Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Web: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Ort: Berlin
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The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin conducts research into how new categories of thinking, of proving and experiencing have developed during the centuries-long interaction between the sciences and the cultures in which they are embedded. To this end, comparative studies, which transcend eras and regions, investigate the historical circumstances under which scientific culture and science emerged as one culture. The individual research projects span several millennia; they relate to the cultures of the West and the East, the North and the South, and to a varied range of disciplines: for example, from Babylonian mathematics to today’s genetics, or from the natural history of the Renaissance to the beginnings of quantum mechanics.

Research Focus

• Ideals and Practices of Rationality
• Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge
• Experimental Systems and Spaces of Knowledge