Caspar Hirschi

The Organization of Innovation— The History of an Obsession

The pace of technological innovation today is slower than between 1920 and 1960. In this Essay, the evolution of fundamental research since 1920 is examined, with particular emphasis on how fundamental research was carried out in industrial settings, and the effect of national funding agencies on creating market-like competition in research. This competition was meant to accelerate the speed of innovation and, as a consequence, produce higher economic growth. However, neither of these expectations were met.

Regulation and Transparency as Rituals of Distrust: Reading Niklas Luhmann Against the Grain

The chapter analyses the interrelated functions of transparency and regulation in contemporary politics. It argues that both are presented by their advocates as procedural measures to establish trust in public persons or institutions. As Caspar Hirschi claims, it would be more accurate to describe them as political rituals, which actually do the contrary of what they claim: they raise the level of distrust in public persons and institutions. As a result, just as with regulation, transparency turns out to be a distrust-generating ritual which aggravates the problems it allegedly resolves. The main argument of the essay is made based on a critical discussion of Niklas Luhmann’s classical study on trust (“Vertrauen”) first published in 1968.

Compiler into Genius. The Transformation of Dictionary Writers in Eighteenth-Century France and England

in 1757 the french essayist and playwright Charles palissot, a man who loved Voltaire and loathed Diderot, published a collection of Little Letters on the Great Philosophes. its first epistle was a well-timed attack on the editors of the Encyclopédie. Diderot and d’alembert, having published seven volumes in seven years to loud plaudits and even louder polemics, were about to come under increased pressure; Damien’s attempt to assassinate louis XV at the beginning of the year had caused a tightening of censorship, and the Encyclopédie, plagued by old and new accusations, soon faced the threat of an official ban. palissot’s criticism, by contrast with that of other opponents of the Encyclopédie, was driven neither by concerns about political stability nor by the wish to defend Christianity.