Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte最新文献

{"title":"Introduction: Embracing Ambivalence and Change**","authors":"Lara Keuck,&nbsp;Kärin Nickelsen","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202200044","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202200044","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In 1997, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger published his now seminal book <i>Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube</i>. Twenty-four years later, in 2021, he compiled a collection of essays under the title <i>Spalt und Fuge: Eine Phänomenologie des Experiments</i>, which will shortly also be available in English. What happened between these two books? What does it mean to write the history of the life sciences now? What is the place of Rheinberger's historical epistemology in the contemporary landscape?</p><p>These were the questions that we, the editors, started discussing in the summer of 2021. The occasion was not only Rheinberger's latest book, but also the more mundane fact that one of us, Lara Keuck, had just joined the editorial team of this journal. The other one of us, Editor-in-Chief Kärin Nickelsen, therefore proposed to collaboratively edit a small topical collection, dedicated to their mutual interest in the history and historiography of the life sciences, in order to introduce the novice to the inner workings of journal making. Rheinberger's <i>Spalt und Fuge</i> would loosely serve as a starting point for a forum of four or five short contributions, mainly from early and mid-career scholars in the field. The project would avoid any <i>Festschrift</i> character (since several of them had been published already¹); instead, we wanted to initiate a discussion about how topics and concepts associated with Rheinberger's work, and others that originated in the same period, are dealt with today. After all, we are now starting to write the history of life sciences during the 1990s, when some of our favorite historiographical tools were invented. What does this mean for our distinction between actors’ categories and analytical categories? Are concepts such as the <i>experimental system</i> still helpful, given the enormous changes within both the life sciences and their historiography? We drafted a one-page concept paper and started to send out invitations.</p><p>The project developed a dynamic that we had not anticipated. Our colleagues thought the questions were timely and worthwhile; however, they also inquired about the scope of our collection and the invitees. We realized that we needed to include more voices, from scholars across academic generations with different degrees of proximity to Department III of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) under Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's directorship (1997–2011). Thus, in between recurrent waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, we asked some of the busiest scholars in our field to write an essay within a ridiculously short timeframe—and, miraculously, they agreed. In early April 2022, we met in person and on screen, for an authors’ workshop at the MPIWG (Figure 1). We had, meanwhile, added a subtitle to our initial proposal, which read <i>Traces of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger</i>. We deliberately chose the Rheinbergian term <i>traces</i> because, despi","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"45 3","pages":"291-300"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9545269/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33457263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Electrophoretic Revolution in the 1960s: Historical Epistemology Meets the Global History of Science and Technology**","authors":"Edna Suárez-Díaz","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202200024","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202200024","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper uses <i>zone electrophoresis</i>, one of the most frequently used tools in molecular biology, to explore two ideas derived from Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's reflections on experiments. First, the constraining role played by technical objects—instrumentation and material conditions—in the production of knowledge or epistemic things. Second, the production of interconnected experimental systems by such technical objects, which results in the unexpected entanglement of research fields and experimental cultures. By the beginning of the 1960s, the inception of zone electrophoresis in laboratories around the world transformed—some say, revolutionized—the study of proteins. Even today, electrophoresis continues to open research venues and questions in biomedicine, molecular biology, human genetics, and in the field of molecular evolution. In my essay, I seek to look at the interconnected lives of zone electrophoresis and address the broader social, and even global context, in which this apparently humble technique became a salient tool in the production of biological knowledge. In so doing, I aim to take the past and present of the history and historiography of experimental systems to the future, where experiments and technologies are interrogated as they are used in different geographies and contexts, including contexts of poverty.