Michael Hagner

On the history of deformation phosphenes and the idea of internal light generated in the eye for the purpose of vision

Deformation phosphenes are light sensations evoked by deformation of the eyeball in total darkness. They were first reported in Western literature by Alcmaeon of Croton in the fifth century B.C. The phenomenon of deformation phosphenes was instrumental in prompting some pre-Socratic philosophers and Plato to conceive the idea that efferent light is emitted from the eye for the purpose of vision and a ‘cone of vision’ is formed by interaction with the external light. In the theories of vision this cone of vision played an important role as a signal-transmitting structure and was also used by the Greek opticians as a geometrical construction to explain optical properties of vision.

Skulls, Brains, and Memorial Culture: On Cerebral Biographies of Scientists in the Nineteenth Century

In this paper, I will argue that the scientific investigation of skulls and brains of geniuses went hand in hand with hagiographical celebrations of scientists. My analysis starts with late-eighteenth century anatomists and anthropologists who highlighted quantitative parameters such as the size and weight of the brain in order to explain intellectual differences between women and men and Europeans and non-Europeans, geniuses and ordinary persons. After 1800 these parameters were modified by phrenological inspections of the skull and brain. As the phrenological examination of the skulls of Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Heinse, Arthur Schopenhauer and others shows, the anthropometrical data was interpreted in light of biographical circumstances. The same pattern of interpretation can be found in non-phrenological contexts: Reports about extraordinary brains were part of biographical sketches, mainly delivered in celebratory obituaries. It was only in this context that moral reservations about dissecting the brains of geniuses could be overcome, which led to a more systematic investigation of brains of geniuses after 1860.

The Electrical Excitability of the Brain: Toward the Emergence of an Experiment

In 1870, Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Fritsch performed experiments on dogs by which they were able to produce movement through electrical stimulation of specific parts of the cerebral cortex. Contemporaries regarded the experiment as a milestone in the controversially discussed issue of cerebral localization of functions even though this experiment came as a surprise to the community of experimental physiologists who had rejected localization for several decades after the antiphrenological work of the physiologist Pierre Flourens. In this article, I will argue that the context in which this experiment emerged was not so much the French localization debate of the 1860s but rather practical demands in clinical medicine, notably in electrotherapy. At the time of the experiment, Hitzig worked as a medical practitioner in Berlin and was interested in an anatomical and physiological explanation of the specific symptoms of one of his patients. The unpredictable outcome of this interest was the discovery of the electrical excitability of the cortex. Whereas experimental physiologists dominated the discussion on cerebral localization in Germany before 1870, the situation shifted after the publication of Fritsch and Hitzigs paper. Concrete medical necessities forced the discussion about localization and it was mainly due to the authority of clinical physicians that the localization of mental qualities in the brain became a cornerstone of brain research.

Caspar Friedrich Wolff

Studierte Medizin in Berlin und Halle und arbeitete ab 1763 am Collegium medico-chirurgicum in Berlin; ab 1766 an der Akademie der Wissenschaften in St. Petersburg; mit seinen entwicklungsgeschichtlichen Arbeiten, in denen er die epigenetische Theorie der Lebensentstehung vertrat, Mitbegrunder der modernen Embryologie und Teratologie.

Toward a history of attention in culture and science

As a direct effect of the omnipresence of the new media, attention has become a central focus of interest. Since the spectrum of visual stimuli and entertainment has become so broad, curiosity, pleasure and admiration are no longer regarded as virtues and passions to be stimulated and satisfied. The problem is rather how to acquire and manage more and more information in shorter and shorter periods of time. In this situation, attention is so precious and expensive, because it cannot be increased at one’s discretion and it is a target for anyone who wants to “sell” goods, ideas, knowledge, or ideology. Authors such as Georg Franck speak of an “economy of attention” and regard it as a currency that makes it necessary to decide how to invest one’s own attention and how to evoke the attention of others. Consequently Franck argues for a new “ethics of attention.”2 The length of TV-spots has regulated our visual attention; the permanent threat of cell-phones has affected our capacity for concentration in various social situations; and the use of computers inevitably trains us to bring our own attention and speed of response into correspondence with the commands and functions of the machine. Attention

