„[A]n der Front des Kampfes um den Menschen selbst“. Anthropogenetik und Anthropotechnik im sowjetischen Diskurs der 1920er Jahre
Abstract
“[A]n der Front des Kampfes um den Menschen selbst”. Anthropogenetics and Anthropotechnics in Soviet Thought. The period between 1920 and 1930 reveals in Russia a practical manifestation of the technologies of the self, which see the body not only in a poetic-symbolical way, but practically as a material of shaping and rebuilding. In this bio-social discourse of a genetically perfected ‘new man’, Russian theorists of eugenics are looking back on traditional parallels of animal and plant breeding. The most influential group of eugenics were the Russian biologists, especially the key players and the founders of the Russian genetics research Nikolai Kol′tsov (1872–1940) and Aleksandr Serebrovskii (1892–1948). It will be demonstrated that ‘human breeding’ (Russ. ‘Antropotekhnika’) is based both on the semantics and on the methodology of traditional animal and plant breeding.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2Fbewi.201601770
Weniger schlechte Bilder. Walfängerwissen in Naturgeschichte, Ozeanographie und Literatur im 19. Jahrhundert
Abstract
Less Erroneous Pictures. Whalers’ Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Natural History, Oceanography, and Literature. This paper uses the iconoclasm of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as a point of departure to examine the problem of representing whales pictorially. Focussing on the use of images in cetological works and whaling logbooks, the paper investigates how the whalers’ knowledge, which served the hunting, killing, and economic exploitation of whales, came to be inscribed in the antithetical work of natural historians who were increasingly interested in living organisms. This paper argues that Melville's juxtaposition of whalers’ and naturalists’ knowledge runs parallel with a dichotomy, along which natural histories, travelogues, and thematic maps of oceanography constitute the whale as an object of knowledge. It concludes by suggesting that, at the same time, this dichotomy is repeatedly undermined for the sake of the whale's representation.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2Fbewi.201601782
Wissenschaft im Glaubenskampf. Geschichte als Argument in den akademischen Festreden Emil DuBois-Reymonds (1818–1896)
Abstract
The Religious War of Science. Historical Argumentation in the Academic Speeches of Emil DuBois-Reymond (1818–1896). Among the protagonists of the “laboratory revolution” (Cunningham/Williams) in 19th-century physiology were the self-proclaimed ‘organic physicists’ (“organische Physiker”), who shared a mechanistic conception of life processes. One of their key figures was the physiologist Emil DuBois-Reymond (1818–1896) who not only excelled in the field of neuroscience but also became known, over the decades of his active career, as an orator at the Berlin Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In his academic speeches, DuBois-Reymond regularly commemorated heroes of the history of science. On closer inspection, these references went far beyond paying the usual homage to precursors: This paper argues that DuBois-Reymond made use of episodes from the history of science as a means to legitimate his own reductionist research programme and, at the same time, decry idealistic natural philosophy and vitalistic positions. Drawing upon biblical rhetorics, DuBois-Reymond systematically construed experimental physiology as the culmination of a teleological development, and, hence, organic physicists as the incarnation of scientific ‘redeemers’. According to him, the success of ‘organic physics’ displayed the peak of an inevitable development.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2Fbewi.201601771