Reine und angewandte Chemie Die Entstehung einer neuen Wissenschaftskonzeption in der Chemie der Aufklärung

In its attempt to achieve acknowledgement and support as a true science and academic discipline eighteenth-century chemistry experienced that the traditional distinction between theory and practice, respectively between science and art, was an incriminating heritage and did not longer conform to the way chemists saw themselves. In order to substitute the former, socially judging classification into theoretical science and practical art, J. G. Wallerius from Uppsala coined the term pure and applied chemistry in 1751. The idea behind this new conception was that it ought to be chemistry's research aim and not the kind of work, be it manual or intellectual, which was to decide about its branches and their dignity. The change in orientation which took place during the eighteenth century, and which is symbolized by the new dichotomy “pure and applied”, led towards a revaluation of the utilitarian aspects of chemistry. Its historical roots reach back to a long and fruitful cooperation of, and interaction between chemistry and economy, which was reinforced by the Stahlian tradition in Germany and Scandinavia. Subsequently, it was its strong economic bias that helped chemistry to become institutionalized and accepted as an academic discipline distinct from the medico-pharmaceutical profession. The analysis of this change of attitudes, behaviour and institutional pattern suggests that, at least during the period of institutionalization of this particular discipline, social structures and the intrinsic scientific contents are so tightly interrelated, that any division into “internal”, cognitive developments (facts, theory and subject-matter) and “external” conditions (social context and stategies of institutionalization) would be artificial, since they both constitute the scientific community as a context of argumentation and action.     

Was zählt der Preis? Dogmengeschichte und Wissensgeschichte der Ökonomie

What’s in a Price? History of Economic Ideologies vs. History of Economic Ideas. This paper suggests applying the approach of a historical epistemology to the field of economics. We observe that an assumedly fundamental opposition between the market and the state dominates popular images of the history of economic ideas. Two conflicting ideologies are roughly assigned to the two opposing sides in the Cold War. To this historical narrative the paper opposes a different view. The argument is that when taking the technical practices of economic knowledge production in the twentieth century into view, similarities abound across ideological ruptures. The chief characteristic change in the recent history of economics was a radical turn towards quantification, measurement, and mathematical modelling. A historical epistemology of economics could show how deeply both, admirers of the state and of the market, share a history. The paper concludes that to-date critique of political economy should also take into consideration a critical perspective towards the unfolding of this measurement revolution in the social sciences.     

Menschenbild und Wirtschaftsordnung: Der Menschenbegriff im Kameralismus und in der National?konomie

This essay addresses the construction of human nature in cameralism and early German political economy. It suggests that the emergent economic sciences in Germany propounded a vision of human beings that stressed the psycho‐physiological roots of human behavior in general, and of economic activity in particular. In this vision, human beings possessed a body and soul whose constant interaction gave rise to needs and desires, and thus to the drive to behave as economic agents. Here the cameralists and early German political economists adopted conceptions of human nature current in the ‘Sciences of Man’ of the Enlightenment. This stress on the non‐rational, psycho‐physiological aspects of human nature prevented the theoretical construction of a stable human social life, and in this way justified the continued need for governmental oversight and control of economic activity.     

Zur Historisierung der Staatswissenschaften Von der Kameralistik zur historischen Schule der Nationalökonomie

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the mostly practically orientated and speculative patterns of economic theory of the eighteenth-century cameralists result with interrupted (but on the whole remarkable) traditional bands in the German Historical School of National Economy, which prevailed most of the German universities after 1870. This school of thought developed, although in the Germany of the beginning nineteenth century the cameralist encyclopedias and the reception of traditional theories of economic liberalism declined. The school of National Economy proved to be determined by traditional professional impacts (training of government officials), regional differences and specific regional changes of the English model, by the historical attitude of National Economy in relation to the arts sciences - this was however not a defined economic science concerning method and contents -, and by continuing the aims of a welfare state within late industrialized authoritarian governments.     

Geschichte als leitende Orientierungswissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert

The nineteenth century has sometimes been dubbed “the age of historical science”, taking account of the hegemonic position occupied by historiography vis-à-vis the natural sciences and also its fellow humanities. The “historical method” was widely adopted by all kinds of Kulturwissenschaften. Moreover, public interest focussed on historiography to a quite exceptional degree since it combined scholarly inquiry and the purposes of general education and personal cultivation. Historiography reached the peak of its influence during the two decades leading up to the revolution of 1848. During this period, the ideas of historians on the national state, on the social order and on cultural affairs carried considerable weight. In the second half of the nineteenth century, historiography gradually lost its position of a “pilot discipline”. Sciences such as economics and sociology were better equipped to respond to the needs of German society in the age of industrialization.     

Kameralismus als paradoxe Konzeption der gleichzeitigen Stärkung von Markt und Staat. Komplexe Theorielagen im deutschen 18. Jahrhundert

Cameralism as the paradox concept of simultaneous strengthening of market and state. Complex theoretical constellations in Eighteenth Century's Germany. Cameralism is an early theory of political economy of the 17^th and 18^th century in Germany and Austria, defining markets as a mode of political order of the absolutistic state. Men are incomplete actors; the state has to arrange a secure life and well being. But all regulation and order is the basement for individual action and a certain kind of early liberty. To regulate men's actions is to protect them against any arbitrariness of the governor. In the shadow of strong regulation of the economy and the society we see the development of the liberal market society.