Science in Context最新文献

{"title":"Modernism, modernity, and politics in the general history of science: Implications of Herbert Mehrtens' work, from \"Vienna 1900\" to the Nazi era, and beyond.","authors":"Mitchell G Ash","doi":"10.1017/S0269889724000061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889724000061","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Herbert Mehrtens' work and the implications of the historical ideas he advanced went beyond the history of any single discipline. The article therefore addresses three broad issues: (1) Mehrtens' reconceptualization of mathematical modernism, in his field-changing book <i>Moderne-Sprache-Mathematik</i> (1990) and other works, as an epistemic and cultural phenomenon in a way that could potentially reach across and also beyond the sciences and also link scientific and cultural modernisms; (2) the extension of his work to the history of modernity itself via the concept of \"technocratic modernism\"; (3) his seminal contributions to the historiography of the sciences and technology during the National Socialist period, focusing on his critique of claims that mathematics, the natural sciences and technology were morally or politically \"neutral\" during or after the Nazi era, and on his counter-claim that mathematicians and other scientists had in fact mobilized themselves and their knowledge in support of Nazism's central political projects. Taken as a guide for understanding science-politics relations in general, Mehrtens' work was and remains a counterweight to the political abstinence adopted by many who have followed the \"cultural turn\" in history of science and technology. In the broadest sense, the article is a plea for the culturally relevant and politically engaged historiography of the sciences and humanities that Mehrtens himself pursued.</p>","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142299554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Brouwer and Hausdorff: On reassessing the foundations crisis","authors":"David E. Rowe","doi":"10.1017/s0269889724000103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0269889724000103","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Epistemological issues associated with Cantorian set theory were at the center of the foundational debates from 1900 onward. Hermann Weyl, as a central actor, saw this as a smoldering crisis that burst into flames after World War I. The historian Herbert Mehrtens argued that this “foundations crisis” was part of a larger conflict that pitted moderns, led by David Hilbert, against various counter-moderns, who opposed the promotion of set theory and trends toward abstract theories. Among counter-moderns, L.E.J. Brouwer went a step further by proposing new foundational principles based on his philosophy of intuitionism. Meanwhile, Felix Hausdorff emerged as a leading proponent of the new modern style. In this essay, I offer a reassessment of the foundations crisis that stresses the marginal importance of the various intellectual issues involved. Instead, I offer an interpretation that focuses on tensions within the German mathematical community that led to a dramatic power struggle for control of the journal <span>Mathematische Annalen.</span></p>","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142269559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"George Montandon, the Ainu and the theory of hologenesis","authors":"John L. Hennessey","doi":"10.1017/s0269889723000157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0269889723000157","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In 1909, Italian zoologist Daniele Rosa (1857–1944) proposed a radical new evolutionary theory: hologenesis, or simultaneous, pan-terrestrial creation and evolution driven primarily by internal factors. Hologenesis was widely ignored or rejected outside Italy, but Swiss-French anthropologist George Montandon (1879–1944) eagerly embraced and developed the theory. An ambitious careerist, Montandon’s deep investment in an obscure and unpopular theory is puzzling. Today, Montandon is best known for his virulent antisemitism and active collaboration with the Nazi occupation of France at the end of his career. By that point, however, he had quietly moved away from hologenesis. This shift has gone unnoticed or been left unexplained in existing research. This article reexamines Montandon’s theoretical outlook and reasons for championing Rosa’s forgotten theory. It argues that while Montandon’s adoption of hologenesis arose from a complex blend of scientific and personal factors, his previously overlooked early fieldwork with the Ainu played a key role. In contrast, hologenesis did not inform Montandon’s later public antisemitism.