Elisabeth Ströker

Elisabeth Ströker (born August 17, 1928 in Dortmund , † December 6, 2000 in Cologne ) was a German philosopher and science historian.

Elisabeth Ströker. Signature 1976

Life

Elisabeth Ströker studied chemistry , mathematics and philosophy at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn , where she passed her state exams in all three subjects. Theodor Litt and Oskar Becker were her philosophical teachers, with whom she received her doctorate in 1955 with a thesis on number and space in Nicolai Hartmann's natural philosophy . She taught for several years at the Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Bonn, then went to Hamburg to the University and was assistant to Wolfgang Wieland , where she habilitated in 1963 with philosophical investigations into the room. In 1965 she took over the management of the Philosophical Seminar at the Technical University of Braunschweig, succeeding Hermann Glockner . In 1971 she accepted a call to the Philosophical Department of the University of Cologne . From 1971 until her retirement in 1993 she was director of the Husserl Archives .

Grave Melaten Cemetery

As a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Werner Reimers Foundation , she made a special contribution to interdisciplinary research. Her work in the Anglo-Saxon world contributed a lot to the fact that there was more to do with phenomenological philosophy . A special concern of her was the cooperation of German and Latvian phenomenologists. For a long time she headed the "Latvian-German Society for Philosophy" from the German side. Since 1993 she has been a corresponding member of the Braunschweig Scientific Society .

Elisabeth Ströker died in 2000 at the age of 72 and was buried in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne (Hall 21 (U) No. 239).

plant

The combination of philosophy , science and rationally based personal responsibility is characteristic of Elisabeth Ströker's work method and work. From this synthesis she gained the clarity of her expression, the stringency of her thinking and her powers of persuasion. She recognized the need for an ethical reflection in the sciences, for which the sciences alone do not have the necessary competence and for which a philosophical way of thinking that mediates between the sciences and common understanding is therefore required.

One of the maxims of Ströker's devotion to science was to get on the track of what scientists are doing. Her studies on the development of chemistry are instructive examples. In her endeavors to maintain and restore close contact between natural science and its history and the philosophy of science , she orientated herself on the classical phenomenology of Husserl . She tested the effectiveness of the phenomenological method in investigations into the historicity of basic scientific knowledge and the "regional ontology" of the historical in its temporality .

The phenomenological philosophizing of Elisabeth Ströker can be characterized as follows: The difference in phenomenological and scientific perspectives correspond to approaches to phenomena that cannot be accommodated in the unity of a context of justification, but are held together solely by their reference to various human possibilities and activities.

Honor

In 1992 the University of Utrecht awarded Elisabeth Ströker an honorary doctorate . She was honored “not only for her fundamental contributions to Husserl research, but also for her work on the history of natural science and for her collaboration in the publication of Helmuth Plessner's collected writings”.

Plagiarism controversy

In September 1990, the philosophy professor and colleague from Cologne at the time, Marion Soreth , accused that Ströker had written large parts of her doctoral thesis written by Theodor Litt and rated “Egregia” ( outstanding ) literally and similarly . a. copied from Bertrand Russell and Ernst Cassirer without citing the sources. The dispute was first published by the science journalist Irene Meichsner in 1990 under the title “Hübsch stolen” in the Kölner Stadtanzeiger and then taken over by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit .

A nine-person examination committee appointed by the Philosophical Faculty in Bonn came to the following conclusion:

“The commission has no doubt that the work as a piece of systematic philosophy (i.e. outside the first part, which compiles the fundamentals) is independent in the actual substance of the Hartmann criticism. ... The parts of the work that are most likely to be suspected of improper use of third-party intellectual property are also recognizable to today's observer, report, compilation of the actual starting platform, not the doctoral candidate's own findings. It is also not claimed that it is your own knowledge of foreign texts. "

The Cologne faculty distanced itself from this judgment, stating that "neither then nor now" would Ströker's work have been accepted as a dissertation in Cologne. The proceedings against Ströker ended one year after their retirement with a settlement. Ströker was not deprived of his doctorate.

In an “open letter”, the one-sided reporting against Ms. Ströker was rejected by over 100 scholars as “irresponsible, unworthy and unfair”. The signatories included Professors Karl-Otto Apel , Hans Michael Baumgartner , Walter Biemel , Günter Dux , Paul Feyerabend , Norbert Hoerster , Ludger Honnefelder , Reinhart Koselleck , Hermann Krings , Hans Lenk , Hermann Lübbe , Odo Marquard , Günther Patzig , Annemarie Pieper , Heinrich Rombach , Eike von Savigny , Herbert Schnädelbach , Josef Simon , Holm Tetens , Michael Theunissen , Ernst Tugendhat and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker . The undersigned “base their assessment on their scientific cooperation with Prof. Dr. Ströker and see no reason to have to change their appreciation of the entire work of this scientifically excellent colleague. You refer to a resolution by the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Bonn on the dissertation of Ms. Ströker, which has been available for months and rejects the accusation of fraud. Above all, they would like to contribute to keeping Elisabeth Ströker in the public consciousness that she deserves due to her numerous publications and scientific initiatives. "

On the plagiarism controversy as a whole, there is a contribution by Elisabeth Ströker herself, a documentation by Marion Soreth and an overview by Marc Dressler. The well-known plagiarism researcher Debora Weber-Wulff pointed out the Ströker case in 2014 as plagiarism.

