Themenschwerpunkt: Sprachen der Wissenschaften 1600–1850 – Scientific Languages 1600–1850. Teil 2: Sprachliche Differenzierung und wissenschaftliche Nationalisierung – Part 2: Linguistic Compartmentalization and Scientific Nationalization
Gastherausgeber: Daniel Ulbrich

Wissenschaftssprache zwischen sprachlicher Differenzierung und wissenschaftlicher Nationalisierung
Ein einleitender Essay
Seite 9–82

Sebastian Kühn
„Saturn – als ein rundes Küglein in einer Schüssel.“
Spuren mündlicher Kommunikation in naturforschenden Aufzeichnungen um 1700
Seite 83–106

Abstract
What does it mean, if a scholar wrote occasionally in his journal book that someone had said something to him? Does the spoken word play a role in science at all? Orality seems to be an odd topic for the history of sciences, as what we can know of it, is in written sources, and science seems to be inseparably connected to literacy. In analysing the astronomical journal books of the Kirch family in Berlin, the article makes an argument for the study of orality in the sciences. It argues that writing about orality in scientific scrapbooks entails specific social and epistemic implications. In this respect, writing points to performative actions beyond pure textualism. In the end, it is rooted in the practice of knowledge production and illustrates the importance of orality in the sciences. Especially two aspects of orality in written sources are discussed here: implicit and direct orality, i.e. explicit references to direct orality (in the form ‚X said …‘), and situations in which oral communication is not explicitly referred to, but in which it must be considered as a condition to understand the meaning of the text, or where orality was put down on paper.

Annette Meyer
Zwei Sprachen – zwei Kulturen?
Englische und deutsche Begriffe von Wissenschaft im 18. Jahrhundert
Seite 107–137

Abstract
The difference between the English and the German understanding of the term ‚science‘ is a given in the historiography of science. According to this view, both the identification of ‚science‘ with ‚natural sciences‘ in English and the distinction between ‚Geisteswissenschaften‘ and ‚Naturwissenschaften‘ in German is normally ascribed to completely disparate national traditions of science. In this paper the attempt is made to draw a different picture which emphasizes the similarity in the conceptual framework of ‚science‘ and ‚Wissenschaft‘ from the seventeenth until the end of the eighteenth century. Both concepts evolved from a delimitation of the Latin tradition of ‚scientia‘, in which the search for truth through formal logic was replaced by new forms of acquirement of knowledge. ‚Science‘ and ‚Wissenschaft‘ became heuristic frames of ever revisable pictures of the world. This new perspective was based on the idea that contingency is not part of reality but of the limited perceptions of man. The conceptions of ‚Science‘ and ‚Wissenschaft‘ reflected the theoretical debate on cognition of the time and were not at all confined to specific disciplines. Only in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century did both developments diverge, and the catch word ‚two cultures‘ came to be used not only to distinguish between different fields of knowledge but also to denote apparent differences between national scientific traditions.

Tamás Demeter
Post-Mechanical Explanation in the Natural and Moral Sciences
The Language of Nature and Human Nature in David Hume and William Cullen
Seite 139–158

Abstract
It is common wisdom in intellectual history that eighteenth-century science of man evolved under the aegis of Newton. It is also frequently suggested that David Hume, one of the most influential practitioners of this kind of inquiry, aspired to be the Newton of the moral sciences. Usually this goes hand in hand with a more or less explicit reading of Hume‘s theory of mind as written in an idiom of particulate inert matter and active forces acting on it, i.e. essentially that of Newton‘s Principia. Hume‘s outlook on the mental world is thus frequently described in terms of conceptual atoms whose association is compared to interparticulate attractions analogous with Newtonian forces in general, and gravity in particular. In the present paper I argue that Hume‘s theory can indeed be understood in Newton‘s wake, albeit not in the context of the Principa‘s reception but that of the Opticks, which exerted a more significant influence on natural inquiry in eighteenthcentury Scotland. I intend to show that Hume speaks a language and represents an outlook on human matters convergent with „philosophical chemistry“ in Scotland at that time, and particularly with the theories of his later friend and physician William Cullen.

