Donata Romizi, Monika Wulz, Elisabeth Nemeth (eds.) Edgar Zilsel: Philosopher, Historian, Sociologist. Cham: Springer 2022. ISBN: 978-3-030-93687-7

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book provides a new all-round perspective on the life and work of Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) as a philosopher, historian, and sociologist. He was close to the Vienna Circle and has been hitherto almost exclusively referred to in terms of the so-called “Zilsel thesis” on the origins of modern science. Much beyond this “thesis”, Zilsel’s brilliant work provides original insights on a broad number of topics, ranging from the philosophy of probability and statistics to the concept of “genius”, from the issues of scientific laws and theories to the sociological background of science and philosophy, and to the political analysis of the problems of his time. Praised by Herbert Feigl as an “outstanding brilliant mind”, Zilsel, being as a Social-Democrat of Jewish origins, mostly led a life of hardship marked by emigration and coming to a sudden and tragic end by suicide in 1944. The impossibility of an academic career has hindered the reception of Zilsel’s scientific work for a long time. This volume is a contribution to its late reception, providing new insights especially into his work during his years in Vienna; moreover, it shows the heuristic value of Zilsel’s ideas for future Scholar research – in philosophy, history, and sociology.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Donata Romizi has studied Philosophy at the University of Bologna (where she also attended the interdisciplinary “Collegio Superiore”) and at the University of Vienna (PhD, 2013). She now works at the University of Vienna: she is Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Vice-Director of the postgraduate program “Philosophical Practice” (which she initiated in 2013) at the Postgraduate Center. Her main publications so far have been in the field of (History of) Philosophy of Science: she has published on the philosophy of probability and statistics, on the Vienna Circle and on the issue of scientific determinism. Her book Dem wissenschaftlichen Determinismus auf der Spur (Karl Alber, 2019) was awarded the Karl Alber Prize 2019. Further main publications: Fare i conti con il caso. La probabilità e l’emergere dell’indeterminismo nella fisica moderna (Bologna: Gedit, 2009). “The Vienna Circle’s ‘Scientific World Conception’: Philosophy of Science in the Political Arena”, in: HOPOS. The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Vol. 2, No. 2; Fall 2012.

Monika Wulz is a philosopher and historian of science. After finishing her PhD at the University of Vienna, she was a postdoc researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, at the Technical University of Braunschweig, at the University of Konstanz, and at ETH Zurich. Currently, she is a postdoc researcher and lecturer at the Chair of Science Studies at the University of Lucerne. Her research is situated at the intersection of Philosophy of Science, History of Science, and the history of social and economic thought. Her publications focus on the epistemological traditions in French philosophy, including her book Erkenntnisagenten: Gaston Bachelard und die Reorganisation des Wissens (Kadmos, 2010), on the philosophy of Ernst Mach and the Vienna Circle as well as on social and economic aspects of epistemology. Currently, she is working on a book project on the economic foundations of intellectual work in the decades around 1900.

Elisabeth Nemeth has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna (retired in 2016). Her fields of research are Philosophy and History of Science, Logical Empiricism, Philosophy of the Social Sciences. She was visiting professor at the Université Paris 1 – Sorbonne and the University of Tunis. She served as a board member in various international philosophical societies (Institute Vienna Circle, HOPOS, Austrian Philosophical Society). 2019-2021 she was president of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. Publications include “Ernst Mach and Logical Empiricism”. In: The Routledge Companion to Logical Empiricism. Ed. by T. E. Uebel and C. Limbeck-Lilienau, Routledge, forthcoming. „Visualizing Relations in Society and Economics: Otto Neurath’s Isotype-Method Against the Background of his Economic Thought“. In: Neurath Reconsidered. New Sources and perspectives. Ed. by J. Cat, A. T. Tuboly. Springer Nature Switzerland 2019, 177-140. “Edgar Zilsel on Historical Laws”, in: History of Explanation, Prediction and Confirmation. Proceedings of the ESF project Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective. Ed. by D. Dieks, W.J. Gonzalez, S. Hartmann, T. Uebel, M. Weber, Springer, 521-532.

