The Leipzig anatomist Werner Spalteholz (1861–1940) started studies on the anastomoses between the coronary arteries of the heart in 1906. He confirmed the thesis, that “the transparency of tissues depends first of all on the refraction index of permeating liquid”, and began to produce transparent organ specimens. The 1st International Hygiene Exposition 1911 in Dresden showed 370 specimens produced by Spalteholz and was a great success. Later Spalteholz worked in the scientific Council of the Hygiene Museum. (...) The exhibition “Transparent man”, shown in 1925, testified to the great extent of knowledge that was passed on to the population with the help of these specimens. The “transparent human being” was not only an attractive and instructive collection for exhibition and educational purposes, but also a didactic concept. Fritz Tschackert (1887–1958) created the “transparent man” for the 2nd International Hygiene Exposition in Dresden in 1930. Today the “transparent woman” is the highlight of the museum's permanent exhibition. (shrink)

Die historisch-ethnologische Abteilung der 1911 in Dresden veranstalteten Internationalen Hygiene Ausstellung war ein großer Publikumserfolg. Organisiert von Karl Sudhoff, dem einflussreichsten Medizinhistoriker der Zeit, versuchte diese Abteilung, die Geschichte der Hygiene zu ‘verkaufen’. Auf einer Ausstellungsfläche von mehr als 2.400 m2 wurden über 20.000 Objekte in mehr als siebzig Räumen, Hallen und Gallerien präsentiert. Die Dresdener Hygiene-Ausstellung war zwar nicht die erste ihrer Art, aber die erste, die eine derartig große Ausstellungsfläche für die Inszenierung einer Geschichte (...) der Hygiene reservierte. Der Beitrag, der auf einer Auswertung der Korrespondenz Sudhoffs mit seinen Mitarbeitern beruht, zeigt, wie diese überaus erfolgreiche historisch-ethnologische Ausstellung möglich wurde. Das Archivmaterial, das einen Blick hinter die Kulissen erlaubt, belegt wie das Aufeinanderprallen unterschiedlicher Charaktere, verschiedener intellektueller Ziele und Organisationskulturen die spezifische Präsentation dieser Abteilung prägten. (shrink)

In 1878, amid a rapidly proliferating social interest in public health and cleanliness, a group of sanitary scientists and reformers founded the Parkes Museum of Hygiene in central London. Dirt and contagion knew no social boundaries, and the Parkes's founders conceived of the museum as a dynamic space for all classes to better themselves and their environments. They promoted sanitary science through a variety of initiatives: exhibits of scientific, medical and architectural paraphernalia; product endorsements; and lectures and (...) certificated courses in practical sanitation, food inspection and tropical hygiene. While the Parkes's programmes reified the era's hierarchies of class and gender, it also pursued a public-health mission that cut across these divisions. Set apart from the great cultural and scientific popular museums that dominated Victorian London, it exhibited a collection with little intrinsic value, and offered an education in hygiene designed to be imported into visitors’ homes and into urban spaces in the metropole and beyond. This essay explores the unique contributions of the Parkes Museum to late nineteenth-century sanitary science and to museum development, even as the growth of public-health policy rendered the museum obsolete. (shrink)

An der Anthropologie von Traum und Einbildungskraft hat um 1800 der juristische Diskurs maßgeblichen Anteil. Während der strafrechtliche Code eine Bereinigung der Imagination betreibt, stößt der urheberrechtliche Code eine unablässige Verschriftlichung der individuellen Einbildungskraft an. Auf beide Operationen antwortet eine Hermeneutik, die die Hygiene der Imagination durch die Auslegung der Schrift ersetzt.

Göttingen: Wallstein 2013. 604 S., 35 Abb., € 39,90. ISBN 978‐3‐8353‐1206‐7.

The paper deals with the unnoticed and sweeping activities of German scientists and university disciplines in the context of German occupation policy and plannings of plundering cultural assets as war pillage during the First World War. It exemplarily shows the case of palaeontologists in occupied Belgium: Their main project was the famous excavation site of skeletons of the dinosaur Iguanodon in the small town Bernissart. After a new excavation between 1915 and 1918 they planned, with the support of occupation authorities, (...) the transportation of dinosaur skeletons into German natural history museums and collections as war pillage. (shrink)