</p>","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138717093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Textual materiality and abstraction in mathematics","authors":"Anna Kiel Steensen, Mikkel Willum Johansen, Morten Misfeldt","doi":"10.1017/s0269889723000182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0269889723000182","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we wish to explore the role that textual representations play in the creation of new mathematical objects. We do so by analyzing texts by Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) and Évariste Galois (1811–1832), which are seen as central to the historical development of the mathematical concept of groups. In our analysis, we consider how the material features of representations relate to the changes in conceptualization that we see in the texts. Against this backdrop, we discuss the idea that new mathematical concepts, in general, are increasingly abstract in the sense of being detached from material configurations. Our analysis supports the opposite view. We suggest that changes in the material aspects of textual representations (i.e., the actual graphic inscriptions) play an active and crucial role in conceptual change. We employ an analytical framework adapted from Bruno Latour’s 1999 account of intertwined material and representational practices in the empirical sciences. This approach facilitates a foregrounding of the interconnection between the conceptual development of mathematics, and the construction, (re-)configuration, and manipulation of the materiality of representations. Our analysis suggests that, in mathematical practice, distinctions between the material and structural features of representations are not permanent and absolute. This problematizes the appropriateness of the distinction between concrete inscriptions and abstract relations in understanding the development of mathematical concepts.","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138685908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The animal model of human disease as a core concept of medical research: Historical cases, failures, and some epistemological considerations","authors":"Volker Roelcke","doi":"10.1017/s0269889723000170","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0269889723000170","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article uses four historical case studies to address epistemological issues related to the animal model of human diseases and its use in medical research on human diseases. The knowledge derived from animal models is widely assumed to be highly valid and predictive of reactions by human organisms. In this contribution, I use three significant historical cases of failure (ca. 1890, 1960, 2006), and a closer look at the emergence of the concept around 1860/70, to elucidate core assumptions related to the specific practices of animal-human knowledge transfer, and to analyze the explanations provided by historical actors after each of the failures. Based on these examples, I argue that the epistemological status of the animal model changed from that of a helpful methodological tool for addressing specific questions, but with precarious validity, to an obligatory method for the production of strong knowledge on human diseases. As a result, there now exists a culture of biomedical research in human disease that, for more than a century, has taken the value of this methodological tool as self-evident, and more or less beyond question.</p>","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138575724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A married couple of mathematicians from Vienna remembers Sigmund Freud (1953).","authors":"Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze","doi":"10.1017/S0269889722000229","DOIUrl":"10.1017/S0269889722000229","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The paper is based on a hitherto unexplored document (audiotape of an interview accompanied by a German transcript) from 1953, located in the Freud Papers at the Library of Congress. It contributes to a better understanding of the impact of Freud and of Psychoanalysis on personalities from the exact sciences, here represented by the noted applied mathematicians Richard von Mises and Hilda Geiringer from Vienna. The detailed discussion of the interview sheds some new light on the different roles of Kraus and Freud in the Vienna culture, on the Vienna Jugendkulturbewegung (youth culture movement) during WWI in which Geiringer was involved, on Freud's and Siegfried Bernfeld's standing around 1930 among German philosophers and psychologists, and on Wilhelm Fließ' theory of periodicity, which von Mises-based on his attitude as an applied mathematician-defended against superficial accusations. Finally, new biographical material is provided for von Mises and the remotely related Freud family, and for Geiringer's and von Mises' early lives. The interview, which was taken during the Cold War, also allows conclusions as to how politics influenced the memories and views of the participants. Part of the aim of the paper is historical documentation of unknown material (letters by Karl Kraus and Wolfgang Köhler, one book review by Wilhelm Ostwald, a file on R. Pfennig), including some correction of erroneous information in the literature.</p>","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9209588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Shane Homan, Seamus O’Hanlon, Catherine Strong and John Tebutt. Music City Melbourne: Urban Culture, History and Policy (review)","authors":"Isobel D'Cruz Barnes","doi":"10.46580/cx70617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx70617","url":null,"abstract":"Documenting cultural life in contemporary Australia seems a fraught and daunting task, if not for the one-sided narratives so consistently reinforced through early scholarship, then at least due to the geographical vastness and diverse population that makes generalisation so difficult. The arrival of Music City Melbourne: Urban Culture, History and Policy is thus welcomed for its resolute specificity and unique historical lens. The book narrates and delineates popular music in Melbourne from the 1950s until the mid-2000s, exploring how it has shaped, and been shaped by, cultural policy and migration. The text is a much-needed contribution to scholarship on both Australian cultural policy, which focuses predominantly on the fine arts, and Australian popular music that in general fails to account for the historical contributions made by marginalised groups. Indeed, the authors describe Music City Melbourne’s historical emphases and use of subtly critical language (most notably, their casual use of the term ‘invasion’ as opposed to ‘settlement’ of Australia) as ‘an important corrective of Anglo Saxon accounts’ of Australian history (p. 3, emphasis added). [...]