According to German theorists historicism was the result of a dynamization of the static world-view of the Enlightenment. According to contemporary Anglo-Saxon theorists historicism resulted from a de-rhetoricization of Enlightenment historical writing. It is argued that, contrary to appearances, these two views do not exclude but support each other. This can be explained if the account of change implicit in Enlightenment historical writing is compared to that suggested by historicism and, more specifically, by the historicist notion of the "historical idea." (...) Aspects of the contemporary debate about the nature and the task of historical writing can be clarified from the perspective of the differences between Enlightenment and historicist historical writing. (shrink)

According to German theorists historicism was the result of a dynamization of the static world-view of the Enlightenment. According to contemporary Anglo-Saxon theorists historicism resulted from a de-rhetoricization of Enlightenment historical writing. It is argued that, contrary to appearances, these two views do not exclude but support each other. This can be explained if the account of change implicit in Enlightenment historical writing is compared to that suggested by historicism and, more specifically, by the historicist notion of the "historical idea." (...) Aspects of the contemporary debate about the nature and the task of historical writing can be clarified from the perspective of the differences between Enlightenment and historicist historical writing. (shrink)

À partir du moment où le chasseur-cueilleur préhistorique devenait agriculteur, une nouvelle société et une culture originale créées par et créatrices de l'organisation sociale de la production marquaient le début d'un monde inédit, le début de l'histoire.À partir du dix-neuvième siècle le déterminant historique du comportement et de l'évolution de l'homme, l'organisation sociale de la production, devenait, dans un intervalle extrêmement court, le subalterne d'un facteur décisif inhabituel, de l'organisation sociale de l'invention. Le monde généré par et générateur de toujours (...) autres inventions qui bouleversent à un rythme soutenu l'humanité et la nature est essentiellement différent du monde historique. C'est un monde posthistorique.Tout en se transformant sans cesse, la société et la culture posthistoriques ont poussé si loin la transformation de leur univers qu'on assiste déjà à l'implantation dans la nature terrestre de deux macro-créations artificielles: d'un nouveau règne, le règne technique, dû à l'invention physique, et d'une nouvelle forme de vie, la paravie, produite par l'invention biologique. Les menaces inquiétantes à l'adresse de l'homme et de la nature multipliées par ces deux systèmes insolites ont leur origine dans le caractère sauvage de l'actuelle organisation sociale de l'invention. (shrink)

Like many other scientists, I was amused by news of the prank played by the NYU mathematical physicist Alan Sokal. Late in 1994 he submitted a sham article to the cultural studies journal Social Text, in which he reviewed some current topics in physics and mathematics, and with tongue in cheek drew various cultural, philosophical and political morals that he felt would appeal to fashionable academic commentators on science who question the claims of science to objectivity.

Einleitung.--Die begriffliche Erkenntniss der Körperwelt.--Natur und Geist.--Natur und Geschichte.--Die historische Begriffsbildung.--Naturphilosophie und Geschichts-Philosophie.

David Cahan has assembled an outstanding group of European and North American historians of science and philosophy for this intellectual biography of Helmholtz, ...

Does thinking have a history? If there are no necessarily changeless structures to be found in things and in our inquiry into them, then what knowledge of the world and ourselves is possible? In this boldly original and elegantly written study, Joseph Margolis argues for a radically historicized view of history that treats it as both a real process and a narrative account, each a product of continual change. Developing his argument through discussions of such influential philosophers of history and (...) the natural sciences as Vico, Danto, Collingwood, Habermas, Hempel, Popper, Putnam, and Gadamer, he provides a coherent theory of flux and invariance that resolves several deep puzzles regarding human nature and understanding. While maintaining a thorough command of Anglo-American philosophy, Margolis challenges many of its most cherished assumptions and demonstrates the sense in which history and interpretation are one and the same. Exploring one of the master themes of this century, his book offers a novel theory of the human condition whose conclusions and concerns seem certain to inform philosophy in the next century as well. (shrink)