 

Call for Papers: Women Scientists, Development and Environmental Citizenship: Scientific Transnational Organizations and Public Activism, University of Trieste - Department of Humanities, April 20-21, 2023

 Call for Papers: Women Scientists, Development and Environmental Citizenship: Scientific Transnational Organizations and Public Activism, University of Trieste - Department of Humanities, April 20-21, 2023

The  Department of Humanistic Studies at the University of Trieste is  organizing a conference on April 20-21, 2023 in Trieste, dedicated to  women's activism in science, development and environmental justice in  the context of transnational organizations during the Cold War.

In  the second half of the twentieth century, beginning with the so-called  "Atomic Age," a realization gradually took hold among scientists of the  two opposing blocs that dialogue for the peaceful use of nuclear energy  would help save the world from atomic cataclysm. At the same time, the  activism of some/all scientists manifested a strong critique of the  development model that had characterized the postwar years. FAO's World  Food Program in 1961 and Rachel Carson's famous Silent Spring  study-denunciation in 1962 paved the way for understanding the links  between environmentalism, economic and social development, and the role  of science. There then gradually emerged the need to analyze, and stop,  the environmental and human consequences that unsustainable development  was bringing to the planet and the poorest people.

During  the 1960s and 1970s, the process of decolonization also led to a more  pronounced prominence of the new countries that emerged from the  dissolution of European colonial empires. This also redefined the  concept of development, in connection with the debate on human rights  and environmental sustainability, which began to gain progressive  prominence in national politics, international relations and the agenda  of International Organizations.

Along  with purely economic issues, women's rights issues also emerged,  intersecting with the debates of the feminist movements of the 1970s and  1980s. In fact, as Regina Laub and Yianna Lambrou have pointed out, it  was female scientists such as Helen Caldicott, Rosalie Bertell, Dorothy  Hodgkin, and Emma Reh who denounced the nefarious effects of the arms  race (particularly atomic) and emphasized the importance of enacting  effective development policies for the world's most backward areas, and  using different criteria to analyze global problems.

These  elaborations also found space at the international level if one  considers the importance of documents such as the Declaration on the  Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (DEDAW, 1967) later to  become the Convention (CEDAW) in 1979. To this must be added the  important presence of women scientists at the UN conferences in Mexico  City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1985), where  the links between women's rights, environmental justice and sustainable  development emerged ever stronger. Beginning in the late 1960s, as  Devaki Jain analyzed in 2005, a series of studies and campaigns were  launched within the so-called Onusian system (which includes all related  agencies, such as WHO, UNDP, UNESCO, FAO and ILO) that influenced and  were influenced in turn by the presence of women scientists who through  channels that were not always official and structured – networks and  associations such as Pugwash, Femmes d'Europe, Women in Science and  numerous NGOs – attempted to influence global choices and perspectives.  At the same time, beginning in the late 1970s, grassroots movements  sprang up in different parts of the world that combined claims about  respect for the environment with demands for greater social and racial  equity. Within these, women's activism played a key role in creating a  transnational network and codifying the concept of environmental justice  on a global level.

The  conference is part of the PRIN-2017 research project "Inventing the  Global Environment: Science, Politics, Advocacy and the  Environment-Development Nexus in the Cold War and Beyond."

The discussion topics and perspectives to be addressed by the papers are as follows:

-  How has women's activism through associations, transnational networks,  or international agencies (such as UNIFEM, TWOWS, INSTRAW) influenced  the orientations and studies of major international organizations,  particularly the UN and related agencies.

-  How has the activism of women scientists and scholars in general  changed, particularly in so-called developing and Third World countries  but not only there, the relationship between development, environmental  justice, and human rights? What have been the connections between  Non-Governmental Organizations, activism of women scientists such as  Rachel Carson (for the Western world) or Wangari Maathai (for Third  World countries) and the creation of women leaders within environmental  and environmental justice movements.

- How can the categories of gender, race, and class explain North-South relations with respect to environmental issues?

-  How have local and global dimensions helped guide the environmental  debate and what has been the contribution of women to this discussion?

-  How has women's activism been incorporated into policymaking on  environmental protection, environmental justice, and development by  states of the two opposing blocs?

-  The impact of women's activism in the development and evolution of  concepts and practices related to environmental justice and development.

-  How have agricultural and food policies of National Governments or  International Organizations changed the status of women? Both from  cultural, labor and political perspectives.

Please send abstract of 500 words maximum, with one-page CV of the author, to

Elisabetta Vezzosi (vezzosi@units.it) and Federico Chiaricati (FEDERICO.CHIARICATI@units.it) by October 15.

With an abstract of 500 words maximum, accompanied by a one-page CV of the author.

Selection will be announced by November 10.

HIRA&hps.cesee Book Launch: J. Surman et. al (eds.) Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scientific Entanglements in Modern History (Marburg 2022). With Zaur Gasimov (Bonn), Jan Surman (Prague) and Justyna Turkowska (Edinburgh).

HIRA&hps.cesee Book Launch: J. Surman et. al (eds.) Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scientific Entanglements in Modern History (Marburg 2022). With Zaur Gasimov (Bonn), Jan Surman (Prague) and Justyna Turkowska (Edinburgh). Thursday, September 15, 18:00-19:00 Vienna / 19:00-20:00 Kyiv / 12:00-13:00 New York, online

The virtual platform HPS.CESEE and Herder Institute Research Academy (HIRA) are proud to present the global book talk  "Ukrainian Science Between Two Empires". Justyna Turkowska (Edinburgh) and Zaur Gasimov (Bonn) will join with the editor of "Science Interconnected: German-Polish Scientific Entanglements in Modern History" (Marburg 2022), Jan Surman (Prague) in a discussion moderated by Tatsiana Astrouskaya (Marburg). It is part of a series of open zoom events aiming to foster the discussion of new books and approaches within the history of science and scholarship (broadly understood) in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

Thursday, September 15, 18:00-19:00 Vienna / 19:00-20:00 Kyiv / 12:00-13:00 New York

The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the link, please register here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hirahpscesee-book-launch-j-surman-ed-science-interconnected-tickets-410753624147 or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com.

Justyna Turkowska is a DAAD Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD on the transnational aspects of the history of medicine in the Eastern borderlands of the German Empire at the University of Giessen (Germany) in 2016 . Her award-winning dissertationIt was published as Der kranke Rand des Reiches. Sozialhygiene und nationale Räume in der Provinz Posen um 1900  (Marburg 2020).

Zaur Gasimov is the DFG Principal Investigator at the Russian Studies Department of the University of Bonn. In 2009, he graduated from the University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and joined the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz, Germany. From 2013 to 2019, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Orient-Institut in Istanbul, Turkey. He has extensively published on Russian-Turkish relations and the entangled history of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Jan Surman is a historian of science and scholarship at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Surman holds a PhD in history from the University of Vienna and has been working at the Herder Insitute, Marburg; IFK, Vienna; and the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. His research focuses on scientific transfer, academic mobility, and scientific internationalism, and he is currently preparing a book on the history of Ukrainian science in the interwar period.

CfP: East Central Europe at the Crossroads: Jewish Transnational Networks and Identities (Polin)

This conference brings together the latest scholarship on the broad themes of transnationalism, intersectionality and cross-border exchanges in Jewish history from the early modern period to the present.  The conference will be conducted entirely in English.

Conference date: 18-21 June, 2023

Venue: POLIN Museum, Warsaw, Poland

Applications in English until November 7, 2022

We invite scholars working on transnational Jewish subjects broadly conceived, including Ph.D. candidates, to apply with a paper proposal (in English only). Applications with a paper proposal (abstract of no more than 500 words) and a short biographical note, should be sent via online application by November 7.

The organizers will reimburse invited speakers’ travel costs to and from the conference (economy class tickets) and will provide lodgings during the event.

» READ MORE: https://polin.pl/en/news/2022/08/24/call-papers-international-conference-east-central-europe-crossroads

» APPLY: https://polin.pl/en/form/conference-east-central-europe

Clare Griffin, Mixing Medicines The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia. Montreal: McGill–Queen's University Press 2022. ISBN: 9780228011941

What the medicines of early modern Russia can tell us about scientific knowledge, global trade networks, and the long reach of colonialism.

Early modern Russians preferred one method of treating the sick above all others: prescribing drugs. The Moscow court sourced pharmaceuticals from Asia, Africa, Western Europe, and the Americas, in addition to its own sprawling empire, to heal its ailing tsars.

