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RESEARCH REPORT 2013—2014MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTEMax Planck Institute for the History of Science

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IntroductionIn 2014 the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Berlin, turnedtwenty. Since 2013, the MPIWG has witnessed a changing of the guard in key posi-tions: a new Department directed by Dagmar Schäfer has begun its work; OhadParnes has succeeded Jochen Schneider as Research Coordinator; and Esther Chenwill soon take over as Head Librarian from Urs Schoepflin. As we gratefully say fare-well to old colleagues and warmly welcome new ones, we pause to take stock of theMPIWG’s development, retrospectively and, especially, prospectively.The MPIWG was established in 1994 to conduct research on fundamental questionsin the history of knowledge from Neolithic times to the present. Of central interest isthe emergence of basic categories of scientific thinking and practice as well as theirtransformation over time: examples include experiment, data, rationality, normalcy,space, proof, and science itself. MPIWG projects investigate traditional themes ofphilosophical epistemology historically, drawing on concrete cases, embracing prac-tices as well as concepts, and embedding episodes of innovation in cultural, social,and economic contexts. The common perspective of the MPIWG’s diverse researchactivities is therefore often called “historical epistemology.” The premise of historicalepistemology is that not only bodies of knowledge (e. g., disciplines such as physics,as well as systems of rational planning such as large-scale architectural and waterprojects) but also ways of knowing (e. g., experiment, collecting, classification, andobservation) and criteria for what counts as knowledge (e. g., certainty, predictiveaccuracy, explanatory scope, and practical applicability) all have histories and thatthese histories are intertwined.When the MPIWG began its work twenty years ago, its research focused almost exclu-sively on the history of the natural sciences in the Western tradition, broadly inter-preted. This focus has long been the heartland of the history of science as a discipline,and a great deal of the MPIWG’s research continues to cultivate this fertile field. How-ever, the same comparative perspective, both cross-cultural and cross-historical, thatinspired historical epistemology has widened the ambit of our inquiry dramatically.This panoramic view has forced us to rethink the boundary between knowledgeand science. Comparative approaches have revealed just how provincial the currentunderstanding (especially the anglophone or francophone understanding) of “sci-ence” is: a product of the latter half of the nineteenth century in a few (not all) Euro-pean countries, this definition of science narrowed its meaning to the university-based natural sciences. Even though historians of the premodern period andnon-European cultures knew better, the modern definition still dominates the subjectmatter of the history of science to a surprising extent: for example, even thoughthe German word Wissenschaft has resisted the narrowing trend of its cognates inEnglish and French, the bulk of Wissenschaftsgeschichte was nonetheless devoted tothe history of the modern natural sciences—a situation that is changing dramatically

