Wissenschaftsstädte – Zur Bedeutung des Topos der ‘kreativen Stadt’ für die Wissensproduktion

Science Cities: What the Concept of the Creative City Means for Knowledge Production. – The article aims to show that the relationship of science and the city has changed since the 1970s in the context of the knowledgeable society. While cities have principally been regarded as the typical space of science, of new ideas and innovation for centuries, since the 1960s and 1970s universities, research institutes as well as industrial research institutes have relocated to the periphery of cities. There, however, these sites of knowledge have been organized in an ‘urban mode’. That means that the concept of the city as a place of science and innovation has determined the architectural, spatial, and social organization of these sites on the periphery of cities. Certain features of the city have been copied, such as social infrastructures, places of communication, restaurants, cafes etc., while others have been left out – housing, cinema, theatre etc. An ‘urban mode of knowledge production’ in the sense of a very stylized model of the city has become a tool to enhance the production of scientific and technological knowledge. – The article exemplifies this by focusing on a case study, namely of the so‐called ‘Science City’ of the Siemens Company in Munich‐Neuperlach.     

Geschichtswissenschaft - Wissenschaftsgeschichte: Koexistenz oder Konvergenz?

Until recently, in Germany general history lived with the history of science in a peaceful coexistence which was the result of their mutual ignorance. The debates on the integration of social and cultural theories and methods into both disciplines have offered opportunities for a new convergence of general history and history of science. The basic assumption of social constructionism that science does not produce knowledge independant from time and space, has offered new possibilities to link history of science with the discourse of general history. This article will argue that the biographical method, the theory of national innovation systems, institutional history and cultural history are among the most promising approaches to ensure that scholarly coexistence will be replaced by convergence.     

Historische Wissenschaftsforschung,heute. Überlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Wissensgesellschaft

Historical Science Studies Today. Thoughts about a History of the Knowledge Society. The article explores theoretical and historiographical approaches in the field of historical science studies, while focusing on the history of the knowledge society. It argues that a straightforward transfer of the concept of knowledge society into the past has to be pursued with care, favorably with an extraction of some analytical key concepts. This extraction is termed ‘decontextualization’ while a second approach, ‘contextualization’, is applied to the study of the knowledge society in its own time, namely the second half of the twentieth century. The latter approach needs to be combined with a history of science studies, especially a history of the concepts explaining and constituting the knowledge society itself. Furthermore, it is proposed to study the operative concepts of innovation and regulation in order to analyze the coupling processes of science, economy, technology, and government.