Beyond the center: Sciences in Central and Eastern Europe and their histories. An interview with Professor Michael Gordin conducted by Jan Surman

Authors

  • Michael Gordin Princeton University, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History
  • Jan Surman Postdoctoral Research Associate Leibniz Graduate School “History, Knowledge, Media in East Central Europe”, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe (Marburg, Germany)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4467/23921749SHS.16.021.6164

Keywords:

Central and Eastern Europe, Habsburg Empire, history of science, science and imperialism, science and nationalism, multiculturalism

Abstract

What is special about sciences in Central and Eastern Europe? What are the obstacles for writing histories of science production beyond metropoles? Is this science different then science in the centers and what makes it such? How imperial are sciences made by representatives of the dominant nations and of non-dominant nations? These are some of the questions touched upon in the interview of Michael Gordin, leading historian of science from Princeton University.

Author Biographies

Michael Gordin, Princeton University, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History

Jan Surman, Postdoctoral Research Associate Leibniz Graduate School “History, Knowledge, Media in East Central Europe”, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe (Marburg, Germany)

References

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Chakrabarty, Dipesh 2000: Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Erickson, Paul; Klein, Judy; Daston, Lorraine; Lemov, Rebecca; Sturm, Thomas; Gordin, Michael 2013: How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Feichtinger, Johannes 2010: Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt. Von Bolzano über Freud zu Kelsen: Österreichische Wissenschaftsgeschichte 1848–1938. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Gellner, Ernest 1998: Language and Solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski and the Habsburg Dilemma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gordin, Michael 2004: A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table. New York: Basic Books.

Gordin, Michael 2007: Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gordin, Michael 2008: The Heidelberg Circle: German Inflections on the Professionalization of Russian Chemistry in the 1860s. In Karl Hall, Alexei B. Kojevnikov (eds.), Intelligentsia Science. Special issue of Osiris 23 (2008), ss. 23–49. Available online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40207002 (dostęp:14.09.2016).

Gordin, Michael 2009a: Points Critical: Russia, Ireland, and Science at the Boundary. Osiris 24, pp. 99–119.

Gordin, Michael 2009b/2009c: Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Polskie tłumaczenie: Truman, Stalin i koniec monopolu atomowego. Tłumaczył Tadeusz Markowski. Warszawa: Prószyński i S-ka.

Gordin, Michael 2012a: How Lysenkoism Became Pseudoscience: Dobzhansky to Velikovsky. Journal of the History of Biology 45/3, pp. 443–468.

Gordin, Michael 2012b: The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gordin, Michael 2015: Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done before and after Global English. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Latour, Bruno 1987: Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Surman, Jan 2012: Habsburg University 1848-1918. Biography of a Space. Nieopublikowana praca doktorska. Uniwersytet Wiedeński. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/16713182/_PhD_Thesis_Habsburg_Universities_1848_-_1918_biography_of_a_space._Wien_Univ._Diss._2012.

Surman, Jan 2015: Imperiale „go betweeners”: Józef Dietl und Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. [W:] Tim Buchen, Malte Rolf (Hrsg.): Imperiale Biographien: Elitekarrieren in den Vielvölkerreichen der Romanows, Habsburger und Osmanen (1850–1918). Berlin: De Gruyter, ss. 311–337.

Von Thun, Joseph Matthias 1845: Der Slawismus in Böhmen. Prag: Calve.

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Published

24-11-2016

How to Cite

Gordin, M., & Surman, J. (2016). Beyond the center: Sciences in Central and Eastern Europe and their histories. An interview with Professor Michael Gordin conducted by Jan Surman. Studia Historiae Scientiarum, 15, 433–452. https://doi.org/10.4467/23921749SHS.16.021.6164

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VARIA