Introduction➔ p. 26ff, 22f due to recent research initiatives like the Excellence Cluster Topoi, with which the MPIWG has cooperated closely. This research landscape is now being reconfigured, thanks to several trends that are enlarging the history of science into a history of knowledge, including a re-examina- tion of the interactions between practical and theoretical knowledge in both familiar (e. g., mechanics in early modern Europe) and not-so-familiar (e. g., water manage- ment in imperial China) contexts; new histories of forms of learning usually excluded from modern definitions of science (e. g., philology across a range of premodern and modern cultures); comparative studies of the classification and hierarchies of knowl- edge and associated forms of reasoning (e.g., thinking with cases in sixteenth-century Italian medicine, Qing dynasty forensics, and twentieth-century social science); and the concerted tracking of certain objects (e. g., jade, astrolabes, indigo) and practices (e. g., distillation, note-taking, double-entry bookkeeping) wherever they may lead, across the boundaries that separate disciplines, learned from lay practitioners, and cultural traditions. All of these trends are well represented in the research document- ed in the pages of this report. The history of knowledge has flourished especially but not exclusively in the history of premodern and non-Western science. Its practitioners have queried the anachro- nistic assumptions that restrict the gaze of historians to institutions, actors, and genres that seem most continuous with modern, Western ones (e.g., professors at medieval universities who write treatises but not apothecaries who trade recipes) or the ethnocentric assumptions that posit a European origin of modern science that slowly diffused to other parts of the world (e. g., through Jesuit missions to China). Historians of knowledge have paid particular attention to place (e. g., the princely court, the household, the merchant’s warehouse, the scholar’s library) and material culture (e. g., materia medica traded over oceans and continents), as well as to the points at which local, lay knowledge intersected with cosmopolitan, elite science (e. g., in observer networks of earthquakes or the weather). Historians of women and gender as well as social historians have shown how much natural knowledge was and is generated outside the framework of professional science, itself a relatively recent institution. The history of knowledge also encompasses learned discourses about what knowl- edge is, what its main divisions are, how it should (and should not) be cultivated, and who should pursue it and why. Especially important in the last decade have been histories of non-Western intellectual traditions, which have challenged long-standing assumptions in the history of science about classifications and hierarchies of knowl- edge as well as about knowers. For example, the dominant role of philology in remarkably long-lived Chinese, Sanskrit, and Arabic, as well as Greek and Latin, in- tellectual traditions has illuminated scholarly practices and standards of rigor that informed other forms of systematic inquiry, such as astronomy. Analogously, the combination of the roles of scholar and government official institutionalized by the 4 M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014

IntroductionChinese examination system queries taken-for-granted assumptions about theboundary between theoretical and practical knowledge that inform much past historyof science. Projecting modern classifications of knowledge even onto late nineteenth-century Europe, much less onto other periods and cultures, can significantly distortour understanding of the history of standards for the most certain and highlyesteemed forms of knowledge, as well as the shared practices (and often personnel)that bound them together. More generally, attention to the history of texts, both theircontents and their material form, and to their associated practices, such as reading,note-taking, commenting, compiling, and interpreting, is transforming the history ofscience across periods and places, whether it be the impact of woodblock printing inthe Song dynasty, the archiving of astronomical observations on baked clay tablets inancient Mesopotamia, or cheap paper in Victorian Britain.The history of knowledge is already cross-fertilizing the history of science in stimu-lating ways, as a glance at even mainstream journals in the field reveals. Yet there hasbeen no sustained reflection on the implications of the enlarged vision for the historyof science—most obviously, for periodization, geography, professionalization, andother core topics, but also for a unified history of ways of knowing. One obviousadvantage of enlarging the history of science would be to deprovincialize the historyof science: what was not just a Eurocentric narrative but rather the Eurocentricnarrative—how science and technology made modern European and derivative cul-tures historically unique—falls apart when confronted with the interconnectedknowledge traditions that have crisscrossed much of the globe since ancient times.But as yet we have no new narrative to put in its place. We lack a unified history ofways of knowing, or even a unified way of talking about them. The MPIWG sees thisreconfiguration as the major challenge to the history of science, one that will even­tually transform both our subject matter and theoretical frameworks.By the standards of the eighty-odd institutes of the Max Planck Society, the MPIWGis small, with only three Departments, directed by Jürgen Renn, Lorraine Daston, andDagmar Schäfer. Emeritus director Hans-Jörg Rheinberger continues to contributeto the Institute’s research on the modern life sciences: he is currently working on abook manuscript provisionally titled System and Synthesis: A Historical Assessment ofthe Life Sciences in the Twentieth Century. Thanks to a swarm of smaller IndependentResearch Groups (eight at this writing), led by Sabine Arnaud, Jochen Büttner,Vincenzo De Risi, Sven Dupré, Elaine Leong, Veronika Lipphardt, Florian Schmaltz,and Viktoria Tkaczyk, we have been able to expand the purview of the Institute’sresearch well beyond the already broad programs of the three Departments.The welcome addition of Professor Glenn W. Most of the Scuola Normale Superiore,Pisa, Italy, and the University of Chicago, USA, as External Scientific Member of theMPIWG has supplemented the history of science with projects on the history of learn-ing. Over 150 Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellows plus 200-odd Visiting Scholarshave contributed their energy and expertise to our projects and taught us volumesabout their own. The MPIWG’s 2013–2014 Research Report provides some idea of the M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014 5

