Abstract

On the Contemporary Uses of ‘Long Durée’ in the History of Science. In the last years, Fernand Braudel's concept of ‘longue durée’ has been widely used in the German history of science. It thereby served as a historiographical tool for the problem of continuity and discontinuity with regard to the political ruptures of the years 1914, 1918, 1933, and 1945. In the context of historical innovation research, these political events seemed to have discontinued an otherwise ‘longue durée’ of a successful German innovation system, established in the German Empire. Critics of this narrative again stress the continuing functionality of a national innovation system also in the Third Reich. While the first group strengthens the negative impact of political events on a ‘longue durée’ of the German innovation system, thereby constructing a positive and politically charged interpretation of a scientific German ‘Sonderweg’, the latter emphasizes the catalytic role of these events, its function as a reorganizer of research. For this interpretation different methodologies like research ensembles and networks, based on Bruno Latour's non‐structural sociology of practices and interests, proved to be more adequate. Paul Rabinow's use of the term ‘assemblage’ as a contingent, temporal ensemble of practices, actors, structures, routines, value systems and self technologies again places the event at the basis of the historical analysis. While Hans‐Jörg Rheinberger's concept of experimental systems relates to this characterisation of assemblage, it also corresponds to Michel Foucault's reading of Braudel's concept of ‘longue durée’. Foucault fundamentally neglected the separation of event and structure in establishing a connection between series and events based on transformations, thereby avoiding both a totalizing macro history and an individualizing micro history. A future ‘longue durée’‐history, which transgresses the dichotomy of continuity and discontinuity, therefore can be conceptualized as a series of multi‐temporal non‐causal occurrences.