An lisis de la relaci n llena de tensiones entre ciencias naturales, literatura y sociolog a en tres fuentes culturales: Francia (primitivo positivismo, literatura y sociolog a a fines de siglo XX); Inglaterra (John Stuart Mill, Beatris Webb, la novela ut pica como sustituto de la sociolog a: H. G. Wells y la critica literaria en los siglos XIX y XX) y Alemania (W. H. Riehl, contradicci n entre poes a y literatura, sociolog a y ciencia de la historia), cuyo (...) resultado trasciende los l mites de tiempo y espacio. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey: Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. Versuch einer Grundlegung für das Studium der Gesellschaft und ihrer Geschichte Lesefreundlicher Großdruck in 16-pt-Schrift Großformat, 210 x 297 mm Berliner Ausgabe, 2020 Durchgesehener Neusatz mit einer Biographie des Autors bearbeitet und eingerichtet von Theodor Borken Erstdruck: Leipzig (Duncker & Humblot) 1883. Textgrundlage ist die Ausgabe: Wilhelm Dilthey: Gesammelte Schriften. Herausgegeben von Bernhard Groethuysen u. a., Leipzig u. a.: B. G. Teubner u. a., 1914 ff. Umschlaggestaltung von Thomas Schultz-Overhage. Gesetzt aus der Minion Pro, (...) 16 pt. Henricus Edition Deutsche Klassik UG (haftungsbeschränkt). (shrink)

Early practitioners of the social studies of science turned their attention away from questions of institutionalisation, which had tended to emphasize macrolevel explanations, and attended instead to microstudies of laboratory practice. The author is interested in re-investigating certain aspects of institution formation, notably the formation of scientific, medical, and engineering disciplines. He emphasises the manner in which science as cultural practice is imbricated with other forms of social, political, and even aesthetic practices. The author considers the following topics: the organic (...) physics of 1847; the innovative research program of Carl Ludwig as a model for institutionalising science-based medicine, optics, painting, and ideology in Germany, 1845-95; the Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia; and the introduction of nuclear magnetic resonance instrumentation into the practice of organic chemistry. (shrink)

Does thinking have a history? If there are no necessarily changeless structures to be found in things and in our inquiry into them, then what knowledge of the world and ourselves is possible? In this boldly original and elegantly written study, Joseph Margolis argues for a radically historicized view of history that treats it as both a real process and a narrative account, each a product of continual change. Developing his argument through discussions of such influential philosophers of history and (...) the natural sciences as Vico, Danto, Collingwood, Habermas, Hempel, Popper, Putnam, and Gadamer, he provides a coherent theory of flux and invariance that resolves several deep puzzles regarding human nature and understanding. While maintaining a thorough command of Anglo-American philosophy, Margolis challenges many of its most cherished assumptions and demonstrates the sense in which history and interpretation are one and the same. Exploring one of the master themes of this century, his book offers a novel theory of the human condition whose conclusions and concerns seem certain to inform philosophy in the next century as well. (shrink)

In the early nineteenth century, a group of German biologists led by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer initiated a search for laws of biological organization that would explain the phenomena of form and function and establish foundations for a unified theory of life. The tradition spawned by these efforts found its most important spokesman in Karl Ernst von Baer. Timothy Lenoir chronicles the hitherto unexplored achievements of the practitioners of this research tradition as they aimed to place functional (...) morphology at the heart of a new science, which they called "biology." Strongly influenced by Immanuel Kant, the biologists’ approach combined a sophisticated teleology with mechanistic theories and sparked bitter controversies with the rival programs, mechanistic reductionism and Darwinism. Although temporarily eclipsed by these two approaches, the morphological tradition, Lenoir argues, was not vanquished in the field of scientific debate. It contributed to pathbreaking research in areas such as comparative anatomy, embryology, paleontology, and biogeography. Preface Introduction 1. Vital Materialism 2. The Concrete Formulation of the Program: From Vital Materialism to Developmental Morphology 3. Teleomechanism and the Cell Theory 4. The Functional Morphologists 5. Worlds in Collision 6. Teleomechanism and Darwin’s Theory Epilogue Notes Name Index Index. (shrink)

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