Geschichte ohne Kausalität. Abgrenzungsstrategien gegen die Wissenschaftssoziologie in zeitgenössischen Ansätzen historischer Epistemologie

History Without Causality. How Contemporary Historical Epistemology Demarcates Itself From the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Contemporary proponents of historical epistemology often try to delimit their enterprise by demarcating it from the sociology of scientific knowledge and other sociologically oriented approaches in the history of science. Their criticism is directed against the use of causal explanations which are deemed to invite reductionism and lead to a totalizing perspective on science. In the present article I want to analyse this line of criticism in what I consider are two paradigmatic works of contemporary historical epistemology: Lorraine Daston's und Peter Galison's Objectivity and Hans‐Jörg Rheinberger's Toward a History of Epistemic Things. I first present their arguments against the sociological and causal analysis of scientific knowledge and practice and then try to defend sociological work in the history of science against their charges. I will, however, not do so by defending causal explanations directly. Rather, I will show that the arguments against sociological analysis put forward in contemporary historical epistemology, as well as historical epistemology's own models of historical explanation and narration, bear problematic consequences. I argue that Daston, Galison and Rheinberger fail to create productive resonances between macro‐ and microhistorical perspectives, that they reproduce an internalist picture of scientific knowledge, and finally that Rheinberger's attempt to deconstruct the dichotomy between subject and object leads him to neglect questions about the political dimension of scientific research.     

Wissens‐ und Wissenschaftstransfer – Einführende Bemerkungen

Knowledge and science transfer – introductory remarks. The article presents introductory remarks on the historical study of knowledge and science transfer. Discussion focuses initially on the reasons for speaking of knowledge transfer and not only about science transfer, and the relations of this topic to current research in general history on cultural transfer. Multiple levels of knowledge / science transfer are then discussed, specifically: (1) transfer by means of migration or other movement of people across geographic boundaries; (2) scientific changes related to the transfer of objects (such as plant specimens or instruments) across continents or disciplines; (3) knowledge or science transfer in practical contexts. Addressed throughout is the problematic character of the concept of transfer itself. The author suggests that users of this concept often presuppose a static conception of scientific and cultural contents being more or less successfully transferred; more interesting, however, are the changes in science and culture conditioned or caused by the migration of individuals as well as the transfer of culture by other means.     

Limits of Historical and Scientific Knowledge

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that subtle and essential uncertainties in language determine the limits of science and history, and thereby define the boundaries of research in the history of science. Historical research, in the strict sense of history as opposed to prehistory, begins with the examination of written records. There is a host of problems in the interpretation of the historical record, but underlying all of these is the simply stated yet complex question of the meaning of words in historical documents. Since this is where the practice of history begins, this problem delimits the boundaries of historical knowledge. In this paper, I will examine structural ambiguities in the meaning of words, explain how they arise, and provide independent evidence for the validity of the analysis.     

Limits of historical and scientific knowledge

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that subtle and essential uncertainties in language determine the limits of science and history, and thereby define the boundaries of research in the history of science. Historical research, in the strict sense of history as opposed to prehistory, begins with the examination of written records. There is a host of problems in the interpretation of the historical record, but underlying all of these is the simply stated yet complex question of the meaning of words in historical documents. Since this is where the practice of history begins, this problem delimits the boundaries of historical knowledge. In this paper, I will examine structural ambiguities in the meaning of words, explain how they arise, and provide independent evidence for the validity of the analysis.     

Archaeology of Northeast Thailand in Relation to the Pre-Khmer and Khmer Historical Records

An earlier study of how the archaeological data from the Khmer period in northeast Thailand confirm and augment the information from historical texts is expanded into an examination of the early historic pre-Khmer and the post-Khmer periods. For these, both the historical and the archaeological data are more limited and problematic. The archaeological record confirms generally the changes associated with the transition from prehistory to history but raises questions about the sources of external influence and the types of political and economic organization which characterized northeast Thailand societies. More robust archaeological data and more precise chronological control will be necessary to test historical models of pre-Angkorian and post-Angkorian political development.     

