The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin was established in 1994, and is part of the network of research institutes sponsored by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science. The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science is dedicated to the development of a theoretically-oriented history of science, which studies the acquisition of knowledge in interaction with its cultural, technical, and social contexts. Although the history of the natural sciences and mathematics is the primary focus of its research program, the Institute also sponsors a number of projects devoted to the history of the human sciences. The research pursued at the Institute aims to develop a "historical epistemology" for the sciences: a historical understanding of the fundamental categories that shape scientific investigation, explanation, evidence, and proof.
The years 1996-97 continued to be years of steep growth for the Institute. By the end of 1997 the number of Research Scholars employed at the Institute had risen from 22 (1995) to 26; in the period 1996-97, 67 predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows and 36 Visiting Scholars from all corners of the learned world enlivened the Institute's research projects, colloquia, and conferences. An increasing number of these visitors came with support from external research institutions, including the Danish Natural Science Research Council, the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, the Schweizer National Fonds, the German Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Heisenberg-Programm), and several universities. The Institute has also participated in research collaborations with the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence; the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence; and the Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. The Institute library has attempted to keep pace with the increase of resident scholars: since 1995 its holdings have grown from 13,000 to 20,000 volumes; these are to be supplemented by several computer data bases compiled in connection with specific research projects and an ambitious scanning project of key manuscripts and primary sources in the history of science. Most significant of all for the Institute's intellectual and institutional development was the addition of a third Department, under the directorship of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, which officially began its work in January 1997.
Now that all three of the scholarly Departments originally planned for the Institute are in place and, as the contents of this Report testify in detail, active, the next intellectual and institutional challenge will be one of integration. Although the research reports contained in this volume cover an extraordinary range of topics, from the workings of ancient balances, to scientific travel, to the construction of a virtual physiological laboratory, certain themes recur throughout. These include the historicity and variety of scientific experience, the role of material culture in science, and the historical processes, cognitive and cultural, that create new objects of scientific inquiry. The specific contexts in which these themes currently are being explored by researchers at the Institute span many disciplines and periods; all, however, aim at a more general level of reflection concerning the historical preconditions for the emergence and disappearance of fundamental epistemological categories like "experience" and "object." In 1996-97 several conferences were dedicated to aspects of these themes (see Workshops and Conferences p. 253) , and in 1999 all three Departments will host an international conference on "Things that Are Good to Think with: Paradigmatic Objects in the Sciences."
In addition to these connecting research themes, four new research initiatives, all scheduled to begin in 1998, will also contribute to the intellectual life of the Institute as a whole. Two of these are five-year independent research groups to be led by outstanding junior scholars; the selection procedure, conducted by an international and interdisciplinary commission of scholars, is already under way. The third is an independent five-year commission established by the Max Planck Society to investigate the history of its predecessor organization, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, from 1998 to 2003, concentrating on the National Socialist period (1933-45). This project is the result of a joint initiative by the historically-oriented Max Planck Institutes and the Max Planck Society Archives, and will be located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Its scholarly advisors are Professor Reinhard Rürup (Technische Universität Berlin) and Professor Wolfgang Schieder (Universität zu Köln); PD Dr. Doris Kaufmann, Research Fellow at the Institute from 1995-97, has been appointed Research Director of the project. Fourth and finally, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science was awarded one of ten five-year research professorships for junior women scholars of distinction in their fields. Dr. Emma Spary (University of Warwick, U.K.) will take up her professorship in July 1998.
Inquiries of a general nature concerning the Institute and its programs should be addressed to the Research Coordinator:
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Phone + 4930 226 67 -210, Fax -299
e-mail: jsr@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
Further information can be found at the Institute's website
http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de