Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 44, Issue 4, Page 339-351, December 2021.

History Without Causality. How Contemporary Historical Epistemology Demarcates Itself From the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Contemporary proponents of historical epistemology often try to delimit their enterprise by demarcating it from the sociology of scientific knowledge and other sociologically oriented approaches in the history of science. Their criticism is directed against the use of causal explanations which are deemed to invite reductionism and lead to a totalizing perspective on science. In the present article I want to analyse this line of criticism (...) in what I consider are two paradigmatic works of contemporary historical epistemology: Lorraine Daston's und Peter Galison's Objectivity and Hans‐Jörg Rheinberger's Toward a History of Epistemic Things. I first present their arguments against the sociological and causal analysis of scientific knowledge and practice and then try to defend sociological work in the history of science against their charges. I will, however, not do so by defending causal explanations directly. Rather, I will show that the arguments against sociological analysis put forward in contemporary historical epistemology, as well as historical epistemology's own models of historical explanation and narration, bear problematic consequences. I argue that Daston, Galison and Rheinberger fail to create productive resonances between macro‐ and microhistorical perspectives, that they reproduce an internalist picture of scientific knowledge, and finally that Rheinberger's attempt to deconstruct the dichotomy between subject and object leads him to neglect questions about the political dimension of scientific research. (shrink)

This contribution draws attention to the circulation of materialities and persons as a central feature in the constitution of experimental cultures. The protein and ribosome research at the Max Planck Society (MPG)—with a main focus on the research conducted by Brigitte Wittmann‐Liebold at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics—serves as an example to highlight some of the central conditions that determined the material circulation in molecular biology: the very organizational framework of gender and economics. In doing so, this contribution (...) argues for a historical narrative that stresses the conditions facilitating the circulation of technologies, materials, and personnel. Histories of this kind contribute to an integrated view of the scientific, technological, social, political, economic, and cultural specificities of experimental cultures. (shrink)

Epistemic Encounters, Emerging Challenges. Three Thoughts about the History of Science and Medicine. With good reason, the future of the history of science and medicine can be characterized as a continuous move towards diversity. Epistemic encounters between disciplines, approaches and subject areas are continuously emerging. At the same time, new and disturbing challenges have arisen in the relationship between science, politics and society. Based on this observation, the following miniature offers three reflective thoughts. These aim (1) to raise more awareness (...) of the socio‐political responsibility of historiographical positioning; (2) to address questions of (historical) relationality and (theoretical) systematicity more explicitly; and (3), and by focusing on German academic medicine, to highlight some desiderata at the intersection of the history of science and contemporary history. (shrink)

Chronische Vergiftung und die Krise regulatorischer Modelle. Chemische Mutagene in der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), 1963–1973. Die Regulierung und Prävention von Gefahren gehört zu den Hauptmerkmalen des modernen Staates. Die Vorstellungen und Konzepte von Gefahr haben sich allerdings über die Zeit verändert. Die Genealogie dieser Veränderungen zeigt, dass die Geschichte gesellschaftlicher Veränderung und die Geschichte des Wissens eng verbunden sind. In den 1970er Jahren hat eine tiefgreifende gesellschaftliche Transformation in den westlichen Industrieländern begonnen. Der vorliegende Artikel geht davon aus, dass diese (...) Entwicklung auch mit grundlegenden epistemischen Rekonfigurationen verbunden war und dass dabei die Genealogie des Risikos eine besondere Rolle gespielt hat. Diese These wird am Beispiel der Beratungspolitik der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) untersucht. Seit Anfang der 1960er Jahre beschäftigten sich die vom DFG Senat eingerichteten und auf Regulierung ausgerichteten Expertengremien (Senatskommissionen) mit der gesundheitlichen Bedrohung, die von Umweltstoffen wie Pestiziden ausgeht. Eine besondere Bedeutung kam der Senatskommission für Mutagenitätsfragen zu, da ihre Arbeit in der Gründung eines DFG‐eigenen Forschungsinstituts, des Zentrallaboratoriums für Mutagenitätsprüfung (ZLM), mündete. Die Arbeit des ZLM zeigt, dass die Erforschung und Testung mutagener Stoffe die expertenbasierte Beratungsspolitik der Mutagenitätskommission in eine Krise führten, deren Muster an die Konstellation der “Risikogesellschaft” erinnert. Es wird gezeigt, dass die hier (neu) austarierte Beziehung zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik/Öffentlichkeit besser im Rahmen einer politischen Epistemologie beschrieben wird.Low Dose Intoxication and a Crisis of Regulatory Models. Chemical Mutagens in the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), 1963–1973. Regulation and the prevention of danger are among the main characteristics of the modern state. However, the idea and the conceptualization of what danger is have changed over time. The genealogy of these changes shows that the history of social change and the history of knowledge are well connected. The 1970s marked the start of a social transformation of Western industrialized societies. This article proposes that this transformation was connected with basic epistemic reconfigurations and that the genealogy of risk played a significant role. This thesis is explored through the example of DFG advisory politics. Beginning in the 1960s, the DFG expert commissions that had been established to make policy and regulation recommendations began to focus more and more on the health effects of environmental pollution. The Commission for Questions of Mutagenicity played a particularly interesting role because its recommendations resulted in the foundation of a research institution run by the DFG, the Central Laboratory for Mutagenicity Testing (CML). The challenges faced by the CML in mutagenic research and testing effected a crisis of the expert‐based advisory politics of the Mutagenicity Commission and a fundamental shift in the way scientific (regulatory) knowledge was perceived and valued politically. The pattern of this crisis calls to mind the constellation of the “risk society”, but as will be shown, the (re)balancing of science and politics/society presented here is more adequately understood within the framework of political epistemology. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 355-372, September 2022.