The Problem of the Human Sciences

2020 ◽  
pp. 229-258
Author(s):  
Stephen Gaukroger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Internal Structure ◽  
Nature Of Science ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Philosophical Project

In the nineteenth century there arose claims to scientific standing that were highly contested, and provoked a new kind of metascientific enquiry. The accreditation and ranking of disciplines were rationalized in terms of the internal structure of science, but they were predominantly extra-scientific in origin, and were more than anything else an elaborate exercise in legitimation. The issues centred on accounts of human behaviour that had traditionally been the preserve of religious and metaphysical teaching. These included ethics, where efforts were now afoot to put it on a scientific standing, as well as areas that had the character of a loose combination of moral, political, and economic views which could now be claimed to have been put on a scientific footing. The dispute between Whewell and Mill on the scientific standing of the new disciplines became transformed into a philosophical project of understanding the nature of science.

Jews and the Criminalization of Madness

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Grey Zone ◽  
Social Type ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Mental Pathology ◽  
Medical Process

Distinctions between delinquency and illness were ill-defined and problematic, as we have seen in the case of the masturbator Johann A. And it was precisely in this vague grey zone between the two that psychiatry was able to insert itself in defining a new mental pathology. The problem of deciphering the difference between delinquency/criminality and madness was further complicated and given a unique twist in the cases of Jewish patients, whose Jewishness (in the eyes of the asylum) was by definition a kind of criminality and immorality. Jewishness, in other words, represented a category of interpretation distinct from illness, one which, in turn, had become highly politicized in the debates about Jewish emancipation since the eighteenth century. Therefore, when race was used to interpret patient behavior, it constituted a form of thinking outside of the medical domain in the strictest sense. In this way, it was potentially at odds with the medical process, and could, as I will show in two case studies, function to prevent the asylum staff from seeing and treating patients as ill. This chapter thus examines the limits of the medicalization of deviancy— the points where, in contrast to the “illnesses” discussed heretofore (male masturbation, nymphomania, and religious madness), medicine pulled back, seeking explanations for the person in a framework outside of the terms of medicine. That extramedical framework drew from long-standing stereotypes of Jews as immoral and criminal; but it also had a more immediate source in a contemporary trope that united Jewishness and criminality in a social type: the jüdischer Gauner (Jewish crook). Such images of Jews had in turn become part of the political arsenal of those opposing Jewish emancipation on the grounds of an incorrigible Jewish “character.” My argument here runs counter to the few historical works on Jews and insanity, which, consistent with the medicalization thesis, have focused exclusively on the conflation of Jewishness and illness in medical theories. In part, this approach derives from their focus on the second half of the nineteenth century, where the conflation was indeed overwhelming, psychiatry and medicine (as well as other human sciences) having become saturated with racial and degeneration theories.

A typology of suicide

1966 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Giddens
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
The Other ◽  
Psychological Phenomenon ◽  
Objective Investigation

Objective investigation into suicide as a social and psychological phenomenon dates back to the opening of the nineteenth century (1). Few other areas of human behaviour, in fact, can have attracted the same measure of continuous interest on the part of students in several disciplines. H. Rost'sBibliographie des Selbstmords, published in 1927, lists well over 3,000 items (2). Today the total must be something over 5,000 (3). The reader surveying this voluminous literature, however, is impressed by several notablelacunae: 1) most of this literature is descriptive rather than explanatory; the great bulk of it consists of surveys of the distribution of suicide, or of clinical descriptions of individual cases (4); 2) there is a marked degree of disciplinary “compartmentalisation”. It has been evident for many years that both sociology and psychology have complementary contributions to make to the explanation of suicide (5); but theory and research into suicide in these two disciplines has tended to proceed separately with little more than a token acknowledgement of the potential relevance of one to the other (6). The object of this paper is to establish a schematic typology upon which a bridge between sociological and psychological theory might be built.

scholarly journals Exit the frog, enter the human: physiology and experimental psychology in nineteenth-century astronomy

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIMENA CANALES
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Physiology ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Sensory Transmission ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intense Debate