Aby Warburg's Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, left unfinished in 1929, has attracted significant interest in recent decades. This essay offers a new interpretation of Warburg's “picture atlas,” not in relation to modernist collage and photomontage, but as an heir to scientific pedagogical exhibitions of the late Wilhelmine period. It deals in particular with two “public enlightenment” shows curated by the Leipzig medical historian Karl Sudhoff, whose work Warburg admired and employed: the first on with the history of hygiene in Dresden (...) in 1911, the second in Leipzig, three years later, on the development of scientific images. Like Warburg, Sudhoff appreciated artworks and artifacts as sources for the history of science and medicine. His exhibitions consisted of assemblages of photographic reproductions—some of which were provided by Warburg himself—and uncannily anticipate Mnemosyne in both form and content. By examining the exchange of materials and display methods between the two scholars, the article explores how their respective visual projects reflected deeper disagreements over the public role of science, the epistemic power of images, and the persistence of the irrational in the human psyche. (shrink)

Parcels, Sales and Gifts: Hans Sauter's Entomological Practices between Formosa and Europe, 1902–1914. The exploration of global biodiversity is a form of knowledge production that is necessarily specimen‐based. In the endeavor to chart the natural world, not only ideas and writings travelled across the oceans, but also a flood of scientific objects. The German entomologist Hans Sauter (1871–1943) spent most of his life in Formosa, then a Japanese colony. His pronounced aim was to complete an inventory of the entire fauna (...) of Formosa. He aimed for the mass production of knowledge, becoming a collecting‐entrepreneur who employed scores of local collectors. Between 1902 and 1914, they amassed large quantities of insects, which required specialized practices in collecting, preserving, documenting, and packaging. Sauter sent these insects, but also hundreds of reptiles, mammals, birds, fish etc., to zoologists all over Europe who identified and published hitherto undescribed species. At first, Sauter sold his finds. Later, he stopped asking for money – pushing instead for speed in publication and making demands about the content and naming of these articles. His demands were met, especially by the Deutsches Entomologisches Museum in Dahlem. Despite almost no publications to his name, Sauter quickly gained considerable influence in the world of entomological research. In this paper, the circulation of these scientific objects serves as a focal point in order to embed local circumstances in the process of knowledge production in a global context. The practices associated with the specimens illustrate the economic, political and social dimensions of the formation of knowledge. Hans Sauter's case defies traditional dichotomies as it illustrates the interdependence of practical and theoretical knowledge, of science and trade and of center and periphery. Practical knowledge gained in a local setting in Formosa allowed Sauter to amass large amounts of insect specimens, a resource he used to steer the course of scientific practice in Europe. (shrink)

The archive produces a linear time that reaches towards ‘what could be’ by asserting ‘what has been’, providing us reassurance of our existence through the assertion of a reliably past past. But the Anthropocene is an era of uncontained material ramifications, where the past juts into the future and temporality warps as change accelerates unexpectedly. As an ecological and geologic epoch, documentation of the Anthropocene inherently has a relationship to natural history museums and archives. These institutions, however, troublingly rest on (...) what Elaine Graham calls ‘ontological hygiene’ – the separateness of the human subject from ‘nature’. The Anthropocene however, challenges the western post-Enlightenment binary of man vs. nature, as it (supposedly) naturalizes humans into an earth systems force. As such, documentation of this epoch might resist ontological sanitation. This article outlines an artistic research practice to create artefacts of the Anthropocene – one that invites material idiosyncrasies, objects-in-becoming, ephemerality, and decay. I suggest that artistic ‘anarchices’ prioritize process over objects, and resist linear and static representation in lieu of material, embodied and sensory artefacts. These include relational encounters with waste materials, reworked forms of ‘geology’, edible artefacts and multimedia works at landfills and feral sites. The anarchives are interpolated by a rejection of hegemonic logic, positivism and ‘objective’ truths about environmental phenomena; Situated, ambiguous and material knowledges are inwrought into the so-called Anthropocene (and any alternatives to this term). By focusing on waste as an analytical category, I explore some of the ontological breakdowns present in the Anthropocene and question how to unorder systems and disturb materiality. (shrink)

