In den 1860er Jahren entwarf der Zoologe Ernst Haeckel die wissenschaftliche Weltanschauung des Monismus, die er in einer Vielzahl popularwissenschaftlicher Schriften mit grossem Erfolg verbreitete. Auf der Grundlage der Darwinschen Theorie rief er die Biologie zur neuen Leitwissenschaft aus und postulierte die Einheit von Natur und Kultur. Seither galt Haeckel vielen als der deutsche Darwin, der die Gottesebenbildlichkeit des Menschen sowie die Schopfungstheologie zu Grabe getragen und so dem modernen Weltbild zum Durchbruch verholfen habe. Infolgedessen wurden die naturtheologischen und pantheistischen (...) Zuge des Monismus lange Zeit vernachlassigt. Demgegenuber formuliert Bernhard Kleeberg die These, dass gerade diese nicht-darwinistischen Elemente das monistische Denken nachdrucklich bestimmt haben. Anhand der wesentlichen Schriften Haeckels sowie an Auszugen aus seiner Korrespondenz rekonstruiert der Autor Genese und Kernaussagen des Monismus. Es wird deutlich, dass auch Haeckels Naturphilosophie letztlich im Banne romantischer und naturtheologischer Deutungsmuster steht. (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the 1860s Ernst Haeckel, German zoologist and one of the foremost popularizers of Darwinism, proposed a natural philosophy called “Monism.” Based on developmental thinking, natural selection, and sound natural laws, the scientific Weltanschauung of Monism was to supersede Christian religion in all its accounts of nature. Haeckel's new scientific religion, this essay argues, fused the religious joys of reveling in the beauty of “mother nature” with the assurance of progress based on scientific certainty. Even though Haeckel and his followers (...) polemicized against dualistic and teleological interpretations of nature, and despite their fierce struggle against the Christian churches, Monism cannot conceal its roots. All central arguments of natural theology reappear – albeit sometimes in causal or reductionist phrasing. Haeckel's aesthetics of nature in particular shows his indebtedness to the concept of a divine economy of nature. His Monism is an evolutionary and pantheistic natural theology. (shrink)

The article delineates the program of a praxeology of truth that allows for studying the dynamics and variability of truth in the sense of situated doing truth. It proposes a heuristic differentiation between »truth scenes« and »truth figures« that helps to analyze the emergence of theories of truth as well as that of specific truth cultures.

The article delineates the program of a praxeology of truth that allows for studying the dynamics and variability of truth in the sense of situated _doing truth_. It proposes a heuristic differentiation between »truth scenes« and »truth figures« that helps to analyze the emergence of theories of truth as well as that of specific truth cultures.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 44, Issue 4, Page 339-351, December 2021.

Bernhard Kleeberg/Andreas Langenohl: »Culturalisation, deculturalisation«. This article discusses variations in the analytic category of »culture« which has recently become prominent, with respect to ideal-typical idiomologies of deculturalisation as well as culturalisation. They are examined against the background of the systematic differentiations that are formulated in the renewed epistemic perspective of constructivism, deconstructivism and essentialism.

The title of this issue of Science in Context – “Believing Nature, Knowing God” – is intended to suggest the moral, emotional, and cognitive conditions in which the historical alliance of “nature” and “God” operated, and to make a more general point about knowing and believing. The production of scientific knowledge includes mechanisms for bringing about acceptance that such knowledge is true, and thus for generating a psychological state of belief. To claim to have knowledge of nature involves an attitude (...) of belief in certain epistemic values, in the procedures associated with them, and in the results to which they lead. “Nature,” both as a totality to be known, and as the sum of the results of research directed towards it, turns out to be an object of belief. (shrink)