Zytoarchitektonik und Revolution ‐ Lenins Gehirn als Raum und Objekt

The investigation of Lenin's brain by the German neurobiologist Oskar Vogt from Berlin and his Russian collaborators in Moscow is one of the most exciting and simultaneously oddest chapters in the history of medicine. With the bizarre claim to be able to detect the material substrate of genius it provoked as much unrealistic expectations in the public as strong criticism by the scientific community of brain researchers. The present paper deals in a brief survey with the history of collecting and measuring the brains of famous persons in general and particularly with the historical, political and social circumstances of the performed investigation of Lenin's brain. In this connection the epistemological and technical prereqisites of architectonical brain research and its means of the topographical representation of complex histo‐anatomical and physiological differences in the brain cortex are shortly discussed. The opening of Russian archives after the socio‐economic turn of the year 1991 brought up new background facts in Lenin's pathobiography; together with the sources from German archives a rather extensive reconstruction of the historical events between Lenin's death in 1924 and the final report of the Moscow Brain Research Institute (Institute Mozga) to the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviki) in 1936 is possible now.     

当代中国史研究中的文献史料问题

当代中国史研究需要搜集、整理、考证和利用文献史料。搜集史料要求“全”,整理史料要求“实”,考证史料要求“真”,利用史料要求“准”,这些直接关系到所出研究成果的科学水平和学术质量。当代中国史文献史料类型多种,既包括有关的文件和档案、文集和文稿、报纸和新闻稿、定期刊物、纪实和回忆、资料汇编,又涉及地方史志、史学史料、国外资料、批判研究资料。就此文献史料进行马克思主义的历史考察和具体分析,可加深对其真实性、政治性和现实性的认识。建国后,学术界十分重视当代中国史文献史料工作:搜集相当广泛,整理比较系统,考证多有创新,利用成效显著。倘能对此丰富实践继续给予理论上的总结,无论对于当代中国史文献史料学的学科建设,乃至当代中国史研究的深入和发展,都具有一定的理论意义和实践价值。     

Die Französische Revolution im Spiegelbild. Die Reaktion der deutschen Ärzte auf die Revolution und das Revolutionieren

The German physicans and medical scientists reacted to the French Revolution in several ways, if you judge only from the medical literature:

• 1 At the beginning of the French Revolution, the scientist answered with still silence, whereas the young intellectual generation was filled with enthusiasm. But after the battle of Valmy (1792) this enthusiasm vanished and they resigned to execute an equal revolution in Germany.
• 2 When, in the middle of the 1790s, scientists gave commentaries on revolutionary acts, they despised the revolution itself. This could only destroy the old – and even better – order. They argued that you can have recourse to science to avoid the political and socially deranged situation.
• 3 This rejection against the political revolution was combined with a rejection against the influences of natural philosophy on medicine. Schelling's philosophy plays the role as an scientific revolution with all negative aspects like the political one. In this sense, the science in the old scientific manner has to be an accepted refuge.
• 4 But in this retreat they developed ideas of German national science to conteract on the French influences. The consciousness of nationalism was supported by the scientists of romantic movements.
• 5 The following degree is characterized by a mental leap. Now, they argued, it will never be necessary to revolutionize the medicine: in science all the ideals of French Revolution are realized – freedom, equality and fraternity.
• 6 Consequently, only in a formal sense did they respond to the French Revolution and so they avoided recognizing, that science is influenced politically and also science itself exercises on in a political way.