The institutionalization of cancer research in the German context was initiated by formation of the “Comité für Krebsforschung” (Committee for Cancer Research) in February 1900. One of the main actors in this connection was Ernst von Leyden (1832–1910), physician, clinician and head of the First Clinic of the Berliner Charité. This article investigates the essential conditions for the process of institutionalization and its further development in time. For this purpose, the concept of “resources” and a multi-level model of the public (...) are applied. It becomes apparent that bacteriology as well as statistics and tuberculosis research were not deployed as scientific resources, but rather as instruments of science policy. The period of investigation comprises the later publications of Leyden, concerning the etiology of cancer, the foundation of the “Comité” and its expansion right up to the participation of its members in exhibitions, namely the “Internationale Hygiene-Ausstellung” (International Hygiene Exhibition) in Dresden 1911. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the development and use of images employed by the Dresden Royal Museum for Zoology, Anthropology and Ethnography to resolve debates about how to use visual representation as a means of making ethnographic knowledge. Through experimentation with techniques of visual representation, the founding director, A.B. Meyer, proposed a historical, non-essentialist approach to understanding racial and cultural difference. Director Meyer's approach was inspired by the new knowledge he had gained through field research in Asia-Pacific as (...) well as new forms of imaging that made highly detailed representations of objects possible. Through a combination of various techniques, he developed new visual methods that emphasized intimate familiarity with variations within any one ethnic group, from skull shape to material ornamentation, as integral to the new disciplines of physical and cultural anthropology. It is well known that photographs were a favoured form of visual documentation among the anthropological and ethnographic sciences at thefin de siècle. However, in the scholarly journals of the Dresden museum, photographs, drawings, tables and etchings were frequently displayed alongside one another. Meyer sought to train the reader's eye through organized arrangements that represented objects from multiple angles and at various levels of magnification. Focusing on chimpanzees, skulls and kettledrums from Asia-Pacific, I track the development of new modes of making and reading images, from zoology and physical anthropology to ethnography, to demonstrate how the museum visually historicized humankind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Irreplaceable Cannot Be ReplacedEllen HarveyThe Irreplaceable Cannot Be Replaced, Ellen Harvey, 2008. Photographs: Jan Baracz.People in New Orleans were invited to submit images or descriptions of irreplaceable places, people, or things lost to Hurricane Katrina. Eleven submissions were chosen at random and the artist painted 16” x 20” oil paintings based on those submissions. All thirty texts that were submitted were framed and exhibited along with the paintings (...) at the Contemporary Arts Center/New Orleans as part of the exhibition Something from Nothing, curated by Dan Cameron. Texts without a painting were accompanied by a framed black panel. At the end of the exhibition, all of the paintings and the framed texts were given away to the participants.Ellen Harvey was born in the United Kingdom and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She has exhibited extensively in the US and internationally and was most recently included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Recent solo exhibitions include Private Collections at Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, The Museum of Failure at Luxe Gallery, New York, Beautiful/Ugly at Magnus Müller in Berlin, Bad Mirror at Galerie Gebruder Lehmann in Dresden, Mirror at the Pennsylvania Academy, and A Whitney for the Whitney at Philip Morris at the Whitney Museum at Altria. She took part in the Whitney Independent Study Program and the PS1 Studio Program. Recent awards include a Pennies from Heaven Grant, a Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative Grant, a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant, a Palm Beach County Cultural Council Grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. She has completed projects for both the New York and Chicago Transit Authorities, most recently including a mosaic for the new Metro-North Yankee Stadium Station. The New York Beautification Project was published by Gregory Miller in 2005, and Ellen Harvey: Mirror was published by the Pennsylvania Academy in 2006. Click for larger view View full resolutionI am 87 years old living in a trailer on our property in New Orleans.We had 5 ft of water, which remained in the house 6 weeks creating mold to the ceiling.We lost everything. When I read Chris Rose’s column (he’s my favorite columnist in the whole world) it brought to mind my mother’s two dining room chairs that had been around as long as I can remember. I had them restored in about 1976 by Senior Citizens in classes of the “Peoples Program” sponsored by the nuns on Mirabean Ave. The wood was polished and varnished with a light brown stain and the seats were re-caned. I was born in 1920 so the chairs could be 75 years old. Anyway I can imagine you will have many interesting subjects to choose from but I’m submitting mine hoping I’ll be one of the very fortunate ones selected.I am terrible at drawing but will give you as complete a description as I can.I loved those chairs and enjoyed them for extra seating on holidays and at parties and they were conversation pieces.Alice Delaney[End Page 2] Click for larger view View full resolutionThere are so many “washed away” treasures, that the memorialization of even just one will be everlastingly meaningful to the community.I am submitting photographs of porcelain dolls, which I had crafted prior to the disaster. The dolls shown were created from commercial molds and were ready to go to a “new home.” Needless to say these dolls were submerged under water for at least two weeks. I call them my “children of the flood” but have not had the courage to disassemble them. I was able to rescue some doll parts and am in the process of cleaning, sorting and sanitizing them for future assembly.If I am ever able to get back to my very rewarding hobby, which was helpful in supplementing my retirement income, I will have to replace my electronic kiln and most of my doll making supplies. Many of the molds that were destroyed are no longer available. However, I will keep the memories dear, I have been fortunate enough to replace my sewing machines and some of the fabric used for clothing and doll... (shrink)

