“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.     

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.     

What can supraspecies richness tell us?

Biogeographers, ecologists, palaeontologists, and conservation managers often deal with checklists in which not all individuals have been identified to a species level, or the accuracy of species identification is questionable. Is it possible and credible to investigate species richness based on such checklists? Studies on macrofauna in the Far Eastern seas, eastern Arctic seas, and adjacent waters of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans suggest that in different habitats and for diverse taxa, species, and higher taxa richness strongly correlate with each other and increase with an expansion in the study area and sample size according to the species–area law. Such an increase is higher in the bottom zone than in the pelagic. Species and higher taxa richness also show a decrease from lower to higher latitudes, which is in line with the Humboldt–Wallace’s law. According to Willis’ law and self-similarity in the organisation of taxonomic levels, species richness can be assessed based on the genus, family, and order richness. In other words, supraspecies richness itself can tell us the same as species richness and therefore certain global patterns revealed at the species level may also be revealed at the supraspecies level. Such a concordance in general trends among richness parameters at different taxonomic levels in practice implies that species richness can be studied based on lists that lack species identifications or lists with doubtful species identification. We suggest bolder use of supraspecies richness in science and practice, discussing the disadvantages and advantages of this approach.     

Venedig und die Wissenschaftssprachen. (30. Symposium der Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsgeschichte im Deutschen Studienzentrum in Venedig, 20.-23. Mai 1993)

Languages of science, the idioms of learning and teaching, depend on intellectual trends and cultural developments. Their characteristic adaptation and transformation was particularly evident in the Venetian history of mind which influenced — comparable to the humanist circles of Florence and Rome — wide parts of Europe. In the 12th century James of Venice translated Aristotle directly from the Greek originals, thus forming a new scholastic idiom, whereas — in the 14th century — Petrarch attacked the lingua franca of the scholastic researchers, stressing the importance of poetic and rhetoric elements. Scholastic and humanistic languages were regarded as irreconcilable. In the 15th century an approach was enabled by Bessarion and Ermolao Barbaro who accepted Aristotle and natural sciences as humanistic topics. Around 1500 the famous Venetian printing offices spread the specific idioms of science and researching in the European countries.     

Crossing the Great Divides: Hans Aarsleff's Lessons for Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Historians

SUMMARY

This essay discusses Hans Aarsleff's long battle to demonstrate the importance of the French and British thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century to the development of modern linguistic thought. Contesting claims that German scholars were the first to develop historicised theories of language, Aarsleff, along with his Princeton colleagues Lionel Gossman and Anthony Grafton, helped pioneer longue durée studies of the history of philology and of historiography that cross national boundaries as well as the so-called Sattelzeit (stretching from about 1780 until 1820). Although the importance of his work was, for a long time, little appreciated by modern intellectual historians, this essay argues that it is time that we fully learned Aarsleff's lessons.     

Nazi Leaks and Intrigues in Second World War Ankara: the Plot to Send Herbert Melzig to a Concentration Camp

This article excavates one of the stranger episodes that took place in the transnational microcosm of the German expatriate world in Ankara and Istanbul during the Second World War. ‘Professor’ Herbert Melzig's story, the ‘Melzig affair’, illustrates how this microcosm, with its very different constituent members - Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Nazism, German pro-Nazi expatriates, and an extensive embassy and Nazi Party network - acted as a conduit in German–Turkish relations, albeit one that produced unexpected results. This ‘Melzig affair’ sheds new light on the German presence in Second World War Turkey as well as the so-called German ‘exile on the Bosporus’ as it has been (re-)constructed and used in recent years; it also contributes to our understanding of Turkish foreign policy during the Second World War, especially regarding Turkey's reluctance to join the war on Hitler's side. At the end of the Melzig affair stood the ‘leaking’ of an internal Ministry of Propaganda memorandum. It prepared the ground for further leaks of this nature and was one of the turning points of public opinion in Turkey against the Third Reich.