Gerd Graßhoff

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Gerd Graßhoff (born June 12, 1957 in Moers ) is a German science historian and philosopher. Since October 2010 he has been Professor of Ancient Science at the Humboldt University in Berlin and, alongside Michael Meyer, he is the spokesman for the TOPOI Cluster of Excellence at the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin .

Life

Gerd Graßhoff studied physics, mathematics, philosophy and the history of natural sciences at the Universities of Bochum , Hamburg and Oxford . He started in 1986 at the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences at the University of Hamburg with a dissertation on “The History of the Ptolemaic Star Catalog . Doctorate on the genesis of the star directory from books VII and VIII of the Almagest ”. The habilitation took place in 1995 with the thesis "The Art of Scientific Discovery - Basics of a Theory of Epistemic Systems".

1986 to 1990 he researched and worked first as a member, then as a visitor of the Institute for Advanced Study Princeton with Otto Neugebauer . From 1990 to 1991 Graßhoff was a Minerva fellow at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv . From 1995 to 1999 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. From 1999 to 2010, Graßhoff held the professorship for the theory of science and the history of science and was director of the Institute for Philosophy at the Philosophical-Historical University of Bern and the Philosophical-Natural Science Faculty of the Department of Physics / Astronomy / Philosophy of Science.

Act

Wittgenstein's Tractatus is at the center of investigations into natural philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century. Heinrich Hertz 'principles of mechanics then formulated a philosophical model of the "exact sciences", which Wittgenstein adopted not only as the model for analytical language philosophy , but also the Vienna Circle . Editions of the various versions of the Tractatus and Paul Engelmann's Psychology were created for these investigations .

The epistemological studies concern many discovery processes from all epochs. The discovery of urea synthesis by Hans Krebs and Kurt Henseleit in 1931/32 showed how new knowledge can be gained in a step-by-step process of experimental design, causal reasoning and generation of hypotheses. Comparable cases expose a heuristic principle of the sudden, unmotivated " Eureka " as fiction. A computer model of research activities for the discovery of cancer was first able to successfully simulate a complex historical research process in 1995. For this purpose, the regularity theory of causality was further developed and John Mackie's objection of the "Hooters" was resolved. The computer model of scientific discoveries obtained was successfully used to carry out a sub-project to search for quasars at the same time as the research project of the Hamburg Quasar Survey and to document it in parallel with scientific theory. Such models have been successfully used to study the history of science in research processes such as cold nuclear fusion .

Works on the history of astronomy range from the beginnings in antiquity, their medieval astronomical reception to the Copernican Revolution including Michael Mästlin and Johannes Kepler . Kepler's “Battle for Mars” was discovered as a failed attempt in Kepler's eyes to explain the cause of the movement of Mars. As a result, Kepler himself never called the laws named after him “natural laws”.

Science is examined as a process of cooperative research. The ATLAS Collaboration of CERN allowed the Graßhoff research group to participate in their research communication. In this way, the course of the genesis of collective knowledge could be traced on a daily basis in memos, emails and preprints.

The Digital Pantheon Project and the Ancient Sundials Project examine the connection between knowledge and material objects. They show how it is possible, despite the lack of textual documents, to reconstruct the geometric knowledge used to construct the objects and thus treat them as an independent genre of historical scientific sources.

Graßhoff's current research expands the models of scientific research processes to include the study of large research communities or entire epochs. This includes technological innovation processes and their characteristic development processes.

Awards and honors

Fonts

  • Hool, A. & Graßhoff, G .: The foundation of the Swiss Physical Society: Festschrift for the 100th anniversary . Bern Studies, 2008, ISBN 3-9522882-8-4 .
  • Hentschel, A. & Graßhoff, G .: Albert Einstein: "Those happy Bernese years" . Stämpfli, 2005, ISBN 978-3-7272-1176-8 .
  • Nickelsen, K. & Hool, A. & Graßhoff, G .: Theodore von Kármán: Airplanes for the world and a foundation for Bern . Birkhäuser, 2004, ISBN 3-7643-7135-8 .
  • Baumgartner, M. & Graßhoff, G .: Causality and Causal Inference: An Introduction with Interactive Exercises . Bern Studies, 2004, ISBN 3-9522882-1-7 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Eastwood, B .: Planetary Diagrams For Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europa, approx. 800 - 1500 . American Philosophical Society, 2004, ISBN 0-87169-943-5 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Driver, H .: Natural law and natural law thinking in the 17th century. Kepler - Bernegger - Descartes - Cumberland. Fundamenta Juridicia . Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2002, ISBN 3-7890-8215-5 .
  • Graßhoff, G .: The history of Ptolemy's Star Catalog . Springer, 1990.