Africa in the View of the Academic World of the GDR: An Overview of the History of African Ethnography. Ethnography – also referred to as ethnology by the GDR – was a “minor subject” in which typical big science problems such as mass-study and large-scale research played no role. It was therefore not the focus of science policy interventions by the state and/or its ruling party. Nevertheless, ethnographic research, exemplified by the sub-discipline related to Africa, remained within the limits set (...) by the state and ruling party. Despite of these relative restrictions, the two East German universities in Berlin and Leipzig, as well as the ethnological museums in Leipzig and Dresden, have succeeded in presenting research results that are relevant and remain valid to the present day. (shrink)

Africa in the View of the Academic World of the GDR: An Overview of the History of African Ethnography. Ethnography – also referred to as ethnology by the GDR – was a “minor subject” in which typical big science problems such as mass-study and large-scale research played no role. It was therefore not the focus of science policy interventions by the state and/or its ruling party. Nevertheless, ethnographic research, exemplified by the sub-discipline related to Africa, remained within the limits set (...) by the state and ruling party. Despite of these relative restrictions, the two East German universities in Berlin and Leipzig, as well as the ethnological museums in Leipzig and Dresden, have succeeded in presenting research results that are relevant and remain valid to the present day. (shrink)

Rammenau is a tiny village situated in the lovely Oberlausitz countryside east of Dresden. It is a village with two claims to fame: it possesses a large and well-preserved early eighteenth century Baroque palace, which now contains an elegant restaurant, hotel, and museum; and it is also the birthplace of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. The modest house where Fichte was born in 1762 no longer survives, but the village still includes several structures from the time of Fichte, including the (...) church where he was baptized and the school where the future philosopher was enrolled before his serendipitous “discovery,” at the age of nine, by Baron von Miltitz, who was so astonished by the extraordinary intellectual talents of the young Fichte that he offered to sponsor his study at Schulpforta and elsewhere. The village also contains several other reminders of its most famous son, including various monuments and, in the palace itself, a three-room “Fichte museum.”. (shrink)

The institutionalization of cancer research in the German context was initiated by formation of the “Comité für Krebsforschung” (Committee for Cancer Research) in February 1900. One of the main actors in this connection was Ernst von Leyden (1832–1910), physician, clinician and head of the First Clinic of the Berliner Charité. This article investigates the essential conditions for the process of institutionalization and its further development in time. For this purpose, the concept of “resources” and a multi-level model of the public (...) are applied. It becomes apparent that bacteriology as well as statistics and tuberculosis research were not deployed as scientific resources, but rather as instruments of science policy. The period of investigation comprises the later publications of Leyden, concerning the etiology of cancer, the foundation of the “Comité” and its expansion right up to the participation of its members in exhibitions, namely the “Internationale Hygiene-Ausstellung” (International Hygiene Exhibition) in Dresden 1911. (shrink)

Hans Kleinpeter’s letters to Ernst Mach held in the Deutsches Museum Archive in Munich are of the greatest importance in order to learn some details of the working relationship between these scholars. In the three letters here entirely published for the first time Kleinpeter shows his interest for Nietzsche’s thought, and states that some of the latter’s ideas are in compliance with Mach’s epistemology.

Hans Kleinpeter’s letters to Ernst Mach held in the Deutsches Museum Archive in Munich are of the greatest importance in order to learn some details of the relationship between these scholars. In the three letters here entirely published for the first time, Kleinpeter shows his interest for Nietzsche’s thought, and states that some of the latter’s ideas are in compliance with Mach’s epistemology.