     

Georges Canguilhem als Medizinhistoriker

The work of the French philosopher Georges Canguilhem is introduced here. Medical historiography is not the ultimate aim of Canguilhems work, but rather a tool for the analysis ef epistemological questions. These questions are to be investigated, as well as the art of medical history that Canguilhem considers to be helpful for such investigations. French ?epistemology”?, a direction of philosophy of science to which Canguilhem belongs, is discussed first. Canguilhem's epistomology does not aim at a rational reconstruction of decontextualized scientific results, but at an historical reconstruction of science. It analyses the functioning of scientific concepts in relation of their historical context. The main themes of Canguilhems work (biological normality, scientific ideology and history of physiology) are summarized in a second part of this study. Finally we investigate the importance of Canguilhem for modern research in history of medicine.     

Getting started: objectives and justifications in the history of neurology

Contemporary historiographical ideas have the potential to enrich the history written by practicing neurologists. Neurology is a science, and historians of neurology might profit from considering the experiences of historians of other sciences. An explicit consideration of the range of possible objectives, justifications, sources and methods of historical research may open new and exciting avenues of inquiry. Any plausible answer to the question, "What does a historian do when he or she sits down to write history" helps an historian to develop the structure of his or her project. The selection of sources for a historical study is improved, if also expanded, by understanding its aims.     

Getting Started: Objectives and Justifications in the History of Neurology

Contemporary historiographical ideas have the potential to enrich the history written by practicing neurologists. Neurology is a science, and historians of neurology might profit from considering the experiences of historians of other sciences. An explicit consideration of the range of possible objectives, justifications, sources and methods of historical research may open new and exciting avenues of inquiry. Any plausible answer to the question, “What does a historian do when he or she sits down to write history” helps an historian to develop the structure of his or her project. The selection of sources for a historical study is improved, if also expanded, by understanding its aims.     

Archaeology, Myth-History and the Tyranny of the Text: Chaldike, Torone and Thucydides

By focusing on Thucydides'Chalkidic Torone' against the backdrop of modern historians' neglect of archaeological evidence, this paper highlights not only another case of 'history being written by the winners,' but the persistent problem of privileging written documents over archaeological material in Aegean prehistory and classical archaeology. The practice of using literary historical records as direct historic analogues continues to be one of the methodological cornerstones of textual history. Such a neglect of archaeological evidence by historians of early Greece, South Italy and Sicily contributes to the current schism between prehistory and history. Even when the material record is used in historical inquiry, it is in a framework already defined or informed by written sources. By adopting a more integrated approach, this paper echoes Kent Lightfoot's (1995) perspective that archaeology is poised to play a pivotal role in the reconfiguration of historical studies.     

何炳松的相对主义史学思想辨证

何炳松指出历史学与自然科学在研究方法、研究目的和研究对象上均有很大不同,由此得出历史学是一门主观推理的学问,历史学不必像自然科学那样寻求历史发展的因果规律,历史认识会随时代的变化而变化,体现了历史相对主义的思想特征。另一方面,他指出,历史学与自然科学都旨在求真,历史学为了求得历史真相,必须在充分搜集史料的基础上,对史料进行科学的考订和分析,然后用科学的方法进行编撰,这又是一种实证史学的方法论。因此,简单将他定位为中国现代相对主义史学家是片面的。     

Wissenschaft im Gehäuse: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil institutionengeschichtlicher Perspektiven

Research is realized in social and cultural context, it is established in institutions, as far as different forms and conditions of practice are concerned. In this article some German examples demonstrate how flexible and varied the institutions of research can be during the course of history of science. The first part deals with historically grown, yet chronologically overlapping institutions of research: beginning with the lonely scholar, going on to hierarchally organized big science and ending up with virtual institutions. In the second part, at the intersection of political‐social administration and styles of scientific thought terms like German Realpolitik, science in context, and science policy are discussed within the modernization process.     

