Nomadic concepts. Biological concepts and their careers beyond biology

This conference is organised in cooperation with the Department of History, Central European University in Budapest.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

9:00-9:10 Peter Haslinger: Welcoming words

9:10-9:30 Katalin Straner, Jan Surman: Conceptual preliminaries

9:30-11:00 Section 1

Alexandra Claudia Manta: A Genealogy of “Vitalism” from the 17th - 18th Century Life Sciences to Contemporary (Bio)philosophies: The Historical and Theoretical Lives of a Vital Question

Mikhail Konashev: Evolutionary theory and evolutionary humanism: what is the first, what is the second?

Discussion

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-13:00 Section 2

Gerhard Müller-Strahl: Explaining organismic phenomena. Metaphors, objectivity and mechanisms

Charles Wolfe: The organism as ontological go-between: hybridity, boundaries and limit cases in its conceptual history

Discussion

13:00-14:15 Lunch break

14:15-15:45 Section 3

Tatyana Skrebtsova: The concept of organism in linguistics: interpretations and implications

Julian Bauer: Organismen als Grenzobjekte. Zur Zirkulation von Wissen zwischen Biologie und Soziologie seit dem späten 19. Jahrhundert

Discussion

15:45-16:15 Coffee break

16:15-18:30 Section 4

Andrew Reynolds: Suicide and Altruism in the Society of Cells: an illustration of nomadic concepts and rhetorical devices

Andreas Musolff: From social to biological parasites and back: the conceptual career of a metaphor

Jörg Richter: Mutation between biology and the humanities

Discussion

Friday, October 19, 2012

9:30-11:00 Section 5

Björn Felder: "Who owns the soil should also saw!" Eugenics, Bio-Politics and the biologized nation in the Baltics 1926-1940

Pieter C. van Duin, Zuzana Poláčková: Ethno-national discourse and biological vocabulary in Slovakia, with special reference to the age of Leibniz
Discussion

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-13:00 Section 6

Christopher Donohue: From ‘Natural Selection’ to ‘Social Selection’: The Differentiation and Career of a Concept in Early Twentieth Century Social Thought.

Anna Piotrowska: Adaptation of biological vocabulary in musicological writings

Discussion

13:00-14:15 Lunch break

14:15-15:45 Section 7

Christina Wessely: Milieu. Surroundings of Life

Wolf Feuerhahn: A Spectre is haunting Germany - the French Spectre of Milieu
Discussion

15:45-16:15 Coffee break

16:15-17:45 Section 8

Michael Weingarten: Nanotechnologie - Die Entwicklung eines Projektes im Spannungsfeld von Theologie, Life Sciences und technologischer Phantasie

Stefan Halft: Der ‚Klon‘ als Wissensobjekt. Konzeptuelle Prozesse der Wissensgenese und Wissensgestaltung

Discussion

17:45-18:30

Katalin Straner, Jan Surman: Final comment

Final discussion

Contact:

Jan Surman
DAAD-Leibniz Research Fellow
Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association
+49-6421-184-101
[email protected]

Ina Alber
Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association
+49-6421-184-122
[email protected]

Venue: