( Completed: 2011)
The Making of a New Research Field: On the Pursuit of Interdisciplinarity in the German Neuromorphological Sciences, 1910–1945
Cooperation Partners: Dr. Cornelius Borck, Director; Professor of History of Medicine and Science; Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies; University of Luebeck – Germany; Professor Stephen Casper; History of Medicine and Science Program; Clarkson University – Potsdam (New York); United States; Professor Stanley Finger; History of Psychology and History of Neuroscience; Department of Psychology; Washington University in St. Louis – St. Louis (MO), United States; Dr. Paul Foley; Australian ARC Fellow & Conjoint Lecturer; School of Medical Sciences, UNSW; Research Institute; University of New South Prince of Wales Medical Research Wales – Sydney, Australia
I am currently working on a new book project, entitled “The Making of a New Research Field: On the Pursuit of Interdisciplinarity in the German Neuromorphological Sciences, 1910-1945,” which aims at reconstructing the important merging tendencies that since the 1910s have brought formerly separated disciplines (anatomy, physiology, neurology, psychiatry, radiology, and serology etc.) much closer together. Research in the neurosciences avant la lettre was hence strongly reorganized in interdisciplinary research groups and found its substrate in new centers for neuroscientific research (e.g. in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Breslau etc.), especially in the German-speaking countries.
In my book, I first discuss current theories from sociology and philosophy of science that have dealt with the problem of “interdisciplinarity” in the biomedical sciences from a theoretical perspective. It is my further aim to then also provide an historiographical account of the development of related concepts of the period in their specific cultural settings, while focusing on specific working groups, laboratories and research centers. It will be shown, with respect to the German neuromorphological sciences between 1910 and 1945, that historical concepts, practice and organizational patterns existed early in the 20th century that legitimize the use of the term of “interdisciplinary research” even at that particular time.
This study specifically explores the historiographical roles, narratives and epistemological meanings of concepts of “interdisciplinarity” in the neuroscientific community between 1910 and 1945. The project adds to the growing corpus of literature on German neuroscience in a time period that has not received as much attention from medical historians as it should have, in order to better understand the scientific, organizational, and cultural innovations that strongly determined the course of biomedical research after WWII.
