Von Vielschichtigkeiten und Verschränkungen “Kulturen der Wissenschaft – Wissenschaften in der Kultur”

On Multiple Levels and Linkages: Introduction to the Symposium ‘Cultures of Sciences – the Sciences in Culture’. – The article presents briefly approaches to cultural history and cultural studies that seem potentially useful to or have recntly been applied in historical studies of the sciences. The first section discusses three such approaches: discourse analysis, symbolic artefacts (images and text), and cultures of scientific practice. Each of the three approaches raises issues of its own, and all of them share a common problem characteristic of cultural and social history in general: linking micro and macro levels of analysis. The second section presents three approaches to resolving this dilemma by focusing on specific linkages between cultures of science (or culture in the sciences) and general history: scientific thought and practice as norms for professional behavior, for example in fields of knowledge dominated by women; spaces of knowledge, for example the city; and linkages of cultural, media and economic history in fields such as radio and television.     

Akzentverschiebung - Zur Geschichte der Semitistik und Islamwissenschaft während des ‚Dritten Reichs’︁

Fifty years after World War II the history of Semitic and Islamic Studies during the period of nazism has more or less remained ‘terra incognita’. The article shows that academic activities in this field did not remain uninfluenced by that period. In addition to the banishment of Jewish scholars, a concentration on Arabian Studies took place and scholars contributed for the weltanschauung of the Third Reich. To date not all the outcomes can be presented. Yet, one of them is easily observable: The study of Jewish religion, history and culture became a special branch, it is no longer part of Oriental studies.     

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.     

„… 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.     

“Fabelhafte Dinge”: Arzneimittelnarrative zu Coca und Cocain im 19. Jahrhundert

“Fabulous Things”. Drug Narratives about Coca and Cocaine in the 19th Century. This contribution focuses on the history of Coca leaves and Cocaine in the second half of 19^th century Europe. Even though, to date, no direct link has been established between the activities of the Milano physician Paolo Mantegazza, and the Göttingen chemist Friedrich Wöhler, it is not a mere coincidence that both published their findings in the same year, namely, 1859. Mantegazza authored the first treatise claiming that Coca had psychoactive qualities and touted its broad therapeutic faculties; he claimed that it should be introduced into European pharmacotherapy. In Wöhler's laboratory, cocaine was isolated from leaves by his pupil Alfred Niemann; later, Wilhelm Lossen refined and corrected Niemann's results. Narratives about medicinal drugs often streamline history into a story that starts with multiple meanings and impure matters and ends with well‐defined substances, directed at clear‐cut diseases and symptoms. In the case of Coca, however, the pure substance triggered no such process well into the 1880s, whereas the leaves continued to circulate as an exotic, pluripotent drug whose effects where miraculous and yet difficult to establish.     

“Lachkabinett” und “großes Fest” der Physiker. Walter Grotrians “physikalischer Einakter” zu Max Plancks 80. Geburtstag

“Funhouse” and “Big Celebration” of the Physicists. Walter Grotrian's ?Physical One‐Act Play”? for Max Planck's 80th Birthday. On the occasion of Max Planck's 80th birthday on April 23, 1938, a “big celebration of the physicists” (großes Fest der Physiker) was celebrated at the Harnack‐House in Berlin. The festivities were organized by the German Physical Society. Part of the ceremony was a “Physical One‐act‐play” (Physikalischer Einakter) written by the Potsdam astrophysicist Walter Grotrian. The actors of the humorous play were chief protagonists in the development of quantum theory such as Debye, Sommerfeld and Heisenberg. In this essay we analyze Grotrian's drama against the background of both the festive event and the professional and social setting of the physicists. We argue that below the level of comedy a number of characteristic and normally unexpressed aspects of the epistemic culture of the German physics by the end of the nineteen‐thirties is treated in the play.     

Lebens‐Geschichte ‐ Wissenschafts‐Geschichte. Vom Nutzen der Biographie für Geschichtswissenschaft und Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Biography as a genre of historiography had been dismissed for some years, criticized for being conservative, resistant to theoretical approaches, and hostile to methodological innovations. But the predominance of a historiography devoted to structures, functions, and statistics has, however, led to a renewed interest in the human factor in history. This paper argues that the pluralism of methods and theories which has emerged thereafter reopened the case for an innovative biography, thus facilitating the convergence of general history and the history of science.     

„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?