Die Fin de Siècle‐These. Der Aufsatz untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen John Heilbrons Argumentation, die Physiker des ‘fin de siecle’ hätten Bild und Substanz ihrer Disziplin kulturellen Belangen angepasst, und Paul Formans Interpretation der Akausalität in der Weimarer Periode. Ergänzend zu ihrer Fokussierung auf Repräsentationen anstelle von Wahrheit, legten die von Heilbron benannten Anhänger “deskriptionistischer” Epistemologien den Schwerpunkt auf Methodik, statistische anstelle kausaler Erklärungen, historisches Verständnis von Epistemologie und unterstrichen die Beziehungen zwischen der Physik und anderen Disziplinen. Ihre Perspektive liefert einen (...) intellektuellen Kontext – innerhalb der Disziplin Physik – für zumindestens einen Teil dessen, was Forman als Kapitulation vor einer feindlichen sozialen Umgebung, wie sie sich in Oswald Spenglers Der Untergang des Abendlandes ausdrückte, beschrieben hat.The Fin de Siècle Thesis. This paper examines the relations between John Heilbron's argument that fin de siècle physicists adjusted the image and substance of their discipline to cultural concerns, and Paul Forman's approach to acausality in the Weimar period. In addition to their focus on representation rather than truth, adherents of the “descriptionist” epistemologies that Heilbron identified also promoted an emphasis on method, statistical rather than causal explanations, historical understandings of epistemology, and stressed the relations between physics and other disciplines. Their views provide an intellectual context – within the physics discipline – for at least some part of what Forman had described as a capitulation to the hostile social environment expressed in Oswald Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes. (shrink)

Aujourd’hui, «scientisme» est un concept péjoratif dans toutes les langues. Mais ne s'agit-il pas plutôt d’une projection qui sert à exploiter la peur de « la science »? L’article développe l’idée que le scientisme est un courant historique qui peut être analysé de manière concrète. Il montre que le concept apparaît au XIXesiècle et reçoit son accentuation négative lorsque le spiritisme « scientifique » d’une part et l’église catholique de l’autre se mettent à combattre les prétentions « exagérées » des (...) sciences de la nature. (shrink)

Today, “scientism“ is a concept with a negative connotation in every language. Although many definitions are circulating, they have the assessment in common that scientism implicates a blind faith in science, which is wrong, simple-minded and even dangerous. However, the question is, who actually is defending that kind of position? Is scientism not just a ghost, a projection, an intellectual scarecrow in order to use many people’s fear of science in order to bash rationalistic opinions? This article develops the argument (...) that scientism is a real historical current which can be analyzed in a concrete way. It starts by outlining the history of the French word “scientisme” and the debates around it and discovers that the word is not at all of recent invention, but goes back to the 1840s and received its negative emphasis in the late nineteenth century when “scientific spiritism” on the one hand and Catholicism on the other were struggling against the “exaggerated” claims of natural science. A polemical counter-concept was therefore needed. Soon afterward some scientists and philosophers emerge, like Félix Le Dantec, Abel Rey or Marcel Boll, who turn around the invective in order to describe their own optimistic and rationalistic conception of science. In conclusion the article argues that scientism has to be understood as an intellectual project and as an optimistic thought-style in science that does not at all correspond to the prejudices of the amoral scientist or the power-hungry technocrat, but is represented mostly by outsiders and nonconformists. (shrink)

Today, “scientism“ is a concept with a negative connotation in every language. Although many definitions are circulating, they have the assessment in common that scientism implicates a blind faith in science, which is wrong, simple-minded and even dangerous. However, the question is, who actually is defending that kind of position? Is scientism not just a ghost, a projection, an intellectual scarecrow in order to use many people’s fear of science in order to bash rationalistic opinions? This article develops the argument (...) that scientism is a real historical current which can be analyzed in a concrete way. It starts by outlining the history of the French word “scientisme” and the debates around it and discovers that the word is not at all of recent invention, but goes back to the 1840s and received its negative emphasis in the late nineteenth century when “scientific spiritism” on the one hand and Catholicism on the other were struggling against the “exaggerated” claims of natural science. A polemical counter-concept was therefore needed. Soon afterward some scientists and philosophers emerge, like Félix Le Dantec, Abel Rey or Marcel Boll, who turn around the invective in order to describe their own optimistic and rationalistic conception of science. In conclusion the article argues that scientism has to be understood as an intellectual project and as an optimistic thought-style in science that does not at all correspond to the prejudices of the amoral scientist or the power-hungry technocrat, but is represented mostly by outsiders and nonconformists. (shrink)