Aufklärung über das Menschenhirn

Soemmerring, Reil, Gall — mit diesen drei Namen ist die Konstituierung der Neuroanatomie in Deutschland am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts verbunden. Wie kam es dazu? Die lange Zeit ubliche Antwort beschrankte sich auf die Vorstellung eines kontinuierlich anwachsenden empirischen Wissens, das sich ohne bzw. gegen die spekulativen Entwurfe zur Funktionsweise des Gehirns und die Theorien zur Interaktion von Seele und Gehirn Geltung verschaffen konnte. Der Preis fur eine solche isolationistische Sichtweise besteht in der willkurlichen Auseinanderdividierung einheitlich gedachter Entwurfe. Wenn Soemmerrings Theorie vom Seelenorgan, Reils Anleihen bei der Naturphilosophie und Galls Organologie vielfach als spekulative Verirrungen dargestellt wurden, die man vernachlassigen durfe, ohne ihre Bedeutung als Anatomen einzuschranken, so ware dem entgegenzuhalten, das sich die zunehmende Konzentration auf die Struktur des Gehirns vis-a-vis mit nicht-anatomischen Fragen und Konzepten entwickelte. Das Postulat eines inneren Zusammenhangs von Anatomie, Anthropologie, Physiologie und Psychologie war gleichsam das Ruckgrat zur Etablierung eines einheitlichen Wissenscorpus, der das Bestreben nach einer moglichen Wissenschaft vom Menschen aufzugreifen versuchte. Dieses Programm scheiterte zweimal, namlich am Ende der Aufklarung in Gestalt einer philosophischen Anatomie, und eine Generation spater, am Ende der Romantik in Gestalt einer naturphilosophischen Physiologie.

Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur

Big Data, Nudging, Verhaltenssteuerung: Droht uns die Automatisierung der Gesellschaft durch Algorithmen und kunstliche Intelligenz? Ein Appell zur Sicherung von Freiheit und Demokratie.

Johannes Peter Müller

Studium in Bonn und Berlin; ab 1826 Professor in Bonn, 1833–1856 Professor fur Anatomie und Physiologie in Berlin; einer der bedeutendsten deutschen Physiologen des 19. Jh.s; innovative Forschungen vor allem auf den Gebieten der Neuro- und Sinnesphysiologie, Embryologie und Pathologie sowie der Morphologie der Seetiere; begrundete in seinem Berliner Institut eine Schule, die mit Theodor Schwann, Jakob Henle, Ernst Haeckel, Emil du Bois-Reymond und Hermann von Helmholtz einige der Hauptvertreter der Biologie und der wissenschaftlichen Medizin der zweiten Halfte des 19. Jh.s hervorbrachte.

Open access, data capitalism and academic publishing

Open Access (OA) is widely considered a breakthrough in the history of academic publishing, rendering the knowledge produced by the worldwide scientific community accessible to all. In numerous countries, national governments, funding institutions and research organisations have undertaken enormous efforts to establish OA as the new publishing standard. The benefits and new perspectives, however, cause various challenges. This essay addresses several issues, including that OA is deeply embedded in the logic and practices of data capitalism. Given that OA has proven an attractive business model for commercial publishers, the key predictions of OA-advocates, namely that OA would liberate both scientists and tax payers from the chains of global publishing companies, have not become true. In its conclusion, the paper discusses the opportunities and pitfalls of non-commercial publishing.