This paper deals with one of the first attempts to measure simple reactions in humans. The Swiss astronomer Adolph Hirsch investigated personal differences in the speed of sensory transmission in order to achieve accuracy in astronomy. His controversial results, however, started an intense debate among both physiologists and astronomers who disagreed on the nature of these differences. Were they due to different eyes or brains, or to differences in skill and education? Furthermore, they debated how to eliminate them. Some, for example, wanted to eliminate the observer, and prescribed the use of new technologies like the electro-chronograph or photography, while others believed in discipline and education. By debating the nature of these differences, astronomers and physiologists sketched both different conceptions of ‘man’ and different paths to objectivity. These diverse conceptions, moreover, were tied to current nineteenth-century debates, such as the benefits or disadvantages of railroads, telegraphy and the standardization of time and longitudes. By focusing on the debates surrounding the speed of sensory transmission, this paper reevaluates the history of astronomy, physiology and experimental psychology. Furthermore, in investigating astronomy's relation to the human sciences, it uncovers profound connections in the traditionally separate histories of objectivity and the body.L'heure sera distribuée dans les maisons,comme l'eau ou le gaz.Adolph Hirsch

The Future of the Human Sciences

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
Ivan Jablonka
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
History And Literature ◽  
The Future

Amid the current crisis in the humanities and the human sciences, researchers should take up the challenge of writing more effectively. Rather than clinging to forms inherited from the nineteenth century, they should invent new ways to captivate readers, while also providing better demonstrations of their research. Defining problems, drawing on a multitude of sources, carrying out investigations, taking journeys in time and space: these methods of inquiry are as much literary opportunities as cognitive tools. They invite experimentation in writing across disciplines, trying out different lines of reasoning, shuttling back and forth between past and present, describing the process of discovery, and using the narrative “I.” We can address the public creatively, decompartmentalize disciplines, and encourage encounters between history and literature, sociology and cinema, anthropology and graphic novels—all without compromising intellectual rigor. Now more than ever, the human sciences need to assert their place in the polis.

Anglophone Historicisms

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-346
Author(s):  
Mark Bevir ◽  
Naomi Choi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the place of historicism in Anglophone and especially analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy arose as part of a general modernist revolt against the developmental historicisms of the nineteenth century with their faith in progress. Modernism inspired more formal approaches to knowledge, philosophy, and the human sciences. It is, however, a mistake to assume the rise of modernism and analytic philosophy left no space for historicism. Three main traditions of historicism continued to persist in Anglophone philosophy through the twentieth century. First, the lingering presence of idealism continued to inspire the historicism of philosophers such as R. G. Collingwood and later Charles Taylor. Second, modernist historians, such as Quentin Skinner, sometimes grabbed at arguments from analytic philosophy to defend their methodological agendas. Third, the rise of holistic themes in analytic philosophy opened the way to historicist moments and themes in philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, and Richard Rorty.

scholarly journals New species of prunoid radiolarians from the Antarctic Neogene

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lazarus ◽  
Karoline Faust ◽  
Irina Popova-Goll
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Species ◽  
Internal Structure ◽  
Range Data ◽  
Neogene Sediments ◽  
Nomina Dubia ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Stratigraphic Range

Abstract. Radiolarians with ‘prunoid’ morphologies (here defined as spumellarians with distinct external, generally ellipsoidal shells, usually bearing a pylome and having a lithelid, pylonid or spongy internal structure) are very common in polar Neogene sediments. Use of these taxa would improve resolution in Antarctic Neogene biostratigraphic and palaeoceanographic studies significantly, but the taxonomy of prunoids is poorly known. This paper reviews the existing literature of generic names commonly used for prunoids, mostly dating from the nineteenth century. With the exception of Larcopyle Dreyer 1889, these names are either assigned to other, non-prunoid groups or are considered to be nomina dubia. Fourteen species, subspecies or varieties – most of them new – of Larcopyle from Antarctic Neogene sediments are described, illustrated with full plates and stratigraphic range data are provided: L. augusti n. sp., L. buetschlii Dreyer, 1889, L. eccentricum n. sp., L. hayesi Chen, 1975 hayesi n. variety, L. h. irregularis n. variety, L. labryinthusa n. sp., L. nebulum n. sp., L. peregrinator n. sp., L. polyacantha (Campbell & Clark 1944) n. comb. polyacantha n. subsp., L. p. titan n. subsp., L. p. amplissima n. subsp., L. titan (Campbell & Clark, 1944) n. comb., L. pylomaticus (Riedel, 1958) n. comb. and L. weddellium n. sp.

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