Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

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Annual Report 1995


Table of Contents

A Growing Institute

Goals of the Institute

Research scholars and guests

Research scholars
Visiting scholars and research fellows

Projects of the research group headed by Jürgen Renn

Project 1: The Relation of Practical Experience and Conceptual Structures in the Emergence of Science

General Goals of the Project
Current research activities related to ``The Relation of Practical Experience and Conceptual Structures in the Emergence of Science''
The Emergence of Preclassical Mechanics
The Sources of Medieval Theoretical Mechanics
The Terminology of Preclassical Mechanics
The Cosmological Contexts of Mechanics
A New Translation of Newton's Principia

Project 2: Studies in the Integration and Disintegration of Knowledge in Modern Science

General Goals of the Project
Current research activities related to ``Studies in the Integration and Disintegration of Knowledge in Modern Science''
Knowledge Integration and Concept Formation in Microbiology
The Philosophical Integration of Classical Science
Newton's Synthesis of jusiV and tecnh and its Reception in the Hegelian system
The Disintegration of Nineteenth Century Physics and its Reflection in Wittgenstein's Philosophy
The Relativity Crisis and the Reorganization of Classical Knowledge on Gravitation
The Quantum Crisis and the Reorganization of Research Strategies in Classical Physics
The Disintegration of Evolutionary Biology

Development: Electronic Research Tools and Databases

General Goals of the Developments
Current work related to ``Electronic Research Tools and Databases''
Toolbox for the Development of Electronic Working Environments
Electronic Edition and Representation of Codex Ms. 72, Galileo's manuscripts on mechanics (joint project together with the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza and with the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence)
Database of Proto-Cuneiform Texts from Archaic Babylonia (joint project together with the Seminar of Near Eastern Archaeology of the Freie Universität Berlin, with the Near Eastern Department of the Pergamon Museum Berlin, and with the Computer Center of the Universität Lüneburg)
Computer Representation and Analysis of Astronomical Diaries from Ancient Mesopotamia
Electronic Models of Discovery Processes

Projects of the research group headed by Lorraine Daston

Project 1: The varieties of scientific experience

General Goals of the Project
Current research activities related to ``The Varieties of Scientific Experience''
Wonders and the Order of Nature
The Emergence of Scientific Psychiatry: From Clinical Observation to Social Field Work
A World on Paper: Experiment, Explanation, and Representation in Nineteenth-Century Organic Chemistry
The Eloquence of Experiment: Changing Physical Standards in Nineteenth-Century Experimental Physics
The Electrification of Iceland: The Calibration of Physics and Culture
Entering a New Field from Different Contexts: The Early Research of Faraday and Ampère in Electromagnetism

Project 2: The history of scientific objectivity

General Goals of the Project
Current research activities related to ``The History of Scientific Objectivity''
The Images of Objectivity
History as a Problem for the Sciences: Changing Approaches to History in the Social Sciences and the Humanities in Germany after 1900
Women Scientists at the Berlin University and at the Berlin Institutes of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, 1898-1945

Other Research Activities

Other activities of the research scholars
Activities of the visiting scholars and research fellows

Service units

Library and documentation unit
Computing service unit

Events and Publications

Workshops and conferences
Workshop on ``Fundamental Concepts of Early Modern Chemistry in the Context of Operational and Experimental Practice,'' June 16-18, 1995
``Fourth International Conference on the History of General Relativity'', July 31 - August 3, 1995
Berlin Summer Academy 1995: ``The Knowing Body of the Scientist/ Körperkenntnisse in den Naturwissenschaften,'' August 13-26, 1995
``The Coming into Being and Passing Away of Scientific Objects,'' September 20-23, 1995
Memorial Symposium for Lorenz Krüger, September 25, 1995
Workshop ``Rethinking - not Unthinking - the Enlightenment,'' November 11-12, 1995
Planned Workshops and Conferences
Workshop ``Gene Concepts in Development and Evolution II,'' October 17-20, 1996
``The Display of Nature in Eighteenth-Century Europe,'' December 1996
``Varieties of Scientific Experience,'' June 19-22, 1997
Berlin Summer Academy: Nature's Histories, August 1997
International Summer Seminar, August 1998
Internal Colloquium of the Institute 1995
Cumulative Bibliography to date December 31, 1995
Preprints 1995

Appendix

Speeches at the opening ceremony of the Institute on March 31, 1995


Responsible: J. Schneider. Last Modified: November 4, 1996