Originating within research on design cognition, the term design thinking has been growing in popularity over the past three decades, and has become a matter in a variety of discourses, assuming diverse and not necessarily congruent notions. In this article we suggest how to differentiate those discourses on design thinking and discuss its evolution into a meta-disciplinary concept.

Creation, collection and retention of knowledge in digital communities is an activity that currently requires being explicitly targeted as a secure method of keeping intellectual capital growing in the digital era. In particular, we consider it relevant to analyze and evaluate the empathetic cognitive personalities and behaviors that individuals now have with the change from face-to-face communication to computer-mediated communication online. This document proposes a cyber-humanistic approach to enhance the traditional SECI knowledge management model. A cognitive perception is added to (...) its cyclical process following design thinking interaction, exemplary for improvement of the method in which knowledge is continuously created, converted and shared. In building a cognitive-centered model, we specifically focus on the effective identification and response to cognitive stimulation of individuals, as they are the intellectual generators and multiplicators of knowledge in the online environment. Our target is to identify how geographically distributed—digital—organizations should align the individual’s cognitive abilities to promote iteration and improve interaction as a reliable stimulant of collective intelligence. The new model focuses on analyzing the four different stages of knowledge processing, where individuals with sympathetic cognitive personalities can significantly boost knowledge creation in a virtual social system. For organizations, this means that multidisciplinary individuals can maximize their extensive potential, by externalizing their knowledge in the correct stage of the knowledge creation process, and by collaborating with their appropriate sympathetically cognitive remote peers. (shrink)

History of medicine is taught in West Germany as part of the standard course offerings for medical students and is well represented at many universities. But history of science and technology unfortunately still lacks any adequate supporting system and accordingly barely continues to survive at a few institutions of the Federal Republic. Although history of medicine serves a different function than history of science and technology, closer cooperation between these groups is possible and greatly desired for the future.

Le présent article éclaire le contexte empirique et argumentatif du développement de la théorie corpusculaire de la matière au 17 e siècle. Dans le cadre d'une conception unitaire de la nature l'hypothèse atomique livra une description imagée des phénomènes en deça du perceptible à l'instar du monde visible. Cependant, tant sur le plan de la méthodologie empirique que sur celui de l'épistémologie, ces analogies n'étaient pas sans poser des problèmes. Différents arguments ont concouru à leur légitimation, mais aussi à leur (...) réfutation ultérieure: la métaphore antique de la literarum similitudo‚ qui considérait les atomes comme les lettres du livre de la nature caractérisées par leurs formes, le progrès de l'instrumentation optique nourrissant l'espoir que le microscope rendrait directement visibles les atomes eux-mêmes, et enfin un scepticisme croisssant à l'égard de la tentative de rendre tangible l'essence de l'être. De Sennert et Jungius à Gassendi, Boyle et Locke, l'atomisme ontologique cédera finalement le pas à une notion de corpuscule qui laissera en suspens la question de l'essence des atomes. (shrink)

Based on a brief historiographical survey, the article aims at tracing some intellectual relationships between early modern science and the protestant Reformation . Besides the mere structural analogies of the two reform movements and their common debt to Renaissance humanism, common elements such as the new reading of texts and the new role of the individual, but also the philosophical link between voluntarism and the notion of natural law, are discussed. However, the ambiguous attitude towards natural knowledge and the wide (...) variety within the European protestant movement ask for a much closer look into the relationships between science and the Reformation than has been hitherto been achieved. (shrink)