普鲁士改革时期的浪漫主义:思想与行动

浪漫主义运动发生于18世纪末至19世纪30年代,是一场构建民族精神特质的思想塑造运动。柏林的宗教氛围、普鲁士君主制传统,特别是作为其“血脉”的等级制度在法国革命冲击后依然完好无损地保留,使浪漫主义者得以将普鲁士作为政治实验场开展活动。亚当·米勒和斯泰因是两位改革时期的浪漫派代表,一个从观念出发,将君主制、等级制“浪漫化”,用于指导改革;而另一个则从历史经验出发,在实践中尝试将君主制和等级制做出顺应时代的改变。他们的思想和实践对普鲁士的改革进程产生了重要影响。     

The Influence of Goethe's Farbenlehre on Early Geological Map Colouring: Goethe's Contribution to Christian Keferstein's General Charte von Teutschland (1821)

An analysis of Goethe's Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours), and of its significance for the development of geological mapping, requires an interdisciplinary approach and specific knowledge of both the history of cartography and the science of chromatics. Thus far there has been little research in either of these areas by historians of geological cartography or by students of Goethe's Farbenlehre. In particular, the influence of Goethe's Theory of Colours on early geological map colouring has not yet been explored, and the present article is an attempt to rectify that omission. After an introduction to the emergence of geological maps during the Age of Enlightenment, the discussion focuses on Goethe's substantial contribution to the selection of colours for Christian Keferstein's General Charte von Teutschland (1821). Detailed study of the available textual and cartographical source material reveals that Goethe applied the principles of his Farbenlehre as a basis for the colour chart that Keferstein used to delineate the rock formations shown on his map. The article concludes with a brief consideration of the extent to which the joint Goethe–Keferstein venture influenced the future of geological map design.     

Between Leibniz and Kant: The Political Thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt

Abstract

In his early text, The Limits of State Action, Wilhelm von Humboldt raises the Kantian question of the permissibility and legitimate extent of political and juridical coercion, as his contribution to a debate amongst Kantians launched by the publication in 1785 of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In arguing for a minimal state, concerned exclusively with internal and external security of its members but not at all with their felicity, Humboldt inflects Kantian political thought in the direction of a liberal laissez-faire state, in marked contrast to the strong interventionism that his fellow-Kantian Fichte derived from similar Kantian grounds. The article argues that the underlying conception of the individual retained by Humboldt has markedly Leibnizian traits, namely the notion of freedom as the spontaneous unfolding of a highly personal, monadic developmental trajectory toward perfection, which ought not to be impeded or homogenized by unnecessary state intervention. Humboldt thus represents not only a ‘rightist’ libertarian reading of Kant, but a particular appropriation of significant Leibnizian themes. His combination of these sources is compared with that of other contemporary theorists like Hufeland and Fichte.     

Laplace schreibt nach Gotha

Around 1800, Laplace had an intense correspondence with his colleagues in Gotha on problems in celestial mechanics, especially on the lunar theory. Most of these letters are not included in Roger Hahn's New calendar of the correspondence of P. S. Laplace (1994).     

Auf der Suche nach der Politik in der Wissensproduktion: Plädoyer für eine historisch‐politische Epistemologie

