Von der „Natur der Sache”︁ zur Geschichte der Sprache Der Übergang von der Sprachforschung zur Sprachwissenschaft zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts

From the “nature of things” to the history of language: The transition from the study of language to historico-comparative linguistics. This brief essay deals with a somewhat problematic phase in the history of linguistics and tries to investigate the process by which language could be understood as a historical phenomenon with a history of its own. This new understanding of language turned out to be the starting condition for a new and very prolific way in the study of language. The conjecture is that this is due to certain alterations in the semantic field of some important notions relating to language and its study. The process of alteration began by the end of the eighteenth century with conceptual achievements which could adequately be termed as temporalization of aspects of language and the notions related to these aspects. In connection with the so called discovery of the Sanskrit language and the gradual reception of its grammatical structure, looking upon language as an organic entity with autonomous and internal structures of developpement became possible after the German romantic language philosophy had developped a strictly abstract concept of language as a notion of form. This essentially metaphorical mode of speaking nevertheless inaugurated that languages were concieved of as having their own history totally independent of their speakers. With language as an autonomous object the study of language rapidly became the science of language.     

Das Problem der “entscheidenden Experimente”

In this historical essay an attempt is made to discuss the problem of decisive experiments both from the point of view of History of Science and of Philosophy of Science. The first part deals with Francis Bacon's idea of instantiae crucis and with the use of the term experimentum crucis mainly in optics. With respect to the experimental confirmation of Maxwell's electrodynamics the Duhem-Quine Thesis is discussed. Duhem had argued that not a single hypothesis but only a complete theory is examined by experiment. So a single experiment neither can prove nor can disprove a single hypothesis. With regard to Bucherer's and Neumann's data concerning the velocity-dependence of the electron's mass the question of the certainty of conclusions arising from experimental tests is treated. In the last parts the really historical problem of the decisive experiments is considered, namely the gap between the context of design of an experiment and the context of evaluation of an experiment in retrospect. The examples here are the Michelson-Morley experiment, the Franck-Hertz experiment, and the Compton-Effect. In the conclusion parity violation is discussed. Perhaps due to the possibility of a single alternative in theory and an unambiguous result of the experiment this test really was crucial. In general, however, the experimentum crucis will prove to be a very seldom event.     

„Siege der Freiheit,welche die Menschen durch die Erforschung des Grundes der Dinge errangen”︁ Wandlungen im politischen Selbstverständnis deutscher Naturwissenschaftler des 19. Jahrhunderts

“Victories of Freedom which Humans Achieved by Research in the Foundation of Things”. - This article analyzes the political self-conception of leading representatives of the natural sciences in 19th century Germany. It is argued that the main feature of this self-conception which remained constant over the time consisted in a strong “rationalization-imperative”, i.e. the postulate that state and society have to be reshaped on the basis of natural science. On the other hand, this imperative was put forward in very different forms and with different political content: it shifted from revolutionary aspirations in the period of 1848 to moderate and sometimes even reactionary positions in the last decades of the century.     

„Und setzet eure Worte nicht auf Schrauben”︁ Medizinische Semiotik vom Ende des 18. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts - Gegenstand und Forschung

There is no doubt that medical semiotics are having a revival at the moment. Different aspects of yesterday's and today's interest in semiotics and in the historical interpretation of signs of disease in the context of theory and history of medicine can be illuminated: their deciphering as the history of the sign in medicine by historic science, their overestimation by philosophy during the Age of Enlightenment, their reduction to a phenomenology of medicine and natural science during the first half of the 19th century and their transformation to medical diagnostics since the middle of the 19th century and recently even their functionalization as methodical instrument within the history of science. The following will show the change in meaning of medical semiotics. Modern development and especially the transition to medicine, based on natural science, will be emphasized.     

„… daß Sie Ihre Tätigkeit einstellen müssen”︁: Die Entlassung Sergej Tschachotins aus dem Heidelberger Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut 1933

“…that you must have to stop working here.” How Sergej Chakhotin was forced to leave the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute at Heidelberg in 1933. - In this essay the author presents some basically unpublished material according to the dismissal of the Russian natural scientist Sergej Chakhotin, a former assistant of I. P. Pavlov. Chakhotin, who got a sholarship granted by an American institution, worked since 1930 at the newly established Kaiser Wilhelm Institute at Heidelberg, as a scientist. Moreover, he practically engaged himself in the political struggle of the German Social Democrats against Nazism and, in 1932, created the at that time well-known symbol of the Three Arrows. But he was - being a Soviet citizen - a guest in Germany. His political activity was the very reason for his discharge in April, 1933, and even the engagement of some prominent academic collegues was not able to stop the administration measure. So Chakhotin became a political refugee like some of his German collegues.     

