulation of the Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics on the

At the height of the Cold War, in the 1950s, the process of parallel invention of masers and lasers took place on the opposing sides of the Iron Curtain. While the American part of the story has been investigated by historians in much penetrating detail, comparable Soviet developments were described more superficially. This study aims at, to some extent, repairing this discrepancy by analyzing the

Previous research in the history of physics has led us to believe that Yoshio Nishina (1890-1851) virtually single-handedly imported quantum physics into Japan. However, there are first-hand accounts that Yoshikatsu Sugiura (1895-1960) also played an important role. Sugiura made his name in quantum chemistry with his contribution to the Heitler-London theory of the chemical bond. Yet, historians of

Is there a future for the history of science? And if there is, what will it look like? These questions stood at the outset of the last special issue of Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, published in December 2018 under the auspices of the previous editorship. Many people accepted the challenge and formulated answers from their particular perspectives. One of the topics that repeatedly came up,

Das vorliegende Heft der Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte / History of Science and Humanities markiert gleich in mehrfacher Hinsicht eine Z-sur in der Geschichte dieser Zeitschrift. Zun-chst gibt es ein neues Redaktionsteam. Seit Januar 2019 werden die Berichte von K-rin Nickelsen (Menchen) gemeinsam mit Christian Joas (Kopenhagen), Dominik Knaupp (Menchen) sowie Fabian Kr-mer (Menchen) herausgegeben

In recent years, cultural studies and cultural theory have experienced a new wave of ecological thought. Despite the engagement with the Anthropocene the history of ecology and the environmental sciences has remained somewhat of a puzzle. This goes especially for the 20th century, a period when the sciences of the environment came to matter on a broader scale. Why do we actually know so little about

The new field of the history of knowledge is often presented as a mere expansion of the history of science. We argue that it has a greater ambition. The re‐definition of the historiographical domain of the history of knowledge urges us to ask new questions about the boundaries, hierarchies, and mutual constitution of different types of knowledge as well as the role and assessment of failure and ignorance

This essay investigates the origins and assesses the advantages and disadvantages of the new field known as Wissensgeschichte from the perspective of an American intellectual historian. It argues that while some historians of science may be ready to embrace a new identity as historians of knowledge, this terminology remains baggy and invites facile applications of Foucauldian theory. The essay concludes

Mit ihrem Leitbild der „deutschen Frau“ war die Frauenheilkunde in die Ideologie des Nationalsozialismus in ganz besonderer Weise verstrickt. Vor diesem Hintergrund zielt das Erkenntnisinteresse des vorliegenden Beitrags auf Arten und Weisen, mit denen der gesamtdeutsche Fachdiskurs der Gynäkologie und Geburtshilfe nach 1945 unter Maßgaben der Entnazifizierungspolitik und unter Einfluss der Zensurbehörden

This essay presents analogies between the development of historical writing and of physical science during the early modern period. Its necessarily spotty coverage runs from the mid sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth. The analogies include arising from practical concerns; preferring material documents and experimental inquiries over texts; making use of mathematical auxiliary sciences;

The scope and mission of the history of science have been constant objects of reflection and debate within the profession. Recently, Lorraine Daston has called for a shift of focus: from the history of science to the history of knowledge. Such a move is an attempt at broadening the field and ridding it of the contradictions deriving from its modernist myth of origin and principle of demarcation. Taking

This paper explores the kind of knowledge that partisans profess in order to contribute to our studies of what has usually been thought of as the “denial of science.” Building on the research of Robert Proctor, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, I show that the tobacco interests and climate science skeptics usually described as “doubt mongers” also purveyed forms of certainty and rested their arguments

Although I remain sympathetic to the narrative behind the notion of “History of Knowledge,” I argue against redrawing the disciplinary boundaries around “knowledge,” as opposed to retaining the term “science.” This is not because I think there is no place for a “history of knowledge,” and not because I am concerned that such a redrawing of disciplinary boundaries would open the floodgates of “anything

Africa in the View of the Academic World of the GDR: An Overview of the History of African Ethnography. Ethnography – also referred to as ethnology by the GDR – was a “minor subject” in which typical big science problems such as mass‐study and large‐scale research played no role. It was therefore not the focus of science policy interventions by the state and/or its ruling party. Nevertheless, ethnographic

Viennese Brain Research and the Formation of Austrian Positivism. In this paper, I want to argue that the Vienna School of Medicine and especially the Viennese Brain Anatomy had an impact on the formation of the Austrian positivism. I argue that Carl von Rokitansky's (1804–1878) doctrine that psychological phenomena must be translated into anatomical facts and Theodor Meynert's (1833–1892) theory of

Spontaneous Histories, Spontaneous Philosophies: Concepts of Science in Academic Training. Science studies and history of science usually focus on exploring scientific research activities. Academic training does not garner much attention by contrast. However, what scientists think and do in the course of research activities is not completely independent of what they once have learned. I suggest that

Cerebral Protuberances. Towards a History of Intellectual Work. In this paper, I unfold the implications of Warburg's notion of “cerebral protuberance” (German: “Gehirnhirnausstülpung”) for a historical epistemology of intellectual work and material imagination. Attention to the penultimate character of conceptual language, I argue, allows for an analysis of unconscious aspects in the process of knowledge

The Squaring of the Bermuda Triangle. In the course of the great success of theory programs and the funding of young researchers within media studies and the history of science over the past 15 years, a generation of scholars has emerged (including the authors of this article) who have been genuinely trained in approaching interdisciplinary problems and objects. However, in view of a recently increasing

