Jan Surman

What is special about sciences in Central and Eastern Europe? What are the obstacles for writing histories of science done beyond metropoles? Is this science different than the science in the centers and what makes it so? How imperial are sciences made by representatives of dominant nations compared to non-dominant nations? These are some of the questions touched upon in the interview with Michael Gordin, a leading historian of science from Princeton University.

What is special about sciences in Central and Eastern Europe? What are the obstacles for writing histories of science production beyond metropoles? Is this science different then science in the centers and what makes it such? How imperial are sciences made by representatives of the dominant nations and of non-dominant nations? These are some of the questions touched upon in the interview of Michael Gordin, leading historian of science from Princeton University.

Academic reviewing, one of the communal academic practices, is a vital genre, in which epistemic virtues have been cultivated. In our article, we discuss reviews as a form of institutionalized critique, which historians could use to trace the changing epistemic virtues within humanities. We propose to use them analogously to Lorraine Daston’s and Peter Galison’s treatment of atlases in their seminal work Objectivity as a marker of changing epistemic virtues in natural sciences and medicine.

Based on Aristotle’s virtue theory and its neo-Aristotelian interpretation in the second half of the 20th century, as well as on its most recent applications in the field of history and philosophy of science, we propose a general conceptual framework for analyzing reviews in their historical dimension. Besides, we contend that the analysis of reviews should be carried out taking into account their historical context of social, political, cultural and media-environment. Otherwise, one may risks presupposing the existence of an autonomous, disconnected community of scholars.

Article available under CC BY license.

License text: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode   

The conversation revolves around the historical epistemology as a special branch of the history of science, which has been largely influenced by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and his team at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Apart from the discussion of the idea of historical epistemology, its position among the historical disciplines and the implications it has for science policy, what is also considered is experiment as a basic unit of science.

Doris Bachmann-Medick (red.), The Trans/National Study of Culture: A Translational Perspective, de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2014, s. 271.

Pomimo dość długiego funkcjonowania jako dyscyplina naukowa kulturoznawstwo (i niesynonimiczne z nim, lecz genetycznie spokrewnione niemieckie Kulturwissenschaft czy angielskojęzyczne cultural studies i culture studies) w dalszym ciągu poszukują własnego miejsca na płaszczyznach tematycznej i teoretycznej. Kolejną próbę dokonania tego dookreślenia stanowi wydany niedawno przez wydawnictwo de Gruyter tom Travelling Concepts for the Study of
Culture pod redakcją Birgit Neumann i Ansgara Nünninga. Wywodzi się on z usytuowanego w Giessen (Hesja) Graduate Center for the Study of Culture (GCSC), w którym to centrum travelling concepts – wędrujące pojęcia (Mieke Bal) – stały się motywem przewodnim szkolenia przyszłych kulturologów. (fragment0