In Search of Politics in Knowledge Production. A Plea for a Historical‐Political Epistemology. Knowledge production has an intrinsic political dimension. Starting from this presupposition, it is argued that the systematic integration of and reflection on the political dimension is necessary for an adequate understanding of historical processes of knowledge production in the sciences. The consecutive plea for a historical‐political epistemology proceeds in two steps: First, it is illustrated that in a number of recent historical science study cases, the political dimension is frequently marginal, or even absent. After a short discussion of previous theoretical concepts to describe the impact of politics for the production of scientific knowledge, an approach is sketched which builds on Hans‐Jörg Rheinberger's historical epistemology and Bruno Latour's symmetrical anthropology. It is argued that in addition to Rheinberger's program to describe epistemic systems, the political dimension is intrinsic to three stages of the process of data production: First to an initial phase which consists in the arrangement socio‐technical configurations to produce new evidence. Here, factors such as the culturally shaped perception and evaluation of ?relevant”? problems, as well as the perception of career resources have to be taken into account. Second, the political dimension is relevant in view of the continuous re‐adjustments of the configuration of epistemic systems, e. g. towards newly available financial, technical, or intellectual resources and ?relevant”? challenges from outside the system. Thirdly, the data produced and represented by epistemic systems – “evidence” – are yet in need of interpretation. This process is in itself imbued with continuously shifting mechanisms of selecting and creating hierarchies amongst the pool of available data.     

Wisse die Wege! Hildegard von Bingen zum 900. Geburtstag

Hildegard is regarded as one of the most important women of the Middle Ages. Her contemporaries from all over the world wrote letters to her searching for help and prayer. Universally working she wrote works about medicine, natural history, compositions of chants for the honour of God and his creation and more than three hundred letters to people all over the world including the popes and the emperor. Hildegard's work and the way she understood herself were strongly marked by vision and prophecy. Her works were of divine origin by vision and audition. Her aim was the religious interpretation of the whole universe and a Christian life in the sense of the bible. Heaven and earth, faith and natural science, medicine and religion, the human existence in all its facts and potentials, everything was a mirror of divine love to her. In her first work Scivias ("Know the Ways") she is considering on the history of creation and salvation, from the origin of the world and of man over Christ's salvation to the fulfillment at the end of times. In the centre is standing the human being as microcosm reflecting the whole world in all conditions and laws. Man is the main work of god, reflecting in his doing and thinking God's love. Man has to know the ways that means to live the life of love in all consequences including reproduction by creating a new human being for the praise of God.     

Erfahrung und Vorurteil im naturwissenschaftlichen Denken Johannes Keplers

The change from ancient and medieval to modern natural science, called Wende (instead of ‘revolution’), must be associated with the work of Johannes Kepler and not that of Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus merely showed the way, introducing heliocentricity as the order of the planets. This Wende resulted from the synthesis of several disciplines formerly isolated from each other, namely mathematical (i.e. hypothetical) astronomy, new physics, mathematical harmony, astrology, new physical optics, and natural theology. Whereas Copernicus united mathematical astronomy and peripatetic (Aristotelian) physics, Kepler was first to see the necessity for providing a physical explanation and an ontological foundation to the heliocentric system. He was the first to consider and measure the movement of the planets in depth. The elements for his new physics Kepler obtained not from newly observed data, but from a harmonic archetypus of the regular polyhedra fitted in between excentric planetary spheres. On the basis of this archetypus (which he considered to be God's model in creating the universe) he accepted the new heliocentric planetary system as a physical reality. That is why astronomy, by way of taking into account stereometric quantities, is, in Kepler's eyes, a kind of divine worship. Later, the best empirical data had also to be taken into consideration as a means of proving this a priori archetypus (Vorurteil, preconception). The result was, on the one hand, a universal natural science able to explain natural processes in grater abundance than ever before or since in the history of science. Although accepted only in parts, it resulted in founding a new natural science with adherent mathematical and empirical methods. It also led Kepler to establish, step by step, the elliptical path of the planets, thereby overcoming, for the first time, the two axioms of ancient astronomy, requiring uniform and circular planetary motion. It has been shown that this Keplerian Wende was possible only within the Historischen Erfahrungsraum (‘historical field of experience’) of Renaissance Humanism (cf. this Journal 9/1986, p. 201), which came about itself as the result of reactivating the scientific and philosophical thinking of the ancient Greeks and was accomplished by three steps (phases) relating to the revival of (1) original ancient writings, (2) the ancient knowledge of natural facts and data, and (3) the ancient scientific and philosophical ideas and mentalities (Drei-Phasen-Modell).