Book publications (selection)

• Philosophical research on space . Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 1965, 2nd edition 1977. ISBN 3-465-01249-6 . English: Ohio 1987
• Paths of thought in chemistry . Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1967. ISBN 978-3-495-47155-5
• Introduction to the philosophy of science . Scientific book society, Darmstadt and Nymphenburger, Munich 1973, 4th edition 1992. ISBN 978-3-534-05204-2 . Japanese Tokyo 1978, 2nd edition 1980. Turkish Istanbul 1990.
• Change of theory in the history of science . Chemistry in the 18th century. Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 1982. ISBN 978-3-465-01496-6
• Phenomenological Studies . Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 1987. ISBN 978-3-465-01762-2
• The Husserlian Foundations of Science . Washington 1987
• Husserl's transcendental phenomenology . Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 1987. ISBN 978-3-465-01773-8 . English: Stanford UP 1993
• Studies in the philosophy of science . Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 1989. ISBN 978-3-465-01852-0
• with Paul Janssen: Phenomenological Philosophy . Philosophy manual. Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1989. ISBN 3-495-47499-4
• History of science and theory of science studies on chemistry , Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschafts- und Regionalgeschichte Engel, 1996, ISBN 978-3-929134-14-8 (series studies and sources on the history of chemistry; Vol. 8).

Editorial activities (selection)

• with Günter Dux and Odo Marquard : Helmuth Plessner - Collected writings in 10 volumes. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1980 to 1985, paperback edition 2003. ISBN 978-3-518-06684-3
• with Wolfgang Wieland : Manual Philosophy . 10 volumes: Political Philosophy (Klaus Hartmann) 1981. ISBN 978-3-495-47455-6 / Philosophy of Language ( Josef Simon ) 1981. ISBN 978-3-495-47467-9 / Philosophy of Social Sciences ( Karl Acham ) 1983. ISBN 978-3-495-47476-1 / Philosophy of Religion ( Richard Schaeffler ) 1983. ISBN 978-3-495-47831-8 / Philosophy of Logic (Thomas M. Seebohm) 1984 ISBN 978-3-495-47474-7 / Analytical Philosophy ( Hans-Ulrich Hoche and Werner Strube) 1985. ISBN 978-3-495-47491-4 / Philosophy of the humanities (Theodor Bodammer) 1987, ISBN 978-3-495-47477-8 / Phenomenological philosophy (Elisabeth Ströker and Paul Janssen) 1989. ISBN 978-3-495-47499-0 / Philosophical Hermeneutics (Hans Ineichen) 1991. ISBN 978-3-495-47492-1 / Philosophy of Law (Matthias Kaufmann) 1996. ISBN 978-3-495-47478- 5 ). Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1981 to 1996
• Edmund Husserl - Collected Writings . 8 volumes and additional volume (E. Ströker: Husserls Werk). Register for the edition of the collected writings. Meiner, Hamburg 1992 and 2012.
• with Lothar Schäfer : conceptions of nature in philosophy, science, technology . 4 volumes (Vol. I: Antike und Mittelalter . ISBN 3-495-47771-3 . Vol. II: Renaissance and early modern times . ISBN 978-3-495-47772-4 . Vol. III: Enlightenment and late modern times . ISBN 978-3-495-47773-1 . Vol. IV: Present . ISBN 978-3-495-47800-4 ). Alber, Freiburg / Munich 1993 to 1996

Web links

• Husserl archive of the University of Cologne
• Literature by and about Elisabeth Ströker in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Irene Meichsner: Plagiarism scandal at the university. Nice stolen. Cologne professor must fear for her doctorate. ( ZEIT Online , October 26, 1990)
2. ↑ Marion Soreth: Critical examination of Elisabeth Ströker's dissertation on number and space together with an appendix to her habilitation thesis . P&P Cologne 1990
3. ↑ Irene Meichsner: Pretty stolen. Cologne professor must fear for her doctorate . In: Die Zeit , No. 44/1990.
4. ^ Report of the commission appointed by the Philosophical Faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität from April 16, 1991
5. ↑ Marc Dressler: Science out of control. Part 2: Plagiarism. ( inspective.de - as of August 12, 2014)
6. ^ Friedrich Hofmann: Promotionsfabriken. The doctorate between science, prestige and fraud . Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag 2016. ( Online )
7. ↑ published in: Information Philosophy 1991, Issues 3 and 4
8. ^ Elisabeth Ströker: In the name of the science ethos. Years of the destruction of a university teacher in Germany 1990-1999. Berliner Debatte Wissenschaftsverlag. GSFP - Society for Social Science Research and Journalism, Berlin 2000. ISBN 3-931703-64-9
9. ↑ Marion Soreth: Documentation on the criticism of Elisabeth Ströker's dissertation. 2nd edition expanded to include a second part. With a supplement, P&P, Cologne 1996. ISBN 3-928373-07-2
10. ↑ http://www.inspective.de/download/Philosophie/WissenAusserKontrolle_2.pdf
11. ↑ Debora Weber-Wulff: False Feathers: A Perspective on Academic Plagiarism (Heidelberg – New York 2014), pp. 52–54.