Daniel Ulbrich
Bemerkung und Revision
Zur Steuerungsfunktion naturwissenschaftlicher Textsorten am Beispiel von Experimentalbericht und litterärhistorischer Erzählung um 1800
Seite 159–257

Abstract
The article focuses on the contribution of linguistic mechanisms and devices to the direction and management of research processes in chemistry around 1800. Taking texts of 18th century chemists A. N. Scherer and J. F. A. Göttling as its examples, it will examine in parallel the ways and workings of two different types of such devices: (1) the narrative of historia literaria or History of Learning (‚Revision‘ or ‚review‘) and (2) the genre of experimental essay (‚Bemerkung‘ or ‚remark‘). It will be argued that, from the point of view of speech act theory, both do not only serve constative purposes, but also exert performative tasks. Review and remark do, however, differ with respect to the dominating types of illocutionary force, their prototypical propositional content and the specific locutionary forms employed in pursuing their respective illocutionary point. Thus, in reviews recognition of illocutionary forces interpretable as counsel and guidance for future research will often afford cumbersome inferences from narrative structures, yielding directive speech acts whose propositional content will primarily consist in the description of general norms of scientific conduct and whose illocutionary forces will be at best of a recommendatory nature. In comparison, ties between locutionary form and illocutionary point in remarks are considerably stronger and provide for an illocutionary regime of questions and requests which take concrete laboratory operations and chemical reactions brought about by them as their propositional content.

Andrea Cavazzini
Le vocabulaire de l‘organisation chez Auguste Comte
Seite 259–273

Abstract
The article deals with the role of French Positivism‘s founder Auguste Comte in creating a concept of organisation valid for both political, biological and sociological thought. Comte‘s political aim was the re-organization of post-revolutionary society by a systematisation of scientific thought in order to determine unity and convergence in human minds. Re-organization of science demands specific conceptualisation of the autonomous field of two sciences whose object is eminently organized: biology and sociology. Comte‘s ideas on the conceptual structure of life and social sciences, his anti-individualism opposed to post-Smithian political economy, his refusal of reductionism both in biology and sociology will play an important role in the history of both biology (Claude Bernard) and social sciences (Durkheim and ‚structuralism‘). Both the richness of Comte‘s philosophical work and its influence on posterior theoretical endeavours depend deeply on its concept of organisation that enabled ‚positive philosophy‘ to circulate between scientific and political issues.

Daniel Ulbrich
Das Begriffsfeld ‚Wissenschaft(en)‘ in den großen europäischen Sprachen
Ein enzyklopädisches Stichwort
Seite 275–320

Abstract
The article provides a brief overview of the semantic relations between terms that refer to the body of academically produced and sanctioned knowledge in six major European languages. In particular, it will examine the dichotomy between the two spheres of knowledge that have come to be called ‚science‘ and ‚humanities‘ in English and the concepts used to refer to their possible unity. It will be argued that the different shapes the semantic field in question takes on in German and English with both respect to semantic criteria and principles of word formation can be conceived of as representing opposing poles of a linguistic continuum along which their French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian counterparts can be placed respectively. In fact, as a predominantly synchronic comparative analysis of present-day language will reveal, the specific design of the field still varies widely cross-linguistically, both in view of the denotative and connotative content of the expressions involved and with regard to the existence of a common generic term encompassing both spheres of knowledge and, if applicable, the degree of asymmetry induced into the field through possible overlaps in meaning between superordinate and subordinate terms. In spite of a series of conceptual realignments brought about by progressive internationalisation in the last decades, the language specific semantics of these concepts therefore continue to shape and influence the course of – and discourse on – academic knowledge production even today.

