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Institute's Bibliography (PuRe) Team

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Working Group Volumes

Working Group volumes are a specialty of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG): volumes written by two or more authors which are the result of intensive collaboration, involving multiple working sessions in which drafts of the individual chapters are presented, discussed, and revised. Many MPIWG research projects publish their principal results in this form, in addition to books and articles by individual participating scholars. These Working Group volumes are especially well suited to opening up new fields of research and to covering topics from a comparative perspective, both challenges that invite collective rather than individual scholarship.

 

 

2017
book cover: Elaine Leong et al: Testing Drugs and Trying Cures (Special Issue Bulletin of the History of Medicine) (2017)
Special Issue (Working Group Volume)

Testing Drugs and Trying Cures

Practices of testing drugs and trying cures were clearly central to premodern medicine. As the present articles demonstrate, a wide range of actors conducted a variety of practices in order to assess drug efficacy; determine the virtues of plants, animals, and minerals; ascertain the composition of compound drugs; tweak production and application methods; and much more.

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book cover: Feldhay et al: Before Copernicus: the Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century (2017)
Working Group Volume

Before Copernicus: the Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century

In 1984, Noel Swerdlow and Otto Neugebauer argued that Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) explained planetary motion by using mathematical devices and astronomical models originally developed by Islamic astronomers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Was this a parallel development, or did Copernicus somehow learn of the work of his predecessors, and if so, how?

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book cover: Alexander Blum et al: The Renaissance of Einstein's Theory of Gravitation (2017)
Special Issue (Working Group Volume)

The Renaissance of Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation

On November 25th 1915, Albert Einstein submitted to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences the last of a series of papers that contained the final and fundamental equation of his theory of gravitation, which he called General Relativity (Einstein 1915, 1916). This equation contains the field-theoretic law according to which the energy-momentum distribution of matter sources acts on and reacts to the gravitational field.

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book cover: Lorraine Daston: Science in the archives - Past, presents, futures (2017)
Working Group Volume

Science in the Archives: Pasts, Presents, Futures

Archives bring to mind rooms filled with old papers and dusty artifacts. But for scientists, the detritus of the past can be a treasure trove of material vital to present and future research: fossils collected by geologists; data banks assembled by geneticists; weather diaries trawled by climate scientists; libraries visited by historians.

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2016
book cover: Schemmel, Matthias: Spatial Thinking an External Representation (2016)
Working Group Volume

Spatial Thinking and External Representation: Towards a Historical Epistemology of Space

Spatial thinking plays a central role in the life of individuals as well as whole societies. It ranges from everyday orientation in our living environment to the social organization of place and space and the structuring of a huge corpus of experiential knowledge by means of theoretical concepts in modern science.

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book cover: Grafton/ Most: Canonical Texts and scholarly practices. A Global Comparative approach (2016)
Working Group Volume

Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices: a Global Comparative Approach

In this collection of richly documented case studies, experts in many textual traditions examine the ways in which important texts were preserved, explicated, corrected, and used for a variety of purposes. This volume shows how much is learned when historians of scholarship focus on earlier scholars' practices, and when Western scholarly traditions are treated as part of a much larger, cross-cultural inquiry.

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book cover: Mitman/ Wilder: Documenting the world (2016)
Working Group Volume

Documenting the World: Film, Photography, and the Scientific Record

Imagine the twentieth century without photography and film. Its history would be absent of images that define historical moments and generations. 'Documenting the World' is about the material and social life of photographs and film made in the scientific quest to document the world.

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book cover: Blum et al: Shifting Paradigms. Thomas S. Kuhn and the History of Science (2018)
Working Group Volume

Shifting Paradigms : Thomas S. Kuhn and the History of Science

The publication of Thomas S. Kuhn’s "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in 1962 stands for a turning point in the history and philosophy of science. The repercussions of this work have rearticulated the theoretical framework of history and philosophy of science and have also generated discussions that contributed to the formation of the communities of historians as well as philosophers of science in many parts of the world.

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2015
book cover
Working Group Volume

Quand la raison faillit perdre l'esprit: la rationalité mise à l'épreuve de la Guerre froide

Aux États-Unis, au plus fort de la Guerre froide, un nouveau projet visant à redéfinir la rationalité suscita l’intérêt d’intellectuels brillants, de politiciens influents, de fondations fortunées et des hauts cercles de l’armée.

