[3] January 23 - How natural science became German
Section outline
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“Anyone who is good at comparing the level of learning of Nations, penetrating the causes of civilization, does not deny that Germany owes its luminosity to the Naturforscher of its lands.” How did the politically fragmented German lands come to play such a central role in the rise of modern disciplinary science, and how did new forms of sociability in the natural sciences make Prussians, Saxons, and Bavarians “all become sons of one and the same mother—Germany”?
Since there is a surfeit of material on the German case, here is a short background lecture on the Congresses of German Nature Researchers and Physicians.
Assigned reading:
[Lorenz Oken], “[Congress of German naturalists and physicians in Leipzig on 18 September 1822],” Isis Encyclopädische Zeitung, no. 6 (1823): 549–59 (abridged). (Original German text.)"German Association, &c." The North American Review 31 (1830): 85-93.
Denise Phillips, "Introduction," Acolytes of Nature: Defining Natural Science in Germany, 1770-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 1-26.German options: Alexander von Humboldt, Rede, gehalten bei der Eröffnung der Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte in Berlin, am 18. September 1828 (1828). (Or Polish version, p. 426)Emil du Bois-Reymond, "Ueber das Nationalgefühl" (1878).Polish option: “Wyjątek z listu pisanego z Berlina do Krzemieńca dnia 30 (18) septembra 1828 r.” Kuryer Litewski, no. 11 (January 25, 1829): 4.Czech option: Jan Presl, "[Translator's introduction]" to Georges Cuvier, Barona Jiřího Cuviera Rozprava o převratech kůry zemní, a o proměnách v živočistvu jimi způsobených, v ohledu přírodopisném a dějopisném (1834), i-viii.Hungarian option: Almási Balogh Pál, “A Német Természetvizsgálók és Orvosok Egyesűlete,” Hasznos mulatságok 1, no. 8 (1826): 57–61.Russian option: F. P. Lubianovskii, Zametki za granitseiu v 1840 i 1845 godakh (1845), 20-33.Baltic German option: Alexander Crichton, Joseph Rehmann, and Karl Friedrich Burdach, “Vorbericht,” Russische Sammlung für Naturwissenschaft und Heilkunst 1, no. 1 (1815): i–x.French option: Antoine Laurent Apollinaire Fée, 12.me Congrès scientifique. Stuttgart pendant l’automne de 1834 (1835).British option: Charles Babbage, “Account of the Great Congress of Philosophers at Berlin on the 18th September 1828,” Edinburgh Journal of Science 10, no. 2 (1829): 225–34.Suggested reading:
Kathryn M. Olesko, “Germany,” in Hugh Slotten, ed., Cambridge History of Science, 8 (2019): 233-277.Ralph Jessen and Jakob Vogel, eds., Wissenschaft und Nation in der europäischen Geschichte (2002).Kai Torsten Kanz, Nationalismus und internationale Zusammenarbeit in den Naturwissenschaften: Die deutsch-französischen Wissenschaftsbeziehungen zwischen Revolution und Restauration, 1789-1832 (1997).Science in Germany: The Intersection of Institutional and Intellectual Issues, Osiris 5 (1989).Myles W. Jackson, “A Spectrum of Belief: Goethe’s ‘Republic’ versus Newtonian ‘Despotism’,” Social Studies of Science 24, no. 4 (1994): 673–701.Michael Dettelbach, “Romanticism and Resistance: Humboldt and ‘German’ Natural Philosophy in Napoleonic France.” In Hans Christian Ørsted and the Romantic Legacy in Science: Ideas, Disciplines, Practices, edited by Robert M. Brain, Robert S. Cohen, and Ole Knudsen, 241:247–58. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007.William Clark, “On the Dialectical Origins of the Research Seminar,” History of Science 27 (1989): 111–54.R. Steven Turner, "University reformers and professorial scholarship in Germany 1760-1806," in The University in Society, vol. 2, ed. L. Stone (1974), 495-531.Charles E. McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany, 1700-1914 (1980).Andreas W. Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, 1848–1914 (1998).
Harry W. Paul, The Sorcerer's Apprentice: The French Scientist's Image of German Science 1840-1919 (1972).Pierre Duhem, “Quelques réflexions sur la science allemande,” Revue des deux mondes 25 (1915): 657–86. -