Abstract

Until recently, the development of the modern sciences has usually been described as a continuous unfolding of constantly expanding and differentiating research institutions on the one hand, and the accumulation of more and better knowledge on the other. The changes that have occurred both in scientific institutions and in the direction and content of research in the course of revolutions or comparable political changes pose significant challenges to such accounts. I would like to propose an interactive approach to this issue. Instead of accepting a linear, deterministic model of scientific change as a result of political upheaval, I suggest that such political changes present an array of challenges to and possibilities for the interruption, redirection, reconstruction or effortful continuation of research. The central claim is that scientific development in times of political upheaval has proceeded in Germany primarily by means of increasing cooperation of scientists with the state, involving a process that I call the technologization of basic research. But this is not always a one-sided affair involving the subordination of science to practical politics or to ideology. Rather, I argue, what occurs is themobilization or reconstruction of physical, institutional, financial, cognitive and/or rhetorical resources. Such mobilizations can proceed in various directions: the state or agencies within it can mobilize scientists as resources in the interest of achieving certain political aims; scientists can convert themselves into such resources (or claim that they are doing so); or both things can happen at once. The approach is exemplified by examining continuities and changes in the situations of the sciences following the major turning points of 20th-century German history, symbolized by the dates 1918, 1933, 1945 and 1990. Considered in particular are: scientific changes in Germany following the Nazi takeover and creative innovations by émigré scientists working in different cultural settings; the massive transfer of scientific resources after Nazi Germany's defeat and attempts to carry on and reconstruct science in the two postwar German states; and the massive reorganization of scientific institutions in eastern Germany after unification. The examples come primarily from biology and experimental psychology, but physical sciences and particular branches of technology are considered as well