Hans-Jörg Rheinberger

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science | MPIWG · Rheinberger

Internationale Tagung | 15.–17.2.2023 | RWTH Aachen | Organisation und Konzept: Caroline Torra-Mattenklott, Christiane Frey, Yashar Mohagheghi und Sergej Rickenbacher | Veranstalter: Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Kulturen des Forschens"

In June 2020, the Vienna Declaration shed light on the viability of artistic research with an identity of its own. In its introduction, it explicitly states the need to “guarantee and incorporate post-graduate studies based on practice, in higher arts education in all European countries, in order to further develop artistic research...”. For the ti...

Studium der Philosophie und Anthropologie; nach Feldstudien an der Elfenbeinküste 1975 Abschluss des Universitätsstudiums; Laborstudien bei Roger Guillemin (Nobelpreis 1977) am Salk Institute in La Jolla; als Ergebnis erschien 1979 das gemeinsam mit dem britischen Soziologen Steve Woolgar verfasste Buch Laboratory Life, in dessen Zentrum der Prozes...

I am supposed to talk about the sponge that was sent to me in preparation for this event. As I gathered from the accompanying text, the question was how I would try to approach this object. The sponge is a receptacle, but a receptacle of a very special kind. Now, I am first and foremost a historian of science, so it stands to reason that I would be...

We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the...

Hub Zwart’s article is about the idea—and the practice—of an embedded philosophy of science, that is, a philosophy participating in and at the same time reflecting about the current state of the sciences facing the Anthropocene, to which I am very sympathetic. There are, however, two caveats . The first is that participation is always in danger to...

This afterword to Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality sifts through a number of different meanings historically associated with forms of testing in the sciences and discusses their relationship with forms of experimentation. Testing as a “way of knowing” has assumed a wide variety of shapes in the sciences and their applications, many of...

In the ‘Fifth Gene Technology Report’, renowned experts provide an overview of current developments and their applications in the dynamically evolving research field of gene and biotechnologies. They examine, among other topics, genetic diagnostics, somatic gene therapy, the development of vaccines, stem cell and organoid research, green gene techn...

As a powerful tool in the production of knowledge, comparing plays a crucial part in the sciences and the humanities. This volume explores the relationship between comparing and narrating in epistemic practices and clarifies the ways in which narratives enable or impede practices of comparing. It takes into account related activities, such as measu...

As a powerful tool in the production of knowledge, comparing plays a crucial part in the sciences and the humanities. This volume explores the relationship between comparing and narrating in epistemic practices and clarifies the ways in which narratives enable or impede practices of comparing. It takes into account related activities, such as measu...

Forschen und Gestalten sind experimentelle Vorgehensweisen, die darauf ausgerichtet sind, etwas Neues, noch nicht Existierendes hervorzubringen. Sie haben beide Projektcharakter, denn sie führen an einen Nullpunkt des Wissens. Doch welche Strategien und Verfahren sind es, die aus diesem Nichtwissen, diesen Vermutungen und Ideen zu konkreten Ergebni...

This volume collects prominent voices in the debate on transdisciplinarity in a transdisciplinary manner. Its coincidence of content and form in presenting main papers and critical replies to them from a different discipline allows for a vivid discussion and new insights. These stylistically and thematically divergent contributions are linked by re...

History of Science Today. The paper argues for a theoretically demanding history of science along three lines. (1) History of science requires a permanent reflection on the concept of history. (2) It demands an epistemological reflection on the historically changing forms of knowledge. (3) An intimate knowledge of scientific practice is necessary,...

Mirko D. Grmek (1924–2000) is one of the most significant figures in the history of medicine, and has long been considered a pioneer of the field. The singular trajectory that took Grmek from Yugoslavia to the academic culture of post-war France placed him at the crossroads of different intellectual trends and made him an influential figure during...

The paper proceeds from a perspective on scientific objects - epistemic things - that is grounded in an approach to characterize the dynamics of the empirical sciences centered on experimental systems. Accordingly, the paper begins with a brief characterization of the concept of ‘experimental system’ and its basic features. It includes an expositio...

Historische Epistemologie ist im deutschen Sprachraum in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten zu einem Schlagwort in Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftsphilosophie geworden, das jedoch sehr verschiedene Ansätze umfasst. Daher seien an den Anfang ein paar Überlegungen zu Herkunft, Etymologie und Verwendung dieses Begriffes gestellt.