Artikel – Papers – Articles

Katherine Angell
Monstrous Medicine
A Study of British Teratology in the Nineteenth Century
Seite 323–343

Abstract
In this paper, I provide evidence of an inconsistency within the concept of monstrosity within nineteenth century medical debate. Using medical reports and journals alongside the autobiography of Joseph Merrick, I concentrate on three areas: the use of classification systems in the diagnosis of monstrosity, the explanations given for the causes of monstrosity and experimental embryology. Expanding on the existing research of Eveleen Richards and Jane Oppenheimer who identify the monster as a site of contestation within the nineteenth-century British medical profession, I argue, that there was no clear definition of monstrosity in medicine at this time; instead, a space was created where monsters had multiple aetiologies, had different diagnoses and were analysed as individuals. The science of teratology encouraged wide ranging debate which led to a transformation in the understanding of monstrosity in the nineteenth century. The new discourse of monstrosity was characterised by the attempted removal of mythical explanations and an uneasy acceptance of experimental science. Joseph Merrick illustrates the inconsistency of teratological classification and diagnosis. Presented with an absence of universal medical opinion, he promoted alternative explanations for his disorder which conflicted with teratological theory. His life as an exhibit in a freak show also questioned his place within medicine and the academic legitimacy of those who treated him. His case highlights the divergence in medical opinion on monstrosity towards the end of the century.

Christian Gérini
Les Annales de mathématiques pures et appliquées de Gergonne et l‘émergence des journaux de mathématiques dans l‘Europe du XIXe siècle
Un bicentenaire
Seite 345–376

Abstract
During the 19th century, Mathematics in Europe benefited from a new form of communication that radically changed exchanges amongst mathematicians of all grades and of many countries: the regular specialized periodicals specifically dedicated to this science. These journals have helped the specialization of this science in an age of rapid technological and scientific developments. In 1810, the French mathematician Joseph-Diez Gergonne published the Annales de mathématiques pures et appliquées, the first notable monthly journal of mathematics published on the continent. So we celebrate in 2010 the bicentenary of this important journal of the history of European science. We first consider the attempts of periodic publications that preceded the Annales, in order to prove that those Annales were the first international and regular journal introducing a kind of modernity in the communication between mathematicians. We then examine their impact: populations of French and foreign authors, contents, theoretical advances, etc. In our conclusion, we give an overview of the initiatives the Annales provoked in France and in Europe, from Crelle‘s Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik (1826) to the Journal de Liouville (1836) and the Nouvelles annales of Terquem and Gerono (1842).

Denis Lamy
Les collections d‘autographes chez les botanistes – un exemple
Les collections de Gustave Thuret, Edouard Bornet et de Casimir Roumeguère
Seite 377–412

Abstract
The practice of a botanist generates, in a recurring way, a collection of dry plants (the own collectings of the botanist and those that he obtained for comparison), associated with notes of observations and a correspondence. These collections reflect the network inside which the botanist worked. They are not exclusive but complementary if we want to appreciate this practice for the XVIIth century until our days. So as to be able to interpret the labels of exchanged herbariums, certain botanists form a collection of autographs. Based generally on its correspondents‘ own network, this collection is enriched by purchases, gifts or still exchanges of authenticated parts. Collections formed on one side by Gustave Thuret and Edouard Bornet and on the other hand by Casimir Roumeguère, analyzed for the first time, exemplify. The contents of these collections of autographs often go beyond the simple specimen of writing and can form an original source for the history of the botany, offering the face of the botanist in action.

Christian Forstner
Nuclear Energy Programs in Austria
Seite 413–432

Abstract
This paper analyses the evolution of Austria‘s nuclear energy programs in the context of changing international networks from World War II until the late 1980. Several Austrian physicists were engaged in the first Austrian attempt to establish nuclear energy within the German Uranverein during World War II. After the war, the vague idea of energy production by nuclear fission was still apparent, but a great lack of financial resources prevented the development of a national nuclear energy program. This changed with the launch of the American Atoms for Peace program. In 1955, the Austrian Council of Ministers decided to build a research reactor with US support. Finally, three research reactors were brought into service with the aim of developing a nuclear energy program in Austria. This attempt resulted in the decision to build a nuclear power plant near Zwentendorf in Lower Austria in 1971. However, this plant never went into operation. After it was finished in 1978, the Austrian people voted against the startup of the plant in a plebiscite with a slight majority of 50.47%. Today, the idea of freedom from nuclear energy is a central part of the Austrian identity.