„Und nur die Zukunft wird Klarheit bringen!”︁Der Fall des Biomediziners Jacques Benveniste aus dem Jahr 1988 im Blickfeld der wissenschaftlichen Publikationsorgane und der Laienpresse

Scientific disputes on the objectivity of research results are an integral part of the collective production of knowledge. One motivation to study cases of scientific controversy is the attempt to discover general patterns in the behaviour of participants and institutions involved in such controversies. Yet, for there to be a controversy, one must assume an important amount of social interaction, so much so that it renders it an essentially social phenomenon, which is accessible to historical study. Cases of obvious scientific fraud, in addition, are neither clear‐cut nor rare and the mere accusation of scientists by their peers frequently constitutes considerable examples of scientific debate. Together with this, it is often assumed that publication organs play a dominant role in directing the lines of scientific controversy, but their institutional significance and the task of individual editors remain widely unexplored. The present article studies the prominent Nature affair of the Parisian biomedical scientist Jacques Benveniste, both, from a perspective on scientific fraud and on the beginning and closure of scientific disputes. One of the most remarkable features of Benveniste's antibody dilution experiments was that they stroke at the foundations of modern physical and biomedical sciences. Could recent history of science actually resolve the case of the so‐called ‘memory of water’ phenomenon?     

Zur Pluralisierung im Luthertum des 17. Jahrhunderts und ihrer Bedeutung für die Deutungen von ‚Natur’︁

Building on methodological considerations in cultural history and historical anthropology, the following contribution proceeds from the concept of ?nature’? rather than from ?natural science’?, with the former understood here as the object of culturally determined projections, values and practices. This ?constructive’?, practice‐oriented concept of nature exposes perceptions of and attitudes towards nature that, owing to the usual reduction of nature to natural science, would otherwise have remained hidden, but which may well be essential to its constitution. To a certain extent, the term ?nature’? continues the terminological extension from ?natural science’? to ?natural philosophy’?, but as a heuristic device it more strongly implies the significance of culturally mediated practices and dynamics. The essay raises the following questions: Which religious conceptions entered into which attitudes towards nature and which religious expectations and interpretive matrices were the motivating forces behind which studies of nature? The figures within seventeenth‐century Lutheranism who shaped and promoted nature‐oriented attitudes and practices were not the ?orthodox’? scholars more strongly tied to academic and controversialist theology, but rather reform‐oriented theologians critical of the church. In the context of the inner differentiation and pluralization of seventeenth‐century Lutheranism, these reform‐oriented groups not only inspired innovate theological projects but also assumed a leading role, along with liked‐minded Christian laypersons, in interpreting and studying ?nature’?.     

Eine naturwissenschaftliche Forschungsbibliothek des 18. Jahrhunderts: Die Bibliothek der ‚Naturforschenden Gesellschaft’︁ zu Jena

The ?Naturforschende Gesellschaft’?, founded in 1793, proved instrumental for the development of science at the University of Jena around 1800. Its library can be considered as one of its most important facilities provided for research and for the education of students. Since this library has been preserved almost without losses, we can ask whether this library served the purpose of a research library in the newly established field of ?science’?. In consequence, the role of scientific societies and the genesis of specialised libraries in the area of science can be investigated in an exemplary case, with implications for the concept of scientific research around 1800.     

“Die wissenschaftliche Ausbildung des Arztes ist eine Culturfrage …”. Über das Verhältnis von Wissenschaftsanspruch,Bildungsprogramm und Praxis der Medizin

The article shows that the elite, nationalistic and imperial mentality of German medicine in the second half of the nineteenth century was closely connected to its aim to be understodd as a natural science. With this in view leading representatives of German medicine propagated a scientific approach to man and nature instead of the traditional values of humanistic education (“Bildung”). One of the most important consequences of the new scientific ideal in medicine — integration in governmental planning, the change in professionel status of doctors, the increasing tendeny to recognize biologistic ideologies — was the loss of the medical ideal of the ars medica, a subject which has not received sufficient thematic attention. This theme is explored in the third part of the article.     

Die ‚Deutsche Physik’︁ in der Selbstkritik des NS‐Ideologen Alfred Bäumler

In 1944, the Nazi ideologist Alfred Baeumler wrote a memorandum for his boss Alfred Rosenberg, Adolf Hitler's commissioner for the political education of party members. In this sensational memo, which did not become known until long after 1945, Baeumler spoke out against the promotion of under‐performing physicists who oust highly‐qualified non‐Nazi scientists at the universities without submitting adequate research results. – Rosenberg's response is not known. What is known, however, is that Baeumler did not manage to change the situation criticised by him.