The paper deals with the engraving hand of Albert Flocon and its poietic description by the pen of Gaston Bachelard. It proceeds by discussing examples of the group of collaborative works that emerged from the cooperation between Flocon, the copperplate engraver and theoretician of perspective and Bachelard, the philosopher of science and scholar o...

Este artículo se ocupa del grabado de mano de Albert Flocon y la descripción poiética que realiza la pluma de Gaston Bachelard. Se procede a discutir los ejemplos del conjunto de trabajos que surgieron de la cooperación entre Flocon y Bachelard; el grabador en cobre y teórico de la perspectiva, y el filósofo de la ciencia y estudioso de imágenes li...

The chapter analyses procedural aspects of experimentation that are commonly considered as “subjective” or “contingent” and ignored because they seem to be inconsistent with the claim to authority of scientific action. Based on a description of experimentation as a type of open exploration of the world, the role of the principles of uncertainty and...

The collection of essays comes under the heading of two catchwords: instruments and media. This Afterword looks at their interaction and roles in exploring the characteristics of living beings throughout history, especially their melding and gliding into each other. Before turning to the papers, I will make some more general remarks on instruments...

According to the thesis of the two cultures of knowledge, during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century the sciences and the humanities parted ways, becoming separate areas of knowledge no longer able to understand each other. This essay shows that times are changing. A dualistic account is no longer helpful. First, the...

Die sozialen, medialen und technischen Konturen unserer Gegenwart transformieren die spektakuläre Anordnung des Theaters. Der Blick weitet sich für die Kontexte des Theaters: öffentliche Räume, angrenzende Künste, Medien und Technologien. Die Beiträge des Bandes gehen der Frage nach, inwiefern diese Kontexte aufgeben, Begriffe der Szene, des Auftri...

The history of molecular biology has many facets, and it has been told in different fashions. In accordance with the present context of this book, the paper concentrates on the relation between international and national, global and local aspects of knowledge production in the history of molecular biology. The paper focuses on the interactions betw...

Das Aufkommen des Begriffs der historischen Epistemologie1 kann als ein Symptom gelesen werden für die kritische, nachpositivistische Wende in der philosophischen und gesellschaftlichen Wahrnehmung von Wissenschaft, wie sie sich in den 60er und 70er Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts vollzog.

1843 Eintritt in das Altbrünner Augustinerkloster, 1844–1848 Studium der Theologie in Brünn, 1847 Priesterweihe, 1851–1853 Studium der Naturwissenschaften an der Universität Wien, ab 1854 Lehrer für Naturlehre und Naturgeschichte an der Oberrealschule in Brünn; meteorologische Studien und Untersuchungen an Bienen, botanische Kreuzungsversuche im Br...

Medizinstudium in Paris; ab 1841 Präparator bei François Magendie; 1843 Promotion mit einer Untersuchung über den Magensaft; maßgebliche Etablierung der Forschung am lebenden Tier mit seinen Arbeiten zur Ernährungs- und Nervenphysiologie; 1854 Professor für Physiologie an der Sorbonne; 1855 Nachfolger von Magendie am Collège de France; 1865 erschie...

When considering the question of possible transformation and disappearance of scientific objects, it is useful to distinguish between epistemic and technical objects. This paper presents preliminary observations and offers a typology of obsolescence. It is based on several case studies drawn from the history of life sciences. The paper proceeds as...

This article gives a short account of the work and life of the Belgian molecular embryologist and cytologist Jean Brachet (1909?1988). Jean Brachet was born in Belgium and educated as a physician at the Free University of Brussels. Still while studying, he started to do cytological experiments in the laboratory of Albert Dalcq, looking into the cel...

Das Dokument spricht Empfehlungen zum Publizieren in der Wissenschaft aus und behandelt im Einzelnen die Themenbereiche Digitalisierung, Open Access und bibliometrische Verfahren der Leistungsmessung. Nach einer Bestimmung des Gegenstands werden Prinzipien für ein gutes wissenschaftliches Publikationssystem formuliert und die zentralen Probleme im...