Fields for Innovative Future Research in History of Science – A Historian of Technology's Perspective. The observations at hand present a historian of technology's perspective and sketch three fields for innovative future research: (past) ‘futures’ and future scenarios in themselves; the challenges as imposed by recent developments in science, technology, and society (e.g. digitization, climate change);

Four Remarks Concerning “the Situation of the History of Science in Germany”. The following remarks contain four brief reflections, based on my experience in teaching the history of science: (1) on the limitations of any national perspective on the history of science, (2) on the subject and task of the history of science, (3) on the power and weakness of knowledge as topics for the history of science

And at the End They Took Care of the Science Museum… This is the story of history of science, and why in the twenty‐first century it ended up curating the legacy of science, as we knew it. Once upon a time, history of science lived quietly and studious next to the Natural and the Medical Sciences and their wax models, their herbaria, the geological collections, and all the scientific instruments that

Views on History of Science II. This essay makes a claim for a new political awareness in the history of science, which goes beyond the practical turn that shaped the field in the last 25 years. This revision should take into consideration both new hostile political circumstances and new conditions for academic publishing after the digital revolution.

History of Science in History. This position paper discusses the position of history of science within the field of history and presents arguments for maintaining and expanding that position in future.

Literature and Madness. The Art of Posing a Problem. Literary studies and the history of science can collaborate in their ways of posing a problem, which is an art in itself. The article points to a problem that is posed by Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. What is the nexus between literature and madness and what makes their difference?

“Remembering the 60s”. On Media Science Studies of Wishful Thinking. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, Philip K. Dick asked in 1968. Half a century later, Werner Herzog echoed this question with his documentary on Reveries of the Connected World. The article outlines some of the conclusions for the history of science that can be drawn from this shift from androids to the Internet.

Citizen Science in the Empire. The System Place “Wertlose Einsendungen aus der Bevölkerung” (Worthless Entries from the Population) in the Archives of the Berlin‐Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Between 1871 and 1946, the Berlin‐Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities maintained a special collection in its archives, which, under the simple name “Entries from the Population”, kept

A Plea for Contrapuntal Work of Reflection in a Niche. This essay traces a still highly influential little ‘Sattelzeit’ in the historiography of science and humanities that occurred more than two decades ago. It expounds some of the problems that have been arising from the disciplinary diffusion of scientific‐historical research agendas and the boom of a history of knowledge. It is sceptical of new

In Search of Lost Culture: From Neuroimaging via Critical Neuroscience to Cultural Neuroscience – and back to Critique. The availability of new technologies for visualizing brain activity generated great expectations to identify the centers responsible for human action and behavior and to “reduce” all mental processes to neuronal states. Some scientists even called society to adapt to the new insights

Human Brain Project: Ethics Management or Proceduralization of Reflexivity? Everywhere, the reflexivity and responsibility of research and innovation is called for – the neurosciences being no exception. Undesirable side effects of scientific‐technical developments should be recognized early on and opportunities for participation by non‐scientific actors should be made available. In addition to the

Wasted Chances? The Current Political Debate on DNA Phenotyping and Biogeographical Ancestry Analysis in Criminal Investigation in Germany. This paper discusses diverse understandings of ‘responsible science’ in heated political debates. It takes a current public debate around a German law amendment draft concerning the use of novel forensic genetic techniques, namely DNA‐phenotyping and biogeographical

Wissenschaft mit Unterschieden: Parodie und Paradies in Margaret Cavendishs The Blazing World (1666). Mit ihrer utopischen Erzählung The Blazing World (1666) ist Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, eine der wenigen Autorinnen der Frühen Neuzeit, die sich sowohl im Feld der Literatur als auch der Naturphilosophie betätigten. Auf den ersten Blick scheint die Welt jenseits des Nordpols, in die die

Justinus Kerner's Reflections on Science. Justinus Kerner (1786–1862) was a physician as well as a poet. In his research, as well as his profession, he tried to reconcile empirical observation with dreams, mesmerism, and the unconscious. Like the romantic naturalists of his time, Kerner rejected the exclusive preoccupation with rational science as a restriction to epistemology, which he wanted to complement

Hybride der Romantik: Frankenstein, Olimpia und das künstliche Leben. Dieser Beitrag untersucht Vorstellungen über die Möglichkeit der Erzeugung künstlicher Lebewesen in der Zeit der Romantik und die damit verbundenen Ängste am Beispiel zweier fiktionaler Texte: Mary Shelleys Frankenstein und Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmanns Sandmann. Dr. Franksteins Monster und Dr. Spalanzanis Automat verkörpern -

Scientization of the Social - Politization of Knowledge? On a Narrative of the History of the Twentieth Century. The spread of scientific methods and expert cultures in the social, political and economic fields represents a key aspect of twentieth century history. In German-speaking historiography, the "scientization of the social" (Lutz Raphael) has advanced to an influential concept for research

Arnold Clapmarius' 'Traineeship in politics'. Practical Experience and the Semblance of Practical Experience as a Qualification in the Field of Political Science around the Year 1600. In 1600, Arnold Clapmarius (1574-1604) was appointed the first professor for Public Law and Political Science in the Holy Roman Empire by the University of Altdorf (Nürnberg). He received this professorship though he

Neutron Therapy: An Experimental System in Radiooncology. The history of the use of neutrons in radiotherapy will be revisited by focusing on the ideas, theories and experiments that led to first clinical studies. For addressing epistemological questions regarding biological effects of fast neutrons, the notion of an "experimental system" is employed and its evolution over time discussed. Taking up