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book cover: Vidal, Francesco et al: Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture (2015)
Working Group Volume

Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture

  • Fernando VidalDias, Nélia

The notion of Endangerment stands at the heart of a network of concepts, values and practices dealing with objects and beings considered threatened by extinction, and with the procedures aimed at preserving them. Usually animated by a sense of urgency and citizenship, identifying endangered entities involves evaluating an impending threat and opens the way for preservation strategies.

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book cover: Hoffmann/ Kolboske/ Renn (ed.): "Dem Anwenden muss das Erkennen vorausgehen" (2015)
Working Group Volume

‚Dem Anwenden muss das Erkennen vorausgehen‘: auf dem Weg zu einer Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Anknüpfend an die Tradition der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft ist die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft heute eine einzigartige Institution der Grundlagenforschung, die weltweit Attraktivität und Vorbildwirkung besitzt. Auf welchen Erfahrungen und Prinzipien beruht diese Wirkung?

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2014
book cover: Renn et al: Wissensgeschichte der Architektur (2014)
Working Group Volume

Wissensgeschichte der Architektur

Das den großen Bauleistungen der Vergangenheit zugrunde liegende Wissen und seine Entwicklung ist Gegenstand der hier vorgelegten Wissensgeschichte der Architektur. Die Forschungen haben sich insbesondere auf das Planungswissen, das Materialwissen, das bautechnische Wissen und das logistische Wissen konzentriert.

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2013
book cover: Daston, L. (Ed.). (2013). How Reason Almost Lost its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Working Group Volume

How Reason Almost Lost its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality

In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass.

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book cover: Badino/ Navarro: Research and Pedagogy: A History of Quantum Physics through its Textbooks (2013)
Working Group Volume

Research and Pedagogy : A History of Quantum Physics through its Textbooks

  • Badino, MassimilianoNavarro, Jaume

Historians of quantum physics and early quantum mechanics have seldom paid attention to the ways the new theory was integrated in physics textbooks, perhaps taking for granted that novelties in science can only be taught once they are fully understood and generally accepted.

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book cover: Katzir/ Lehner/ Renn: Traditions and Transformations in the History of Quantum Physics (2013)
Working Group Volume

Traditions and Transformations in the History of Quantum Physics: HQ-3 Third International Conference on the History of Quantum Physics, Berlin, June 28 - July 2, 2010

More than a century after the beginning of the quantum revolution, historians continue to explore new facets in the history of quantum physics, and to re-examine some of its better-known aspects.

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book cover: von Oertzen, Christine: Beyond the academy: Histories of Gender and Knowledge (2013)
Special Issue (Working Group Volume)

Beyond the Academy: Histories of Gender and Knowledge

These essays examine overlooked agents and sites of knowledge production beyond the academy and venues of industry- and government-sponsored research. By using gender as a category of analysis, they uncover scientific practices taking place in locations such as the kitchen, the nursery, and the storefront.

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2012
book cover: Jürgen Renn: The Globalization of Knowledge in History (2012)
Working Group Volume

The Globalization of Knowledge in History

This volume presents results of an interdisciplinary research project on the globalization of knowledge. The project is part of the research program of a historical epistemology whose aim is to contribute also to the reflexivity of present science and its institutions. It pursues a comparative history of knowledge in which present processes of globalization are conceived as the outcome of historical developments and their interactions.

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book cover: Annals of Science, Volume 69, 2012: Issue 3: Ursula Klein: Artisanal-scientific Experts in Eighteenth-century France and Germany
Special Issue (Working Group Volume)

Artisanal-Scientific Experts in Eighteenth-Century France and Germany

The 18th century was an age of expanding and diversifying state bureaucracies. In France and the German states new administrative departments were founded in order to promote trade and manufacture, as were public institutions to provide technical and scientific education. The essays are based on a workshop held at the Institute in October 2010.

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book cover: Lehner/ Renn/ Schemmel: Einstein and the Changing Worldviews of Physics (2012)
Working Group Volume

Einstein and the Changing Worldviews of Physics

This volume reviews conceptual conflicts at the foundations of physics now and in the past century. The focus is on the conditions and consequences of Einstein's pathbreaking achievements that sealed the decline of the classical notions of space, time, radiation, and matter, and resulted in the theory of relativity.

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2011
book cover: Feest/ Sturm: Erkenntnis (2011)
Working Group Volume

What (good) is Historical Epistemology?

  • Sturm, Thomas Feest, Uljana

The central purpose of epistemology, as traditionally understood, is to identify and justify the epistemic basis of knowledge, including scientific knowledge. While epistemology in this sense is one of the strongest branches of contemporary philosophy, its universalizing approach has been criticized in various ways.

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