Table of Contentsthematic variety and chronological and geographical scope of the research projects pursued under this roof, from thehistory of ancient technology to the history of data, from the history of colors in early modern Europe to the history ofplanning across regions and epochs. It would be easy to conclude that our ambition is to cover the history of science inits entirety, in all places and all epochs.Easy, but misleading: we cannot achieve such all-encompassing coverage; nor do we strive to. Although by the standardsof a small discipline such as the history of science, the MPIWG is a big institution, it is dwarfed by the vastness of itssubject matter. And this is as it should be: no one institution should be able to monopolize research initiatives; diversityof topics and approaches is essential to the vitality of the discipline, as is the distribution of scholars and scholarshipamong many different places and intellectual traditions worldwide. We are in absolutely no danger of exhausting oursubject matter—quite the contrary.Cooperation is essential to meeting the challenge of rethinking the history of science, and the MPIWG has sought part-ners far and wide. These collaborations are documented in connection with the relevant research projects described inthis report. In many ways, however, our most intense collaborations are those with colleagues near at hand, with whomwe have the pleasure and privilege of more frequent and informal discussions. The Berlin Center for the History ofKnowledge has hosted seven postdoctoral fellows, who organized three workshops in 2014; starting in January 2015, amonthly colloquium on the boundary between science and knowledge will be launched under its auspices, pairing schol-ars from Freie Universität Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the MPIWG inpresentations. Most important of all are the collaborations that cut across the organizational structures of the MPIWGitself, including a joint grant application by scholars from three different research units, cosponsored reading groups andworkshops, shared Postdoctoral Fellows and Visiting Scholars, new digital mapping tools applied to diverse projects, andcountless conversations in the library, the corridors, and the tea kitchens. A new theme-centered format for the Institute’scolloquium has brought prominent scholars from a range of specialties to the MPIWG and brought scholars from allcorners of the Institute together both at the colloquium itself and associated reading groups. Despite the fact that theMPIWG is overflowing its quarters, with more scholars than space, it has never been so thickly crosshatched with con-tacts among all of its eleven research units.None of this would be possible without the dedication of our indefatigable staff, whose competent, cheerful efforts sup-port our work every day. We gladly take this opportunity to thank them, each and every one. 11 Structure and Organization of the Institute 11 Scientific Advisory Board 12 Department I 13 Department II 14 Department III 15 Max Planck Research Groups 16 Emeritus Scientific Member 16 External Scientific Member 17 Administration, Coordination, and Services 6 M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014

Table of Contents Department I director Jürgen Renn 19 Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge 22 Systematic Longitudinal Studies The Structure of Practical Knowledge 26 Transforming and Melding Ancient Knowledge Networks and Institutions of Knowledge 31 Toward an Epistemic History of the Anthropocene Transforming and Melding Classical Physics 38 Scientific Networks and Academic Institutions 43 47 55 Department II director Lorraine Daston 61 Ideals and Practices of Rationality 63 The Sciences of the Archive 76 Between the Natural and the Human Sciences 89 Gender Studies of Science 93 Science in Circulation 101 Reading and Writing Nature in Early Modern Europe 108 The Making of Acoustics in Sixteenth- to Nineteenth-Century Europe 112 Pre- and Postdocs Department III director Dagmar Schäfer 115 Artefacts, Action, and Knowledge 118 Histories of Planning 131 Tools and Methods 137 Postdoctoral Fellows External Scientific Member Glenn W. Most 144 The Learned Practices of Canonical Texts Max Planck Research Group research group leader Sven Dupré 147 Art and Knowledge in Premodern Europe 148 Alchemy and the Arts M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014 7