Works by one of the most important artists working in America today—photographs, collaborative projects, ephemeral objects, and trenchant and witty institutional critique. For the past two decades Louise Lawler has been taking photographs of art in situ, from small poignant black-and-white images of art in people's homes to large format glossy color pictures of art in museums and in auction houses. In addition she has produced a variety of objects—paperweights, etched drinking glasses, matchbooks, gallery announcements—all of which cleverly describe how (...) art comes to accrue value as it moves through various systems of exchange. Lawler's oeuvre was essential in creating an expanded field for photography, it was crucial in postmodern debates over theories of representation, it remains indelible within the field of institutional critique, and it has always been trenchant and witty in its sustained commitment to a feminist vision of art, art history, and contemporary art practice. But Lawler is also an old-fashioned "artist's artist," long overdue for the kind of serious reconsideration and recognition that this volume affords. The very self-effacing nature of Lawler's practice, however, her continual suspicion about notions of authorship—and her sly disregard for museological conventions—have meant that she has resisted precisely the usual mid-career retrospective. Twice Untitled and Other Pictures, published in conjunction with Lawler's first major museum exhibition in the United States, organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, eats away at the standard museum practices of chronology, linear development, and the presentation of masterpieces, opting instead to explore such dynamic themes and undercurrents in Lawler's practice as her relationship to sculpture, her long history of collaborative projects, her production of such ephemera as napkins, matchbooks, and announcement cards, and the steady political dimension of her work—which culminated most recently in works that are deeply critical of the American invasion of Iraq. With essays by art historian and political theorist Rosalyn Deutsche and curators Ann Goldstein and Helen Molesworth, Twice Untitled and Other Pictures promises to be an essential volume for anyone interested in late twentieth- and early twenty-first- century art. (shrink)

The career of the German physicist Walther Gerlach (1889–1979) spanned two world wars and the changing political systems in Germany in the twentieth century. As a physicist involved in the rapid development of atomic physics and the management of scientific research in Germany during World War II as well as in post-war West Germany, several attempts have been made in the past by historians of science to write his full biography. These projects have, among other foci, asked about Gerlach's role (...) and his position with respect to National Socialism. However, based on his extensive papers preserved in the Deutsches Museum Archive in Munich, none of these projects has so far been conclusive. In this article, we identify evidence for the selective deletion of personal files relating to his first wife and daughter. We argue that reconstructing this lacuna sheds new light on the influence of National Socialist ideology on Gerlach's personal life, making him both a profiteer and a victim of eugenics jurisdiction. (shrink)

This paper argues that the heritage represented by a museum should be seen not just in its individual objects but also in the relationships between them. The Conservatoire Nationale des Arts et Métiers and the Science Museum in London, the earliest great European science museums, were deeply concerned with the relationship between science and practice. The foundation speeches of the Deutsches Museum emphasised the concern with both past and future. Such ancestry provided hard-to-escape templates within which (...) collections were built up over the subsequent century and more. Thus the Science Museum’s biotechnology collection developed at the very end of the twentieth century and albeit based on detailed historical research reflects the same concerns with science–technology relations as could be seen in the 1876 Loan Exhibition which started off the Science Museum. The physical presence of such carefully-structured accumulations of objects could embody and reinforce the reality of such categories as pure and applied science. (shrink)

The article takes the world’s first exhibition on the geological and philosophical concept of the Anthropocene, »Welcome to the Anthropocene «, Deutsches Museum (2014-2016), as a starting point for initial theoretical reflections on the potential and limitations of exhibitions as media and designers of the Mediocene. On the basis of a discussion of image deployment, use of space and the materiality of objects, exhibitions are analyzed as ›slow media‹.

The article takes the world’s first exhibition on the geological and philosophical concept of the Anthropocene, »Welcome to the Anthropocene «, Deutsches Museum (2014-2016), as a starting point for initial theoretical reflections on the potential and limitations of exhibitions as media and designers of the Mediocene. On the basis of a discussion of image deployment, use of space and the materiality of objects, exhibitions are analyzed as ›slow media‹.

Summary In 1874, the Dutch chemist and Nobel prizewinner Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (1852?1911) laid the foundations for stereochemistry with a publication in which he openly suggested that molecules were real physical entities with a three-dimensional structure. He visualized this new spatial concept with illustrations, but also with the help of small cardboard molecular models, which he made himself. Some of these models have survived the ravages of time and are among the oldest molecular models in the world still (...) in existence. What is more, they are the first material models of a three-dimensional molecular structure ever made. This article describes the surviving Van 't Hoff models, kept in Museum Boerhaave in Leiden and in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Special attention is paid to the use of these models and the specific purposes they served. A closer examination of the models and their context reveals that they had an essential part to play in the early development and spread of Van 't Hoff's stereochemistry theory: he put his molecular models not only to versatile use as didactic tools, scientific instruments, and precursors to experimental proof, but also as devices to persuade other scientists of the usefulness of his theory. (shrink)

