This article traces the history of interdisciplinarity as a contemporary form of thought and of producing knowledge in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1955 to 1975. It establishes that concepts of interdisciplinary research and teaching circulated in diverse fields of knowledge and modes of articulation, and evaluates the transformations that interdisciplinarity underwent along the way. After detailing the process by which the adjective “interdisciplinary” first came into usage in scientific publications in the late 1950s, this article discusses how interdisciplinary (...) research and teaching began to feature in debates about university reforms and the founding of new universities in the 1960s. The article then draws on the examples of Bochum, Konstanz, and Bielefeld to illustrate how debates about disciplinary specialization and interdisciplinary connections unfolded in visual modes of expression such as diagrams or sketches. In a last step, the article examines how visual and textual reflections connected interdisciplinarity to the architecture of envisioned universities, and hence related this time-specific form of thought and knowledge production to the material environments of future research and teaching. (shrink)

This article is intended to contribute to the discussion of the topicality and historical and theoretical limitations of Koselleck’s theory. The concept of acceleration, which has a special meaning for Koselleck, both in terms of conceptual history and social theory, will serve as a guide to this investigation. Since it is a socio- and temporal-analytical concept, the current thesis, that we have entered a post-Koselleckian culture, should be amenable to testing on the basis of this concept, which this article will (...) consider in some detail. The examination is divided into three parts: The first part addresses the concept of acceleration and its implications for Koselleck. On the basis of the results of the first part, the second part discusses issues and problems that go beyond Koselleck’s approach, and/or show it’s theoretical or methodological limits. Finally, the third part summarizes the conclusions of the foregoing examination, and emphasizes the problem-historical continuity with Koselleck’s inquiry into a socio-historically informed history of concepts. (shrink)

This article traces the history of interdisciplinarity as a contemporary form of thought and of producing knowledge in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1955 to 1975. It establishes that concepts of interdisciplinary research and teaching circulated in diverse fields of knowledge and modes of articulation, and evaluates the transformations that interdisciplinarity underwent along the way. After detailing the process by which the adjective “interdisciplinary” first came into usage in scientific publications in the late 1950s, this article discusses how interdisciplinary (...) research and teaching began to feature in debates about university reforms and the founding of new universities in the 1960s. The article then draws on the examples of Bochum, Konstanz, and Bielefeld to illustrate how debates about disciplinary specialization and interdisciplinary connections unfolded in visual modes of expression such as diagrams or sketches. In a last step, the article examines how visual and textual reflections connected interdisciplinarity to the architecture of envisioned universities, and hence related this time-specific form of thought and knowledge production to the material environments of future research and teaching. (shrink)

Reinhard Koselleck has long been regarded as a particularly eminent theorist of socio-political concepts, while Hannah Arendt had not been in focus as a conceptual author until recent times. This article explores the common thinking space between Arendt and Koselleck through their thesis about the gap, rupture, crisis, or break in the tradition of political thinking and historical periods and how this is linked to their notion of conceptuality, i.e. Begreifen. Despite the impression that each of them focused on the (...) one main break between the past and the future, Arendt and Koselleck both studied multiple breaks and crises in the Western political tradition. The article attempts to show how their distinctive thinking and rethinking of political concepts are related to these breaks through several direct and indirect encounters and how these are both close and apart at the same time. While they have different concepts of politics and the political, their understanding of the breaks in time and crises can be read as complementary, especially considering their concern with returning the responsibility for actions and concepts to the human sphere. (shrink)