Scientific Advisory Board 151 Early Modern Materials and Art Technologies 157 Written Transmission in the ArtsS truct1u60r e Sapancdes oOf rEgxcahannigzeaotf iOobnjectosfantdhKenoIwnlesdtgietute 163 Artisanal Practices and Knowledge of Light, Color, and Per-spective 168 Colloquia, Conferences, and WorkshopsScientific Advisory Board Max Planck Research Group research group leaderPVreorof.nDikra. MLiaprpkhuasrAdtsper Institut für Klassische Philologie, Humboldt–Universität zu Berlin, GermanyP rof. Dr. Fa1b7i1o BeTviwlacequnat ieth-Century Histories of KnowledgeDaibpaortuimt eHntoudmi Faisinca V“Aa. Vroialtat,”ioUnniversità degli Studi di Pavia, ItalyP rof. Dr. Francesca Bray School of S1o7ci2a l anInddPiovliidtiucaal SPcrieonjecec,tUsniversity of Edinburgh, United KingdomP rof. Dr. A1n7ge7l a NG. uHe.sCtrePargoegr ramD epartmen1t 8o6f HisWtoroyr,kPsrhinocpetson University, USAP rof. Dr. M1o8r9it z ECppollelo quium SeriesH istorische1s9S0em inGarr,oWupissMenesmchbafetrsgseschichte, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main,Germany (until December 31, 2013)Prof. Dr. Mareile Flitsch Völkerkundemu seuMmadxePr lUannicvekrsRiteätsZeüarricch, GSwriotzueprlanrdesearch group leaderSParobfi.nDe rA. rJnohanudForrester Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge,U nited Kin1gd9o5m The Construction of Norms in 17th- toP1r9of.tDhr-.CBeeantritcue rGyrueEnudlrero peS eminar für Sem itiastnikduntdhAerabUistniki,tFeadchbSerteaictheGseschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften,F reie Universität Berlin, GermanyP rof. Dr. Sh1i9ge6h isaEKncuoriuynamtear s between Medicine, Literature, Philosophy, andDtheepiarrtCmirecnut loaftEioanst iAnsian Languages, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USAP rof. Dr . ChristophPuMbeliicneDl ebatesL ehrstuhl f1ür99W issMenescdhicafatsligzeastcihoinchatet, tUhneivIenrtseiträst eRcegtieonnsboufrgt,hGeerHmisatnoyry of Psychol-(ougnytial DndectehmebeHr i3s1t,o2r0y13o)f EducationP rof. Dr. M2a0r1ti n MLuelgsaowl H istory, History of Criminology, and History of Psychia-Ftroyrschungszentrum Gotha der Universität Erfurt, GermanyP rof. Dr. Pe2t0er2 C. PHeirsdtuoer y of Material Culture, History of Technology, History ofDPsepycarhtimaternitcoIfnHsitsittourtyi,oYnasle University, New Haven CT, USAP rof. Dr. D2a0vi3d WHarisretnorSyaboefaLnin guistics, Philosophy of Language, and Forms ofDLiefepartment of History, University of California, Los Angeles CA, USAP rof. Dr. A2n0a5S imCõeosn ferences, Workshops, and SeminarsSecção Autónoma de História e Filosofia das Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, PortugalProf. Dr. Pamela H. Smith D epartm ent of HisMtoaryx, PCloalunmckbiRa eUsneivaerrcsihtyG, NroewupYorrke, sUeSaArch group leader Vin-Pcernozf.oDDr.eMRi.sNi orton Wise (Chair) Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, USAP rof. Dr. K2ar0i9n ZaMchmoadnen rn Geometry and the Concept ofSchool of Education, Technische Universität München, Germany M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014 9