Nie zuvor in seiner Geschichte war der Mensch von einer solch großen Anzahl von Dingen umgeben wie heute. Der Sachbesitz des Einzelnen in der Konsumgesellschaft übersteigt jedes zuvor bekannte Maß. Dank innovativer Technologien verfügen Menschen über immer neue Objekte mit zuvor ungeahnten Fähigkeiten. Obgleich Medien, Werbung und auch die Kulturwi...

Die Debatte um »Künstlerische Forschung« hat einen hohen Grad an Differenzierung erreicht, sei es in ihrer allgemeinen, theorieorientierten Dimension, sei es auf der Ebene der Praxis des künstlerischen Forschens selbst. Alles deutet darauf hin, dass sich die Künstlerische Forschung an der Schwelle zu einer Institutionalisierung befindet. Ziel des B...

For a long time, identity and contradiction were the categories in which historical trajectories were conceptualized. Following Gilles Deleuze, this essay uses the categories of reproduction and difference instead to convey an idea of how the sciences develop on the basis of experimentation—a development that does not rest on anticipation, as is us...

The paper takes a critical look at the present situation of the European university and traces its history over the second half of the twentieth century. The assessment leads to a statement about the mission of academic education, both past and future. The paper concludes with reflections about the task and function of research for the institution...

Historical epistemology, according to the historian of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, is a space through which "to take experimental laboratory work into the realm of philosophy". This key concept, together with the crucial events and challenges of his career, were discussed in a public conversation which took place on the occasion of Rheinberger's...

Der berühmten These von Charles Percy Snow zufolge haben sich die Naturwissenschaften und die Geisteswissenschaften im 20. Jahrhundert in zwei einander nicht mehr verstehende Kulturen auseinander gelebt. Im Vortrag des Referenten, der sowohl in den Natur- als auch den Geisteswissenschaften beheimatet ist, wird diese Schwarz-Weiß-Zeichnung aufgebroc...

The paper exposes the views of Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger on the dynamics of the sciences of their day, as both developed them in the two decades after the encounter of the two philosophers in Davos in 1928. It emphasizes points of common concern, and it compares their positions to those of contemporary philosophers of science Gaston Bache...

This paper proposes an outline for a typology of the different forms that scientific objects can take in the life sciences. The first section discusses preparations (or specimens)—a form of scientific object that accompanied the development of modern biology in different guises from the seventeenth century to the present: as anatomical-morphologica...

Had anybody told me at the beginning of my university studies that I would end up as a historian of science, I would not only have shaken my head in disbelief, I would in all probability not even have understood the prophecy. When I left high school, my interests ranged from literary writing to the life sciences. After an initial attempt to study b...

Carl Erich Correns (1864–1933) is remembered in the annals of science as one of the three botanists who re-discovered Mendel’s laws. He can also, however, be regarded as one of the founding figures of classical genetics in Germany. Between 1894 and 1899 he carried out the crossing experiments with corn and peas that led to the re-statement of Grego...

The paper focuses on the collaboration between the philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard and the copper engraver Albert Flocon during the first decade after World War II. The exchange resulted in a number of books whose content is discussed.

The essay deals with the final part of a project on the cultural history of heredity stretching from the early modern period to the present. The focus is on epistemological questions such as the establishment of genetics as a discipline, the phenotype/ genotype divide, and the relation between science and images of science on heredity. Three images...

The botanist Carl Erich Correns became known in history of science as one of the rediscoverers of Mendel's laws. He is the founding figure of classical genetics in Germany. Between 1900 and 1910, he explored these laws in a number of plant species and argued for a location of the corresponding factors in the cell nucleus. In later years, he became...

Georg Christoph Tholen zählt zu den Wegbereitern der deutschsprachigen Medienwissenschaft, die er seit ihren Anfängen in den 1980er Jahren mitgeprägt und für kritische Interventionen aus den Feldern der Philosophie, Kulturtheorie, Soziologie und Psychoanalyse offen gehalten hat. Seine Arbeiten drängen stets darauf, die Schnittstellen der Medien (im...

The paper approaches the topic of what a general philosophy of science could mean today from the perspective of a historical epistemology. Consequently, in a first step, the paper looks at the notion of generality in the sciences, and how it evolved over time, on the example of the life sciences. In the second part of the paper, the urgency of a ge...