Zukunft Ruhr 2030

Zusammenfassung  Regionale Entwicklungsstrategien werden in der Regel ohne substanzielle Beteiligung der Wirtschaft entwickelt. Das war im Projekt „Zukunft Ruhr 2030“ anders. Hier hat der „Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet“, die Vereinigung gro?er Unternehmen in der Metropolregion Ruhr, Entwicklungsperspektiven für die Region aus Sicht der Wirtschaft entworfen. Sechs führende Unternehmensberatungen haben in Zusammenarbeit mit Experten aus Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft verschiedene Themenfelder untersucht, eine Vision entwickelt und daraus eine Entwicklungsstrategie für die kommenden Jahre abgeleitet.     

Die sprachliche Zukunft Europas

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Die sprachliche Zukunft Europas     

Das Förderprofil der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft 1949 bis 1969

The DFG, short for ‘Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft’ (German Research Foundation), was founded in 1920 and re‐founded after the 2. World War in 1949. This article concentrates on the activities of the DFG in the period between 1949 and the end of the sixties and on the two major programmes (the so‐called ‘Individual Grants Programme’ and the so‐called ‘Priority Programme’) because until now it has not been known, how many — and more importantly — which studies in which disciplines had been financed by the DFG. All together almost 54.000 studies (36.500 in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ and 17.400 in the ‘Priority Programmes’) were accomplished with the support of the DFG, whereas — in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ — less than 3.000 proposals were declined (there are no figures for the ‘Priority Programmes’). Till the end of the seventies the whole amount of money allocated for the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ was not fixed for the different disciplines in advance. Consequently every proposal submitted in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ had to compete against all others for the overall allocated funds. Who — in other words: which of the disciplines — won this competition? The analysis shows a clear result. With regard to both, the number of successful proposals and the money received, the winner was medical science (with 23 percent of all successful proposals in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’). Chemistry finished second with 15 percent and then biology a distant third (9 percent), followed by physics (8 percent) and agronomy (8 percent). Coming to the ‘Priority Programmes’, which were instituted in the middle of the 1950s, it must first be stated that here the topic is fixed in advance. The broad issue of investigation is devised by the DFG itself or — to be more precise — by the Senate of the DFG. In contrast to the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ the ‘Priority Programme’ can therefore be seen as an important instrument of the politics of research support. This leads to the following question: Which programmes did the DFG establish between 1954 and 1969? In other words: Which research topics or fields were, in the view of the DFG, the most important ones? The database again shows a clear result. Almost 50 percent of the money distributed overall and more than 50 percent of all programmes were benefitted to natural science, another fifth part to engineering technology (which didn't play an important role in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’). Medical science which was the most successful discipline in the ‘Individual Grants Programme’ received 16 percent of the funds. With regard to — first — the number of successful proposals within a Programme, — second — to the money received and — third — to the duration there were three frontrunner programmes: nourishment research, research on water and hydraulic engineering, and aeronautical research. And the humanities? The DFG didn't grant much relief giving only 7 percent to these disciplines.     

Das Werden des Kosmos Von der Erfahrung der zeitlichen Dimension astronomischer Objekte im 18. Jahrhundert

The Permanent ‘Becoming’ of the Cosmos: On Experiencing the Time Dimension of Astronomical Entities in the 18th Century. - This paper deals with two of the initial stages through which the dimension of time, in the sense of an irreversible development, found its way into astronomical-cosmological thinking. The one resulted from the first consequental application of Newtonian principles and laws to cosmic entities outside of our solar system found in the General Natural History or Theory of the Heavens of Immanuel Kant (1755): Endeavoring to explain through natural causes first the peculiarities of the solar system, no longer naturally explainable through the celestial mechanics of Isaac Newton (such as the common orbital plane and rotational direction of all the members of the solar system and the distribution of the masses) - which, however, had been deducible in Johannes Keplers Weltharmonik -, and endeavoring secondly to explain above all the beginning of the inertial movement of all discrete heavenly bodies - which, however, could have been derived from René Descartes's vortex theory - without using arbitrary acts of God as Newton had done, Kant had to introduce an initial state in which matter in the form of atoms was equally and almost homogeneously distributed over the whole space (similar to the permanent state in Descartes's theory). Thereupon, according to Kant, the initial movements of the slowly growing masses resulted from the effect of gravitational forces. The parameters within the solar system which had to be explained, could then be easily deduced from the process of mass concentration at different points and from the resulting vortex movements. - The other initial stage is found in the classification of ‘nebulae’ by William Herschel who introduced the historical time factor, in the above-mentioned sense, as a principle of order in addition to the outward shape, which had become common for all the different elements in natural history during the second half of the 18th century. Thereupon the different shapes of the nebulae could be interpreted as stages of development from the primordial nebular state to multiple or single stars. (Herschel had not yet considered them to be accumulations of stars for lack of a suitable telescope.) Both initial stages, which arose out of the thinking of the second half of the 18th century, were still premature for astronomy and cosmology; they have only been taken up again since the end of the 19th century as a result of the emergence of astrophysics, which provided the empirical data for the earlier speculations and conclusions from analogy.     

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.     

Das Wissen der Schulden. Recht,Kulturtechnik und Alltagserfahrung im liberalen Kapitalismus

The Knowledge of Debt: Law, Media Technique, and Everyday Experience in Liberal Capitalism. Performing an object such as ‘the economy’ hinges on practices of formatting knowledge. The article proposes to look at such instituting moments in connection with social conflicts over the legitimate rules of exchange. This is exemplified by way of recounting the story of the codification of Swiss bankruptcy law in 1889. In order to homogenize the legal procedures of debt collection and bankruptcy, two subject categories were instituted: ‘merchants’ and ‘non-merchants’. These different categories were thought to account for the diverging temporalities and spaces of credit exchange in everyday economic life. The introduction of the commercial register, a media-technical apparatus, enabled a formal distinction between ‘merchants’ and ‘non-merchants’. However, this boundary was contested and proved to be porose.     

Präzision versus Exaktheit: Konfligierende Ideale der angewandten mathematischen Forschung: Das Beispiel der Tragflügeltheorie

It is often supposed that mathematical argument provides a model of precision for the sciences. In contrast to this view, the present article proposes to distinguish between mathematical exactness as a (historically variable) ideal regulating the inner standards of mathematical argumentation and precision as a (historically variable) norm governing the relation between products of mathematical reasoning in scientific contexts and empirical or practical data. By discussing a major achievement in the mathematization of flight, Ludwig Prandtl's lifting line theory of wings, it is shown that exact reasoning does not necessarily lead to scientific precision, and that the achievement of precision may even require to loosen existing standards of exactness. It is argued that the main contribution of mathematical argument to generating precision in science lies in its capacity to provide sophisticated tools for the production of data, rather than in its adherence to an ideal of exactness.     

Das andere Zuhause

Cities are increasingly addressing high-skilled migrants. Our contribution examines the factors that shape how this group relates to places and why cities provide different conditions for this. We draw on empirical data from an explorative case study with highly qualified migrants in the university city of Münster. First, we look at the place ties at the new place of residence and thereby focus on their local social networks and their sense of belonging. Second, we turn to the place-specific characteristics, in particular the role of “connections” and “urban opportunity structures”. Based on our findings we discuss how urban policy-making may influence the place attachment of this desired group.