Department II Space 212 Individual Projects Max Planck Research Group research group leader Vik- toria Tkaczyk 219 Epistemes of Modern Acoustics 220 Group Members Joint Activities 223 Research Services 223 Cooperation and Outreach 236 Preprints 238 Library 245 Digital Humanities 252 The Institute’s Colloquia 257 Overviews 257 Workshops and Conferences 262 Collaborations, Academic Achievements and External Activi- ties 271 Publications 325 Index 10 M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014

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Department I Department I Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge director Jürgen Renn Since its inception in April 1994, Department I has investigated the history of science as part of a larger history of knowledge, emphasizing the role of practical knowledge and of deep-time continuities, even when focusing on the turning points of modern science. Since 1998 cross-cultural comparisons—in particular between Western and Chinese science—have been one of the hallmarks of the Department’s work. Since 2004 the globalization of knowledge in history has been advanced as a central research topic. research scholars  Jaromír Balcar Alexander Blum Sonja Brentjes Jochen Büttner Giuseppe Castagnetti (until January 2015) Giulia Giannini Dieter Hoffmann (until February 2014) Ursula Klein Christoph Lehner Pietro Daniel Omodeo Christoph Rosol Matthias Schemmel Florian Schmaltz (until December 2014) Juliane Stiller Klaus Thoden Matteo Valleriani Helge Wendt12 M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014

Department IIDepartment IIIdeals and Practices of Rationalitydirector Lorraine DastonThe research projects of Department II (established 1995) chart the history of epis-temic categories and practices that have become so fundamental to modern scienceand culture that they seem self-evident. Examples described in this report include“data” (“Sciences of the Archive”), “gender” (“Gender Studies of Science”), and mod-ern classifications of knowledge (“Between the Natural and the Human Sciences”).Because the hidden histories of these taken-for-granted objects only become visiblewhen contexts vary, most projects have a comparative dimension, spanning manycenturies, several cultures, or both (“Science in Circulation”).research scholars Elena AronovaEtienne Benson (until August 2013)Lino CamprubíDonatella GermanesePhilipp LehmannElaine Leong (Minerva Research Group Leader)Christine von OertzenDavid SepkoskiViktoria Tkaczyk (Dilthey Fellow until March 2015)Annette Vogt M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014 13

Department III Department III Artefacts, Action, and Knowledge director Dagmar Schäfer Artefacts, action, and knowledge are at the heart of Department III’s research agenda. Established in August 2013, Department III studies the historical dynamics of con- cept formation, situations, and experiences of action through which actors have ex- plored, handled, and explained their physical, social, and individual worlds. Three premises inform this work. First, historically, actors often conceived of forms and expressions of knowledge bound to action in terms of procedures (such as planning, ordering, and designing). Second, different material orders (of life, environment, work, use, or production) contributed substantially to the witnessing of knowledge production. Third, scientific and technological understanding took place in a diver- sity of forms and formats. research scholars  Emily K. Brock CHEN Shih-Pei (Digital Curator) Nina Lerman (until July 2015) Martina Siebert14 M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014

Max Planck Research GroupsMax Planck Research GroupsArt and Knowledge in Premodern Europeresearch group leader Sven Dupré (2011–2016)ended August 2015Twentieth-Century Histories of Knowledgeabout Human Variationresearch group leader Veronika Lipphardt (2009–2016)ended June 2015The Construction of Norms in 17th- to 19th-Century Europe and the United Statesresearch group leader Sabine Arnaud (2010–2016)extended until October 2016Modern Geometry and the Concept of Spaceresearch group leader Vincenzo De Risi (2010–2015)extended until September 2016Epistemes of Modern Acousticsresearch group leader Viktoria Tkaczyk (2015–2020) M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014 15

Department II Administration, Coordination, and Services Research Coordination Jochen Schneider (until January 2015), Ohad Parnes (since February 2015) Cooperation and Outreach Hansjakob Ziemer Library head Urs Schoepflin (until March 2015), Esther Chen (since April 2015) Digital Humanities head Dirk Wintergrün Administration head Claudia Paaß16 M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014

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Department II18 M P I W G R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 2 013 – 2 014