Response to Matthias Egger and Angelika Kalt

I am grateful to Drs. Matthias Egger and Angelika Kalt for their comment [1]. They granted me the opportunity to clarify some of the points I had raised in my paper. Green OA is a reasonable strategy for journal articles. Many publishers permit the publication of the accepted manuscript version in an institutional depository, and this may prove useful for scientific communication and archiving. That said, it is far from ideal, as it requires that materials be duplicated, thus giving potential rise to error, disregarding editorial changes to submitted manuscripts, and generating unnecessary costs. Moreover, green OA is quite unsuitable for scholars in the humanities, as they are accustomed to making precise references to page numbers. This well-established scholarly procedure, on the other hand, requires the use of the article published in a journal or book. As I lay out in my paper, the policy of the SNF is “more damaging for book publishing than for publishing papers in periodicals”. Indeed, I am convinced that the effect of this policy is devastating for scholars in the humanities. Firstly, it prohibits scholars funded by the SNF to offer their manuscripts to the best publishing houses in the German-speaking world (e.g. Suhrkamp, Fischer, Hanser, C. H. Beck, Klett-Cotta, Meiner, Matthes & Seitz, and others), for the simple reason that these publishers would not accept a book manuscript which has been or will be published via green OA in a depository after 12 months. Certainly, book authors should not be excluded from OA, but they should have the freedom to make the decision on their own. Secondly, the SNF policy supports those global publishers (e.g. Springer, Brill, de Gruyter) whose newly developed business model will sooner or later substitute printed books either by ebooks at high prices or by OA models. It is all too predictable that this business model will lead to new publisher monopolies and suppress small publishing houses. Given that printed books are the gold standard in many branches of the humanities, I fail to see any advantage in fundamentally altering the longstanding practice. It is disheartening that funding institutions like the FWF of Austria or the SNF might enable monopolists to destroy the culture of academic books. The situation proves different in the STM disciplines in many respects. Nonetheless, it is an indisputable fact that, with its new policy, the SNF is strengthening the position of the largest global publishers. I am delighted to read that Egger and Kalt share my views on noncommercial publishing, but I would wish for the SNF strategy to include sustainable support for noncommercial forms of high-quality OA publishing. That is not to say that the SNF should take the general lead in this complex matter, but what should prevent it from encouraging and backing the exploration of new forms of academic communication, including platinum OA, which seems to be an effective way to secure the necessary separation between cultural and economic capital? Apart from these practical issues, I continue to find it disconcerting that policymakers (be they politicians, private or public funding institutions, universities, etc.) feel entitled to prescribe the ways in which researchers communicate. Making OA coercive may prove less detrimental via the option of green OA, but I cannot conceal my suspicion that this may merely constitute a further step in the attempt to gain increasingly more control over research activities. This translates into creeping erosion of academic freedom. I do not stand alone with this suspicion, and the law faculty of the University of Constance has sued the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, as the state intends to make OA coercive for all articles in periodicals published by researchers working in its respective universities. The case will now be brought before the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe [2]. That said, why should federal judges have to opine on an issue that is so central to academic freedom? This deplorable escalation would have been prevented if the state and its institutions had been more cautious in regulating academic research. Scientists should not be hindered in publishing OA, and perhaps they should indeed be encouraged to do so, but they certainly must not be forced. Matthias Egger and Angelika Kalt conclude their statement with the often repeated opinion “that findings from research funded with tax payer’s money are a public good and should be accessible not only to the academic community but to anyone who wishes to use, apply, interpret or critically review such research”. This grand statement of euphemistic principles is, or course, morally unimpeachable. Nonetheless, there are many different manners of implementing the said principles – some of which may, through good faith, entail severe unintended consequences. Lastly, the legitimate interests of readers, recipients and consumers must be weighed against the legitimate interests of researchers, scholars, or authors. If we do not defend the interests of the latter, anti-scientific and anti-intellectual populists will increasingly succeed in imposing their fundamentalist views, casting scientists as clerks of the public, no different than employees of a private company. Such a Correspondence: Correspondence:, Prof. Dr. Michael Hagner, ETH Zürich, Science Studies, Clausiusstrasse 22, CH-8092 Zürich, mhagner[at]ethz.ch