Überlegungen zur Verortung der Nanotechnologie in einem wissenschafts‐ und technikgeschichtlichen Kontinuum

Reflections about an embedding of nanotechnology in a continuum of the history of science and technology. Nanotechnology is not a completely new technology, we can rather understand it as a continuation and extension of chemical technology. Along this line, it is not only problematic to characterize nanotechnology as a new ‘key technology’ but also the definition of nanotechnology as looking at a particular causality between properties and dimensions of materials seems hardly new. For embedding nanotechnology in such a greater historical context, the development of colloid chemistry at the beginning of the 20^th century by Richard Zsigmondy and Wolfgang Ostwald is shown as an important reference point. Modern theories of supramolecular chemistry as those constituted by Jean‐Marie Lehn and others refer to this line of research in colloid chemistry and lead currently to scientific foundations of some nanotechnological fields. The historical embedding of nanotechnology can hence be used as a contribution for a more realistic evaluation of the technological possibilities as well as for a critical estimation of technological visions.     

The search for historical experience

In the first part of my paper I will try to reconstruct a series of attempts at dialogue between history and the social sciences made by historians connected with the “Annales” (Marc Bloch, Ernest Labrousse, Giovanni Levi, Bernard Lepetit). What these attempts have in common is the idea that in history, as in the natural sciences, it is to some extent possible to carry out forms of experimentation on the sources, and that the inclusion of history among the human sciences, and even the scientific future of the discipline itself, ultimately depend on the adoption of this method. In the second part I will discuss the relationship that links historical experimentation with lived experience, and I will conclude by discussing the possible meaning of the idea of experimenting with the sources of history.     

"文革史学"初探--以中国近代史研究为例

“文革史学”是指1966-1976年“文化大革命”期间中国“史学”的发展和演变的历史,它既是中国史学史、也是“文革”研究的重要组成部分。“文革史学”是动乱年代政治运动的特殊产物,是中国史学史上极为黑暗的一页,给中国史学蒙上了极大耻辱。它截断了中国史学的优良传统,并离群索居,与不断前进的世界史学背道而驰;中国史学成了政治史学、影射史学的代名词,失去了作为一门科学的独立性与尊严。     

The Transition to History in Southeast Asia: An Introduction

Studies of the transition from prehistory to history in Southeast Asia have traditionally relied primarily on documentary sources, which tend to emphasize foreign influences, rather than on the archaeological record, which suggests a series of indigenous developments. The papers in this journal issue and the next discuss strategies for using both documentary and archaeological evidence to study the transition to history and the emergence of early states in the region. These papers investigate how political units were structured and integrated in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and South China, and illustrate how historical and archaeological data can cross-check each other to inform on Southeast Asian sociopolitical and economic developments during the early historic period.     

英国政治现代化的历程及特点--读阎照祥关于英国政治制度史的几本论著

阎照祥的《英国政党政治史》、《英国政治制度史》和《英国贵族史》构成诠释英国政治现代化的合力体系与传导体系,体现了作者独特的文本解释技术和知识话语生产体系,即基于大史学的治史观念,寻找历史学、心理学与社会学的最佳结合点,并在发挥学科整合群集优势的基础上运用心理一行为流派、结构一功能流派和比较一综合流派的操作范式,对英国政治现代化多元结构的状态、各政治单元的功能及其彼此的关系进行纵向历时维与横向共时维的交叉解读。不仅突破了学术界长期存在的“重社会革命而轻社会改革”、“重政治精英而轻特殊群体”、“重阶级斗争而轻政党政治和政治制度”等思维定式,弱化了史学功能的人为化与工具主义倾向,而且在史学的宏观泛化和微观碎化之间寻找到一种相对的平衡,为回归史学的多样性、复杂性和客观性提供了可以遵循的范例。     

Rethinking Performative Methods in the History of Science

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 longer appears to be whether performative methods have a place within history and philosophy of science research, but what their place is, could, or should be; when and how they can and cannot be used. Because although performative methods are seen as an enrichment of the field by many, their growing popularity also raises questions: what new insights and challenges has the increased use of performative methods in the history of science brought us? How has it changed the field? Should performative research methods become a mandatory part of the training of new generations of historians of science? In this special issue, historians and philosophers of science for whom performative methods play an important role in their work reflect on these questions from their own research and teaching practices.