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"45 3","pages":"332-343"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9544742/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33457268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Politics of Sources Meets the Practices of the Librarian: An Interview with Esther Chen**","authors":"Esther Chen,&nbsp;Lara Keuck,&nbsp;Kärin Nickelsen","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202200035","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202200035","url":null,"abstract":"<p>[I] want to single out one phenomenon that could be called the ‘politics of sources’. It points to the extent to which the histories that both scientists and historians can write are artifacts of the available sources. The Rockefeller Foundation not only opened its archives very early on for historical work but also invested a lot in making the archives readily available for historical exploration. During the 1980s, many young historians took advantage of this opportunity. Thus, in a relatively early phase of the professional historiography of molecular biology, one could have gained the impression that the development of the new biology as a whole was a bio-politically directed enterprise of the Rockefeller Foundation sustained by the vision that social processes could ultimately be controlled by biological processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"45 3","pages":"508-516"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/5e/dc/BEWI-45-508.PMC9543250.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33457269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“How Many Individuals Consider Themselves to Be Cell Biologists but Are Informed by the Journal That Their Work Is Not Cell Biology”**","authors":"Hanna Lucia Worliczek","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202200019","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202200019","url":null,"abstract":"<p>What can we gain from co-analyzing experimental cultures, regionalization, and disciplinary phenomena of late twentieth century life sciences under our historiographic looking glass? This essay investigates the potential of such a strategy for the case of cell biology after 1960. By merging perspectives from historical epistemology inspired by the work of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger with a focus on boundary work in the realm of scientific publishing, community building, and disciplinary norms, a set of understudied scientific practices is exposed. These practices, historically subsumed under the label <i>descriptive</i>, have been as central in cell biology as hypothesis-driven research aiming at mechanistic explanations of cellular function. Against the background of an increasing molecular-mechanistic imperative in cell biology since the late 1960s, knowledge from <i>descriptive practices</i> was often judged as having low value but was nonetheless frequently cited and considered essential. Investigating the underlying epistemic practices and their interactions with disciplinary gatekeeping phenomena (as policed by journals and learned societies) provides historiographic access to the plurality of experimental cultures of cell biology, scattered into many interdisciplinary research fields—with some of them only partially engaged with mechanistic questions.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"45 3","pages":"344-354"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/6a/fc/BEWI-45-344.PMC9545452.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33457711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hans-Jörg Rheinberger as a Philosopher of Time**","authors":"Michael F. Zimmermann","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202200045","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202200045","url":null,"abstract":"<p>When Hans-Jörg Rheinberger proposed the concept of <i>epistemic things</i>, he drew inspiration from the art historian George Kubler, who had considered the aesthetic object as resulting from problem-solving processes in <i>The Shape of Time</i> (1962). Kubler also demonstrated that a sequence of objects could retrace the progress that led to a solution that was afterwards accepted as the most classical. Parallel to Kubler, Rheinberger demonstrates how temporally extended activities of experimentation are condensed in the object, revealing the moments of innovation that lead to it. In the history of science as well as in art history, various <i>trajectories</i> can thus be grasped in the materially given. Rheinberger conceives of an object as a network of heterogeneous <i>time strings</i>. However, these are manifold: they cannot be thought of as making up a homogeneous temporality encompassing all the others as a temporal container and synchronizing them within it. Since the discovery of the Anthropocene, we no longer separate natural from cultural time, and no hegemonic historical narrative can be taken as unifying all the others. Historical epistemology as proposed by Rheinberger will be read as a contribution to constructing new models of natural as well as of cultural time.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"45 3","pages":"434-451"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/1a/10/BEWI-45-434.PMC9544621.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33458216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Titelbild: (Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 3/2022)","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202280301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.202280301","url":null,"abstract":"<p>\u0000 <figure>\u0000 <div><picture>\u0000 <source></source></picture><p></p>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </figure>\u0000 </p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"45 3","pages":"285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202280301","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"137816377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Glückliche Fügung: Experiments’ Potential to Integrate Disciplines**","authors":"Caterina Schürch","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202200015","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202200015","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This essay reviews the discipline-connecting potential of experimentation. Two examples are used to illustrate how researchers in the first half of the twentieth century profitably combined resources from different disciplines in their experiments. These experiments were designed to test mechanism models describing chemical processes underlying the behavior of biological systems. The researchers had clear expectations about how certain interventions should affect the behavior of the organisms studied, if that behavior was indeed based on the presumed chemical processes. They manipulated the organisms in the relevant ways and determined how the behavior of the organisms changed as a result.