Pub Date : 2024-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100920
Donald L. Opitz (Editor-in-Chief)
This editorial introduces the collection, “Specialists with Spirit: Re-Enchanting the Vocation of Science,” co-edited by Dorien Daling and Hanneke Hoekstra. The collection offers a tribute to the eminent historian of science, Klaas van Berkel, commemorating his retirement from the University of Groningen. The papers compel us to consider the ongoing tensions between knowledge production and the social, political, and economic constraints faced by scholars, a theme that Max Weber famously addressed in his 1917 lecture, Wissenschaft als Beruf, which the collection’s contributors revisit as they consider a range of historical and contemporary questions concerning science and its study by historians.
{"title":"Editorial: Re-enchanting the vocation of science","authors":"Donald L. Opitz (Editor-in-Chief)","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100920","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100920","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This editorial introduces the collection, “Specialists with Spirit: Re-Enchanting the Vocation of Science,” co-edited by Dorien Daling and Hanneke Hoekstra. The collection offers a tribute to the eminent historian of science, Klaas van Berkel, commemorating his retirement from the University of Groningen. The papers compel us to consider the ongoing tensions between knowledge production and the social, political, and economic constraints faced by scholars, a theme that Max Weber famously addressed in his 1917 lecture, <em>Wissenschaft als Beruf</em>, which the collection’s contributors revisit as they consider a range of historical and contemporary questions concerning science and its study by historians.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140162679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100914
H. Floris Cohen
In his 1917 lecture for Munich students (most often entitled in English translation “Science as a Vocation”), Max Weber addressed numerous issues: not only how “profession” and “calling” are related in science and scholarship, but also Entzauberung (“disenchantment”); rationality and its limits; ultimate values; and the field of tension between science and religion. The present essay locates these themes in Weber’s oeuvre from 1911 onward, and analyses how they resonate and culminate in Weber’s address in 1917. It is in 1911 that he decided to engage with the problem that was to stand central in his thinking until his death in 1920: the nature and causes of certain specific turns in the course of European history which, so he argued, have proven to be of “universal significance.” Special attention is given in the present essay to how Weber dealt in this connection with the rise of modern science and the rise of modern tonal harmony. A concluding section explains what, over a century later, makes reading Weber still so rewarding an experience.
{"title":"Science as a calling and as a profession: The wider setting in Weber’s scholarly endeavor","authors":"H. Floris Cohen","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100914","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In his 1917 lecture for Munich students (most often entitled in English translation “Science as a Vocation”), Max Weber addressed numerous issues: not only how “profession” and “calling” are related in science and scholarship, but also <em>Entzauberung</em> (“disenchantment”); rationality and its limits; ultimate values; and the field of tension between science and religion. The present essay locates these themes in Weber’s <em>oeuvre</em> from 1911 onward, and analyses how they resonate and culminate in Weber’s address in 1917. It is in 1911 that he decided to engage with the problem that was to stand central in his thinking until his death in 1920: the nature and causes of certain specific turns in the course of European history which, so he argued, have proven to be of “universal significance.” Special attention is given in the present essay to how Weber dealt in this connection with the rise of modern science and the rise of modern tonal harmony. A concluding section explains what, over a century later, makes reading Weber still so rewarding an experience.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160932724000036/pdfft?md5=6e9aedbd9602ab07f1bc9d68b4495bd2&pid=1-s2.0-S0160932724000036-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140295831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100916
Klaas van Berkel
In well-established disciplines like history it is not common to find professionals who admit that they are driven by a “calling” or who say they have a “mission” to fulfill. In emerging disciplines, however, the situation is different: in order to gain recognition these new disciplines need highly driven practitioners, who’s calling enables them to overcome opposition or neglect from the side of the established disciplines. A clear example of such a practitioner with a mission in an emerging field of knowledge is the Dutch historian of science Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892–1965). His career as a mathematics teacher, historical scholar, and public intellectual was marked by the desire to re-integrate science and mathematics in culture in general. Dijksterhuis regarded the history of science as a major instrument to bring about this ideal. His magnum opus, The Mechanization of the World Picture (first published in 1950 in Dutch; translated into English in 1961), was the culmination of a lifetime of writing in the service of a cultural vision that can still inspire our own generation.