Mixing Medicines explores the dynamic and complex world of early modern Russian medical drugs, from its enthusiasm for newly imported American botanicals to its disgust at Western European medicines made from human corpses. Clare Griffin draws from detailed apothecary records to shed light on the early modern Russian Empire’s role in the global trade in medical drugs. Chapters follow the trade and use of medical ingredients through networks that linked Moscow to Western Europe, Asia, and the Americas; the transformation of natural objects, such as botanicals and chemicals, into medicines; the documentation and translation of medical knowledge; and Western European influence on Russian medical practices. Looking beyond practitioners, texts, and ideas to consider how materials of medicine were used by one of the early modern world’s major empires provides a novel account of the global history of early modern medicine.

Mixing Medicines offers unique insight into how the dramatic reshaping of global trade touched the day-to-day lives of the people living in early modern Russia.

CFP: Mountains and Plains: Past, present and future environmental and climatic entanglements, 12th Biennial European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) Conference

 CFP: Mountains and Plains: Past, present and future environmental and climatic entanglements

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12th Biennial European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) Conference

Call for Papers: Mountains and Plains: Past, present and future environmental and climatic entanglements

Bern, Switzerland, 22–26 August 2023

Mountains and Plains: Past, present and future environmental and climatic entanglements

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Universität Bern, Historisches Institut und Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, 3012 Bern (Switzerland)

22.08.2022

Deadline: 31.10.2022

The University of Bern has a long tradition in environmental and climate studies. The Institute of History and the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research are therefore proud to host to the 12th Conference of the ESEH.

Bern will be the first conference site since the establishment of the biennial ESEH conferences that is close to the Alps or to mountainous regions in general. Drawing from its closeness to mountainous regions Bern invites for a conference on “Mountains and Plains”, a topic enabling approaches from various disciplines possible.

Possible topics to be discussed as part of the conference’s thematic focus on “Mountains and Plains”, include, but are not limited to the following:

- Transit across mountainous areas and their socio-economic impact (including culture and knowledge transfer)

- History of environmental knowledge related to mountains and plains

- Environmental histories of tourism in the Alps and other alpine areas as well as traffic connected with these activities

- Mountains/plains interactions, e.g. water metabolisms

- Resource use and management, biodiversity, and the commons in mountain environments and their associated plains

- The place of underwater and island mountains in oceanic environments and climates

- Influence of weather and climate on mountain and plain regions in the past, present, and future

- Mountains and plains as battlefields, migratory routes and barriers of war – the environmental impact of war

In addition, we warmly welcome papers/provocations/presentations on environmental history also outside the conference theme. We also invite contributions on teaching and communicating environmental history to a wider public (e.g. schools, university pedagogics, public outreach, citizen science). Furthermore, we encourage submissions from related academic disciplines and interdisciplinary fields, such as archaeology, anthropology, digital humanities, infrastructure studies and geography.

The Call for Papers (https://www.eseh2023.unibe.ch/conference/call_for_papers) is now open until 31 October 2022.

Online Submissions (https://www.conftool.com/eseh2023/).

Šárka Velhartická: Bedřich Hrozný: Texty a přednášky [Text and Lectures by Bedřich Hrozný]. Praha: Academia 2022. ISBN 978-80-200-3161-7

Šárka Velhartická: Bedřich Hrozný: Texty a přednášky [Text and Lectures by Bedřich Hrozný]. Praha: Academia 2022. ISBN 978-80-200-3161-7

Kniha představuje souborné vydání doložených textů a přednášek Bedřicha Hrozného v českém jazyce, které byly nashromážděny nejen z mnoha dobových periodik 1. poloviny 20. století, ale zejména náročným bádáním v archivních materiálech. Některé texty – především Hrozného popisy cest a archeologických expedic na Přední východ –, které byly zcela zapomenuty a jsou čtenářům představeny opět po téměř sto letech, vrhají na osudy tohoto badatele zcela nové světlo. Jeho líčení putování Palestinou i Tureckem na koni, texty o cestách syrskou a mezopotamskou pouští za objevením starověkých lokalit, vykreslení podmínek během archeologických výkopů v Sýrii i Anatolii, vysvětlení postupu při luštění chetitského jazyka i převratný nález klínopisných tabulek na Kültepe a mnoho dalších úvah na téma sumerského, babylonského a egyptského náboženství a kultury, orientálních dějin i srovnávací jazykovědy zavedou čtenáře na starověký Přední východ a současně seznámí s neobyčejnými životními osudy našeho předního orientalisty.