Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte最新文献

How is historical evidence conveyed? How could an eighteenth-century scholar vouch for the information stored on paper, drafted with the quill, and publicized in copperplate engravings or letterpress? In this article, I employ material and medial perspectives to reconstruct the multiple production stages of Johann Christoph Gatterer's Historia genealogica dominorum Holzschuherorum (1755) and, thereby, reveal how historical knowledge was shaped by the media that presented it. By focusing not only on the text but mainly on the engraved plates inserted within the pages of this work, I will reveal how, in the eighteenth century, historical knowledge was collectively achieved through complex scholarly, artistic, and editorial negotiations that encompassed issues of authorship and intellectual authority as well as disputes that occurred both in the making of visual evidence and the trading of authoritative editions. After exploring many drawn, handwritten, typeset, and engraved sources related to this editorial project, I argue that Gatterer's work relied on an information system based on the interplay between verbal and visual information and their relationship to the material evidence of the past. Moreover, I show how this system itself was shaped by the different media that it, in turn, used to reproduce historical evidence.

Ever since Erwin Schrödinger learned about Indian thought through Arthur Schopenhauer, it occupied a visible role in both his published writings and personal books. Schrödinger called for a “blood transfusion” of Indian thought into the West and, in one notebook, construed the Upaniṣadic slogan “Brahman = Atman” as the “closest thing to the truth.” However, the historical and philosophical literature on his engagement with Indian ideas remains limited and often confused. Two questions should be addressed for a more comprehensive account of Schrödinger's philosophical views: which Indian insights did he embrace, and what was their role in his thought? I argue that examining what he termed the Indian “doctrine of identity” illuminates answers to these questions and can correct some historical misinterpretations. First, situating Schrödinger's reading of Indian works in his time and analyzing his personal notebooks reveals the dominance of Śaṅkara's Advaita Vedānta reading of the Upaniṣads. Second, by analyzing Schrödinger's published writings and personal notebooks, I argue that this doctrine of identity offered Schrödinger religious consolation, but, furthermore, that Schrödinger took these Indian ideas seriously in his philosophy as well. I highlight how Schrödinger adopted this doctrine of identity into his metaphysical ruminations about the nature of reality and show how it resonates with some of his reflections in the philosophy of science.

In 1961, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Franklin Institute, a popular science museum in Philadelphia, PA, launched a mobile science education program in the U.S. called the Spacemobile. The program went international a year later, touring 53 countries by 1969. NASA's Educational Programs Division, part of the Public Affairs Department, collaborated with the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and the U.S. State Department to facilitate the international circulation of science education diplomacy at the height of the early Cold War. Using primary sources from NASA, the USIA, the State Department, oral histories, and memoirs, it is argued that the Spacemobile program mediated the circulation of NASA's technoscientific knowledge and materials around the world by teaching the basic science behind the space program to students and other public audiences. Mediation Occurred when the Spacemobile program accompanied NASA's technoscientific collaboration and exchange agreements, confirms geopolitical alliances, eased sociopolitical tensions over tracking station expansion, and when it appealed to student audiences receptive to Western ideological perspectives about space science.

The oil and uranium industries always have been intertwined. Both industries are inherently global and span an extensive geological history. The formation of uranium and oil deposits, and their eventual extraction, is a story circling through early planetary history, continuing in depleted oil wells in Germany, Canada, and France, and lingering well into the second half of the past century. Understanding this history proved to be the key for two businesses that would shape the later twentieth century: the oil and nuclear industries. Oil companies are among the very first to integrate new quantum mechanics and knowledge about radioactive decay into their search for oil. This article locates the origins of this interconnectedness in the emergence of applied geophysics. Based on case studies to the experiments and research projects of geophysicist Richard Ambronn and the studies by the oil service company Schlumberger into measuring radioactive decay as a method of determining underground sediments and finding oil during the 1920s and 1930s, this article argues that the depleted oil sources at Pechelbronn and Celle formed the basis of both industrial and academic developments in the knowledge of radioactivity, geophysics, and petroleum.

The term “epistemic object” has been recently used by some scholars in the history and philosophy of science to refer to the peculiar history of objects of inquiry such as RNA, genes, electrons, or phlogiston. Despite the relative success of this neologism as an analytical tool, a comprehensive analysis of its many versions is still lacking. In this article, an attempt has been made to sketch such an analysis first by comparing three main versions of this idea: epistemic things, epistemic objects, and representations of theoretical entities. Second, these conceptions are compared with the notion of scientific concept, arguing that, although similar, they are not the same thing. However, a proposal suggested from the history of concepts program, Klaus Hentschel's semantic layered methodology, could be usefully adapted for epistemic things. Third, accomplishing such adaptation by drawing from the tradition of evolutionary epistemology is recommended, analyzing the potential fit between historical epistemology and the Evolutionary Epistemology of Theories programme.

In 1976, the year that Werner Heisenberg passed away, Armin Hermann published a short biography, titled Werner Heisenberg in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Since then, historians and biographers have offered their accounts on Heisenberg's life and his contributions to modern physics. Many of these biographies present Heisenberg as a genius. Upon closer inspection, the ideal of the genius relies on the topos of the experience of knowledge presented in Heisenberg's memoir from Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik. This article discusses the influence of this topos on his biographies. The article first contextualizes Heisenberg's popular science texts among his academic career and the cultural contexts of the German Bildungsbürgertum. Second, it focuses on the aesthetic repertoire of knowledge production as the experience of knowledge. By going beyond the semantic level, it is shown that the topos of the experience of nature in Heisenberg's memoir is central to his scientific persona. Ultimately, the idea of the genius stands in a longue durée of German Romanticism and natural philosophy is shown to shape the masculinities and scientific personae of the modern physicist.

This paper examines how an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expert mission for technical assistance in the late 1950s to Greece was effectively transformed into a mission to achieve the IAEA′s central objective: to consolidate its position as the leading global authority on radiation protection. The study focuses on the work of Alfred Maddock, a professor at the University of Cambridge. In 1959, Maddock arrived in Greece as part of one of the IAEA's original missions, contributing to an educational program on radioisotopes. Beyond providing educational services, Maddock accomplished something more significant. As the Agency's facilitator, he introduced radiation protection materials and concepts to the country in accordance with the IAEA protocols. He introduced dosimetry devices (film badges) and, at the same time, reviewed, modified, and created architectural plans for the laboratories of the Greek Nuclear Centre to meet the IAEA safety standards. It is argued that Maddock's visit to Greece transcended a mere one-sided enforcement process. Rather, it catalyzed a dynamic interaction between Greece and the IAEA, characterized by robust elements of mutual cooperation. This mission stands as a prime example of the gradual integration of IAEA culture within a member state, tailored to local needs and conditions.