Karl Marx (1818–1883) was born in Trèves in the Rhineland. He studied law in Bonn, philosophy and history in Berlin, and received a doctorate from the University of Jena for a thesis on Epicurus (341–270 BC). (Epicurus' philosophy was a reaction against the ‘other-worldliness’ of Plato's theory of Forms. Whereas for Plato knowledge was of intelligible Forms, and the criterion of the truth of a hypothesis about the definition of a Form was that it should survive a Socratic testing by (...) question and answer, for Epicurus the criterion of truth was sensation, and employment of this criterion favoured the theory with which Plato explicitly contrasted the theory of Forms (Sophist 246a–d), namely, the materialism of the atomists, Leucippus and Democritus.) Marx was editor of the Rheinische Zeitung of Cologne, 1842–1843. The paper was suppressed and he moved to Paris, becoming co-editor of the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher, the one and only issue of which contained two articles by Marx and two by his friend, Friedrich Engels (1829–1895). Together they wrote The German Ideology (1846) and their most influential work, The Communist Manifesto (1848). Marx had been expelled from France in 1845, and went to Brussels, from where he was expelled during the 1848 revolutions. He went to Cologne to start, with Engels and others, a paper with a revolutionary editorial policy, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Expelled once again, Marx finally settled in London, working in the British Museum on his great historical analysis of capitalism, Das Kapital. The first volume was published in 1867, the remaining two volumes, completed by Engels after Marx's death, in 1885 and 1895. (shrink)

To compile a comprehensive edition of the correspondence of the world-famous physicist, physiologist, philosopher, and pioneer historian of science, Ernst Mach is an urgent desideratum. An estimated 5000 letters to and from Mach are kept in public and private archives worldwide. The largest part of this correspondence was formerly kept in the Ernst Mach Institut für Kurzzeitdynamik der Fraunhofergesellschaft in Freiburg/Breisgau and is now archived at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. A smaller partial estate, based on collections by (...) Ernst Mach’s son Ludwig has been transferred to the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. Other major collections are kept in Konstanz, Vienna, Prague etc. Mach’s own letters are spread throughout Europe and North America in hundreds of archives hosting private papers or estates of his contacts. (shrink)

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe. They have unlimited scope and power to cause change, and the quest to improve them is the basic regulating principle not (...) only of science but of all successful human endeavor. This stream of ever improving explanations has infinite reach, according to Deutsch: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper boundary to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve. In his previous book, The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch describe the four deepest strands of existing knowledge-the theories of evolution, quantum physics, knowledge, and computation-arguing jointly they reveal a unified fabric of reality. In this new book, he applies that worldview to a wide range of issues and unsolved problems, from creativity and free will to the origin and future of the human species. Filled with startling new conclusions about human choice, optimism, scientific explanation, and the evolution of culture, The Beginning of Infinity is a groundbreaking book that will become a classic of its kind. (shrink)

Solutions to Russell’s paradox of propositions and to Kaplan’s paradox are proposed based on an extension of von Neumann’s method of avoiding paradox. It is shown that Russell’s ‘anti-Cantorian’ mappings can be preserved using this method, but Kaplan’s mapping cannot. In addition, several versions of the Epimenides paradox are discussed in light of von Neumann’s method.

§1. Mathematics and the physical world. Genuine scientific knowledge cannot be certain, nor can it be justified a priori. Instead, it must be conjectured, and then tested by experiment, and this requires it to be expressed in a language appropriate for making precise, empirically testable predictions. That language is mathematics.This in turn constitutes a statement about what the physical world must be like if science, thus conceived, is to be possible. As Galileo put it, “the universe is written in the (...) language of mathematics”. Galileo's introduction of mathematically formulated, testable theories into physics marked the transition from the Aristotelian conception of physics, resting on supposedly necessary a priori principles, to its modern status as a theoretical, conjectural and empirical science. Instead of seeking an infallible universal mathematical design, Galilean science usesmathematics to express quantitative descriptions of an objective physical reality. Thus mathematics became the language in which we express our knowledge of the physical world — a language that is not only extraordinarily powerful and precise, but also effective in practice. Eugene Wigner referred to “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences”. But is this effectiveness really unreasonable or miraculous?Numbers, sets, groups and algebras have an autonomous reality quite independent of what the laws of physics decree, and the properties of these mathematical structures can be just as objective as Plato believed they were. (shrink)