在历史学等历史悠久的学科中,很少有专业人员承认他们是受 "召唤 "驱使的,或者说他们有 "使命 "要完成。然而,在新兴学科中,情况则有所不同:为了获得认可,这些新学科需要极具驱动力的从业人员,他们的使命感使他们能够克服来自既有学科方面的反对或忽视。荷兰科学史家爱德华-扬-迪克斯特胡斯(Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis,1892-1965 年)就是这样一位在新兴知识领域肩负使命的实践者的一个明显例子。作为一名数学教师、历史学者和公共知识分子,他的职业生涯以希望将科学和数学重新融入整个文化为标志。戴克斯特胡斯将科学史视为实现这一理想的主要工具。他的巨著《世界图景的机械化》(1950 年首次以荷兰文出版,1961 年译成英文)是他一生为实现文化理想而写作的结晶,至今仍能激励我们这一代人。
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Pub Date : 2024-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100913
Frans H. van Lunteren
This essay aims to shed some light on the still common sense of a vocation among scientists. Taking its cue from Paul Forman’s analysis of twentieth-century disciplinary science and Emile Durkheim’s social view of religions, it suggests that modern scientific communities resemble religious communities in their penchant for transcendence. The essay aims to illustrate this perspective by looking at some developments within the physics discipline since its emergence in the late nineteenth century. One indication for this penchant is the tendency to distance oneself from the material conditions which allowed the discipline to flourish. These utilitarian conditions, industrial as well as material, were seen to pose a threat to the disinterested pursuit of truth. Another is the persistent tendency among theoretical physicists to search for otherworldly, immaterial and unifying foundations.
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Pub Date : 2024-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100919
Steven Shapin
This article is both a comment on the collection of papers, “Specialists with Spirit: Re-Enchanting the Vocation of Science,” offered as a tribute to Klaas van Berkel, and an attempt to add historical depth to present-day sensibilities about the academic discipline called the history of science: Is it a special sort of inquiry? Is science as its subject matter a special sort of culture? Max Weber’s 1917 Science as a Vocation lecture, and its continuing appropriations, is a focal point for addressing these questions.
本文既是对论文集《有精神的专家》的评论:作为对 Klaas van Berkel 的致敬,本文既是对论文集 "有精神的专家:重新赋予科学以魅力 "的评论,也试图为当今人们对科学史这一学科的认识增添历史的深度:它是一种特殊的探究吗?科学作为其主题是否是一种特殊的文化?马克斯-韦伯(Max Weber)1917 年发表的 "科学是一种天职"(Science as a Vocation)演讲,以及对这一演讲的不断引用,是探讨这些问题的一个焦点。
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Pub Date : 2024-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100912
Catrien Santing
Intellectuals tend to cherish heroes who embody their ideal way of life. The fact that the personas of the unworldly Greek philosophers Diogenes and Crates were so popular in the late Middle Ages proves that Max Weber’s Idealtypus of the “authentic man of science” (as termed by Steven Shapin) has been problematic for centuries. This finding gives cause to modify Max Weber’s and Shapin's viewpoints about the loss of the “authentic man of science” due to professionalization. The development of the university as an educational institution in the High Middle Ages chained the academic once and for all to a formal training that costs time and money: investments that were expected to have reward. Soon, university-trained experts were highly appreciated by local and national authorities. By combining Frank Rexroth’s and Marcel Bubert’s ideas on the coming into being of an “amor sciendi” in the twelfth century Arts faculties, with David Kaldewey’s and Klaas van Berkel’s appeals for academic autonomy, my article argues that academics have always struggled to protect the pursuit of truth, even while they recognized its vital importance from the beginning.
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Pub Date : 2023-12-05DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2023.100889
Nathan Smith
J. D. Wetherspoon is a popular pub chain in the United Kingdom. Despite its prominence in British cultural life and active and deliberate engagement with history, it has received scant academic attention. Here, this engagement with history is explored with a particular focus on how Wetherspoon approaches the history of science. This paper highlights the focus of Wetherspoon on local history and, in particular, on local exceptionalism, before discussing how such an understanding of history informs wider debates—such as Wetherspoon’s support of Brexit (the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union). It contributes to understandings of what constitutes popular history and, through doing so, emphasises the need for historians to engage with historical narratives outside the academy.
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Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2023.100902
David E. Dunning , Brigitte Stenhouse
Although much scholarship on nineteenth and twentieth century mathematics has focused on processes of professionalization, historical mathematicians themselves rarely experienced their lives as neatly divisible into the professional and the private. Taking marriage as a focal point, this introduction brings the fruitful historiography of gender, collaborative couples, and domesticity in science into a broader conversation with the history of mathematics. By historicizing marriage and its relationship to mathematical careers, we lay the groundwork for the special issue which uncovers the myriad ways in which spousal collaboration and support have been central to mathematical work.
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