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"45 3","pages":"306-316"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/f6/3c/BEWI-45-306.PMC9545058.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33457272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“You've Got to Work on This Axon”: J. Z. Young and Squid Giant Axon Preparations in 20th-Century Neurobiology**","authors":"Kathryn Maxson Jones","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202200021","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202200021","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Employing and extending Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's analytical concept of <i>epistemic things</i>, this essay proposes one reason why squid giant axons, unusually large invertebrate nerve fibers, had such great impacts on twentieth-century neurobiology. The 1930s characterizations of these axons by John Zachary Young reshaped prevailing assumptions about nerve cells as epistemic things, I argue. Specifically, Young's <i>preparations</i> of these axons, which consisted of fibers attached to laboratory technologies, highlighted similarities between giant axons and more familiar ones via lines of comparative study common to aquatic biology. Young's work convinced other biologists that the squid giant fibers were, in fact, axons, despite their unusual fused (syncytial) structures, thereby promoting further studies, such as intracellular measurements, made possible by the fiber's size. Tracing direct relations between preparations of squid axons and broader interpretations of neurons as epistemic things, this paper renders an actors’ category, “preparations,” into an analytical one. In turn, it offers glimpses into how aquatic organisms shaped twentieth-century neurobiology and how local experiments can drive broader, disciplinary changes.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"45 3","pages":"317-331"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33457709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ultrasound assessment of gastric volume in older adults after drinking carbohydrate-containing fluids: a prospective, nonrandomized, and noninferiority comparative study.","authors":"Hyun-Jung Shin, Bon-Wook Koo, Dongsik Lim, Hyo-Seok Na","doi":"10.1007/s12630-022-02262-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12630-022-02262-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety of drinking carbohydrate-containing fluids two hours prior to surgery in older adults using ultrasonography.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We conducted a nonrandomized and noninferiority comparative study in 60 patients aged over 65 yr who were scheduled for total knee arthroplasty. Patients who were fasted from midnight (fasting group) or who drank 400 mL of a carbohydrate-containing fluid (carbohydrate ingestion group) two hours prior to surgery were matched for age, sex, and body mass index. We measured the cross-sectional area (CSA) of gastric antrum using ultrasound and estimated the gastric fluid volume as the study's primary outcome measure. The noninferiority margin (δ) for the mean difference was predefined as 50 mL. The secondary outcome measures included CSA of the antrum and qualitative gastric volume.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The mean (standard deviation) gastric volume was not significantly different between the fasting group and the carbohydrate ingestion group (30.2 [25.4] mL vs 28.4 [35.8] mL; each group, n = 30; P = 0.81). The mean difference in gastric volume was -1.9 mL (95% confidence interval [CI], -17.9 to 14.2), and the upper limit of the 95% CI was lower than the prespecified noninferiority limit (δ = 50 mL). Secondary outcomes were not significantly different between the two groups.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Drinking of carbohydrate-containing fluid two hours prior to surgery was noninferior to overnight fasting with respect to residual gastric volume at induction of anesthesia in healthy older adults who undergoing total knee arthroplasty.</p><p><strong>Study registration: </strong>ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04514380); registered 14 August 2020.</p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"17 1","pages":"1160-1166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73096600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Titelbild: (Ber. Wissenschaftsgesch. 1-2/2022)","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/bewi.202280101","DOIUrl":"10.1002/bewi.202280101","url":null,"abstract":"<p>\u0000 <figure>\u0000 <div><picture>\u0000 <source></source></picture><p></p>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </figure>\u0000 </p>","PeriodicalId":55388,"journal":{"name":"Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte","volume":"45 1-2","pages":"1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bewi.202280101","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41611803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}