Exactitude. The Genesis of an Epistemic Virtue in the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’. The article examines the genesis of exactitude as an epistemic virtue in both scholarly and scientific contexts in the 19th century, mainly in Prussia. Starting with an influential historiographic work on ancient metrology three semantic fields of accuracy, exactitude and precision are differentiated and pursued in their etymologies as well as applications. The historic situation between 1790 and 1860 is identified as the crucial period when the exactness of (...) the exact sciences as well as the notion of accuracy in the humanities start to diverge from one another in order to develop an epistemic virtue each on its own. (shrink)

Citizen Science in the Empire. The System Place “Wertlose Einsendungen aus der Bevölkerung” (Worthless Entries from the Population) in the Archives of the Berlin‐Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Between 1871 and 1946, the Berlin‐Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities maintained a special collection in its archives, which, under the simple name “Entries from the Population”, kept correspondences, projects and proposals, for which a negative expert opinion was issued after thorough examination. The collection offers surprising insights into the pathologies and (...) fantasies of mostly pseudo‐scientific researchers, inventors and discoverers, while at the same time revealing a glimpse of the topics of this epoch that moved the history of science. Using a selection of examples, this essay examines the economic cycles and archive practices of a largely forgotten source of what is now called Citizen Science. (shrink)

In den letzten zehn Jahren sind die digitalen Geisteswissenschaften von einem Randphänomen zu einem der sichtbareren Felder kultur- und geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung geworden. Dieser Erfolg ist von Kritik begleitet und Fotis Jannidis identifiziert drei Topoi der Kritik an den Digital Humanities, die oft vorgebracht und wiederholt werden: 1. ›Das wussten wir schon vorher‹ 2. ›Die Themen der Digital Humanities sind veraltet‹ 3. Es handle sich bei den Digital Humanities um eine neue Form des Positivismus, der geisteswissenschaftliche Gegenstände nicht adäquat beschreibt. Diese (...) drei Vorwürfe gegen die Digital Humanities werden von Jannidis aufgegriffen und auf ihren argumentativen und wissenschaftspolitischen Gehalt befragt und hinterfragt. Der Beitrag schließt mit einem Plädoyer für das Ausprobieren, Basteln und für die Neugierde auf die neu entstehenden Datensammlungen in den Bibliotheken und Archiven. Markus Krajewski hält die Erwartungen an das Innovationspotenzial der Digital Humanities dagegen für überzogen, die aus seiner Perspektive bisher über den Status einer Hilfswissenschaft nicht hinausgekommen sind. So wie die Diplomatik um die Analyse von Urkunden oder die Numismatik um die Einordnung von Münzen oder die Paläographie um die Analyse von Handschriften besorgt ist, so kümmern sich die Digital Humanities bisher lediglich um die Nahtstelle von geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungsfragen mit computergestützten Methoden. Die eigentliche Aufgabe der Digital Humanities bestünde aber darin, die Kulturtechnik Codieren in den Vordergrund zu rücken. Denn Programmcodes lesen und schreiben zu können, seien auch für Geisteswissenschaftler eine Schlüsselkompetenz, damit die Schrift der Zukunft – die von Softwareentwicklern, Computeringenieuren und selbstlernenden Maschinen entworfenen Algorithmen – weiterhin kritisch kommentiert und interpretiert (und nicht bloß passiv angewandt) werden kann. During the last ten years, the so-called digital humanities have developed from a footnote to being a major player in the academic field of cultural studies and humanities alike. However, success goes hand in hand with increasing criticism, and Fotis Jannidis identifies three topoi of critique digital humanities repeatedly have to face. 1. ›We already knew that‹ 2. ›The topics of digital humanities are outdated‹ 3. Digital humanities are said to be a new form of positivism not adequately describing humanities related issues. Jannides takes up these accusations against digital humanities by scrutinizing and questioning their argumentative and scientific- political substance. The article closes with a speech promoting of a phase of trial and error, of tinkering and of curiosity for the subject at hand while analyzing newly originated data collections from libraries or archives. In Markus Krajewski’s opinion, however, the expectations placed in the potential of innovation of digital humanities are exaggerated which subsequently leads him to label them an ancillary discipline. The usefulness of digital humanities is entirely limited to providing the link between humanities-related research questions and computer-based methods in the same way diplomatics relies on the analysis of records, numismatics on the process of categorizing coins or paleography on the analysis of historical manuscripts. Krajewski sees the real task of digital humanities in bringing the cultural technology of coding into the spotlight. He describes the ability to write and read source code as a key competence every modern humanities scholar needs in order to be able to critically comment and interpret the script of the future: algorithms designed by software developers, computer engineers, and auto-didactic machines. (shrink)

The article examines the relationship between Aby Warburg and his library by analysing the media which is involved: first, the arrangement of the books according to the library’s principle of the ‘law of thse good neighbour’, which helps to order the books on the shelves. Second, the handling of the library is even more determined by Aby Warburg’s use of index cards and card indexes. Like his card index which is situated between him and the library, Aby Warburg himself is (...) in between two library paradigms: on the one hand, as a person of the nineteenth century, Warburg belongs to the supporters of the systematic shelving instead of cataloguing the book collection. On the other hand his work is based on swift associations and direct responses to research questions, the associations not only thought up by words, but also visually, manually to be re-arranged on the shelves, which turns out to be a rather clumsy practice. The motor and initiator of these new orders is the card index with its mobile elements, allowing quick connections between the entities and resulting in enormous processes of re-shuffling of whole shelves and systematic arrangements in the book collection. It is especially the combination of these usually incompatible paradigms that makes the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg such a unique institution and rich example of knowledge practices in the twentieth century. (shrink)

This ‘technical memoir’ shares insider knowledge of a specific scholarly and scientific situation in the second half of the 1990s: how a group of students and researchers at Humboldt-University Berlin, together with their teacher, media historian Friedrich Kittler, combined historical questions with computer science. The discussions and projects developed in this circle constituted a scholarly practice which would be called today digital humanities.

Focusing on a subject the author has extensively engaged with over the years, the article develops the notion of service as a cultural technique, and the media-theoretical figure of the servant as its servomechanism. The analysis follows three distinct scenarios that highlight, via different channels of perception, the interplay between corporeal practices and media objects in the production of specific cultural effects. In each of the examples chosen, service implies highly regulated networks of recursive operational chains that regulate in their (...) turn the production and distribution of power and knowledge. Thus, Krajewski argues, despite, or rather, precisely because of their apparent marginality and invisibility, the ‘small gestures’ of service join the ranks of already established, elementary symbolic techniques such as reading or writing. (shrink)

The world around 1900 -- The unity of diversity : Wilhelm Ostwald's world formations -- World history of technology : Dr. Franz Maria Feldhaus -- Systems economy : Walther Rathenau, man of the world -- As for the rest : in search of the world's remains.