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75124759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Noblewomen’s Devotional Song Practice in ‘Patiençe veinque tout’ (1647–1655), a German Manuscript from the Mid-seventeenth Century","authors":"Hannah Spracklan-Holl","doi":"10.46580/cx78832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx78832","url":null,"abstract":"\"Devotional song in the German vernacular was a large repertory in the seventeenth century; as Robert Kendrick points out, the more than two thousand printed collections of these songs produced at this time attest to a relatively musically literate public that engaged with the repertoire. Most published devotional songs appeared in collections, usually consisting of a foreword or dedications, other poetry, and songs. The songs themselves often appeared without printed musical notation, indicating the use of contrafactum. Both men and women contributed to the German devotional song repertoire; however, there is a notable number of original song texts written by women. The 1703 publication Glauben-schallende und Himmel-steigende Herzens-Music, for example, contains 1,052 devotional songs, of which 211 have texts written by women. Women’s performance of devotional texts—whether by singing, recitation, or reading—was a practice that demonstrated their deep internalisation of the text itself whilst also providing a socially acceptable means of self-expression. This article focuses on a mid-seventeenth century manuscript songbook compiled by Duchess Sophie Elisabeth of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1613–1676). It suggests that at least three songs in the manuscript have poetry and/or music written by noblewomen other than the duchess, including Juliane of Oldenburg-Delmenhorst (1615–1691) and Maria Magdalena of Waldeck-Wildungen (1606–1671). This suggestion is based on two notable features of Sophie Elisabeth’s meticulous recording practices in ‘Patiençe veinque tout’ that are missing from the songs in question. First, the authorship of these three songs is ambiguous, whereas the text and music for all other songs in the source are either made clear by Sophie Elisabeth’s own annotations accompanying each song, or are easily traceable. Second, none of the three songs include the duchess’s monogram, a date of composition, nor any other note stating her authorship (one or more of these notations are included for the songs in ‘Patiençe veinque tout’ that are of her own creation). In investigating the provenance of these songs, this article highlights the fact that women’s original texts, which are often overlooked, form a sizeable and significant body of musical literature from the early modern period. The two complementary practices of writing and performance paint an intimate portrait of women’s confessional and personal identity and the role music played in forming this identity, while also reflecting broader cross-confessional trends towards spiritual interiority and personal piety in the seventeenth century.\"","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85263365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Joseph N. Straus. The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis: Thirty-Three Graphic Music Analyses (review)","authors":"Aidan McGartland","doi":"10.46580/cx29461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx29461","url":null,"abstract":"Joseph Straus’s The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis is the apotheosis of his decades-long work in post-tonal theory, and serves as an apt analytical companion to his seminal textbook, Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory (4th ed. 2016). Straus displays his mastery of post-tonal analytical artistry throughout. The monograph consists of thirty-three graphic music analyses intuitively laid out, with a pioneering use of colour for further clarity, and complete with a slick video version of each analysis on the companion website. The aim of each analysis is to uncover the structure and form of the music, with an emphasis on pitch organisation, whilst remaining largely free from overarching contextual or theoretical arguments. […]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87835078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Not Just Wallpaper: An Interview with Michael Kieran Harvey","authors":"I. Parsons","doi":"10.46580/cx58054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.46580/cx58054","url":null,"abstract":"The career of pianist and composer Michael Kieran Harvey is notable for its diversity and wide repertoire. In addition to his more than fifty solo CDs recorded on various labels, Harvey is particularly known for his promotion of contemporary music; he has premiered many new Australian and international concertos, and more than three hundred solo Australian keyboard works, many of which are dedicated to him. […]","PeriodicalId":49562,"journal":{"name":"Science in Context","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72460830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}