Editing

  • Graßhoff, G. & Wüthrich, A. (Eds.): MetaATLAS: Studies on the generation, validation and communication of knowledge in a modern research collaboration . Bern Studies, 2012, ISBN 3-9523904-0-2 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Heinzelmann, M. (Eds.): The Bern Digital Pantheon Project: Plates (The Pantheon in Rome) . LIT, 2009, ISBN 3-8258-1964-7 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Schwinges, C .: culture of innovation . Vdf. Hochschulverlag, 2008, ISBN 3-7281-3025-7 .
  • Graßhoff, G. (Ed.): Wittgenstein's World of Mechanics. Including Transcripts of Lectures by Wittgenstein's Teacher Joseph Petzold and Related Texts on Mechanics . Springer, Vienna, New York 2006, ISBN 3-211-32816-5 .
  • Stückelberger, A. & Graßhoff, G. (Eds.): Klaudios Ptolemaios. Handbook of Geography . Schwabe, 2006, ISBN 3-7965-2148-7 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Lampert, T. (Ed.): Ludwig Wittgenstein's Logical-Philosophical Treatise: History of Origin and Publication of Typescripts and Correction Copies . Springer, 2004, ISBN 3-211-83782-5 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Lampert, T. (Ed.): Paul Engelmann: Psychology graphically represented . Springer, Vienna New York 2005, ISBN 3-211-24490-5 .

items

  • Graßhoff, G. & Fischer, G .: Copernicus's Heliograph at Olsztyn - the 500th Anniversary of a Scientific Milestone . Edition Topoi, Berlin 2017, doi : 10.17171 / 2-7 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Mittenhuber, F. & Rinner, E .: Of paths and places: the origin of Ptolemy's Geography . In: Ossendrijver, Mathieu & Steele, John (Eds.): Archive for History of Exact Sciences . tape 71 . Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg 2017, p. 81-101 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Wenger, E .: The Coordinate System of Astronomical Observations in the Babylonian Diaries . In: Ossendrijver, Mathieu & Steele, John (Eds.): Studies on the Ancient Exact Sciences in Honor of Lis Brack-Bernsen . tape 44 . edition topoi, 2017, ISBN 978-3-9816384-5-5 , p. 81-101 .
  • Graßhoff, G .: Panbabylonism as a myth of cultural development . In: Helmrath, Johannes J. & Hausteiner, Eva Marlene & Jensen, Ulf (ed.): Antiquity as Transformation. Concepts describing cultural change . De Gruyter, 2017, p. 16-39 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Rinner, E. & Ossendrijver, M. & Defaux, O. & Schreiber, M. & Villey, E .: Longitude . In: eTopoi. Journal for Ancient Studies . tape 6 . Edition Topoi, 2016, p. 634-677 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Berndt, Chr .: Decoding the Pantheon Columns . In: Architectural Histories . tape 2 , 2014, p. 1-14 , doi : 10.5334 / ah.bl .
  • Graßhoff, G .: Ptolemy and Empirical Data . In: Neef, Sonja AJ & Sussman, Henry & Boschung, Dieter (eds.): Astroculture. Figurations of Cosmology in Media and Arts . Wilhelm Fink, 2014, p. 32-44 .
  • Graßhoff, G .: Globalization of Ancient Knowledge: From Babylonian Observations to Scientific Regularities . In: Renn, J. (Ed.): Globalization of Knowledge in History . epubli GmbH, 2012, ISBN 978-3-8442-2238-8 , p. 175-190 .
  • Graßhoff, G .: The "Battle for Mars" as Johannes Kepler's greatest scientific defeat . In: Physica et historia . Hall 2005, p. 79-90 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & Samuel Portmann, AW: Minimal Assumption Derivation of a Bell-type Inequality . In: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science . tape 56 , 2005, pp. 663-680 .
  • Christlieb, N. & Wisotzki, L. & Graßhoff, G .: Statistical methods of automatic spectral classification and their application to the Hamburg / ESO survey . In: A&A . tape 391 , 2002, p. 397-406 .
  • Graßhoff, G. & May, M .: Causal regularities . In: Spohn, W. & Ledwig, M. & Esfeld, M. (Ed.): Current Issues in Causation . Mentis Verlag, 2001, p. 84-114 .
  • Graßhoff, G .: Normal Star Observation in Late Astronomical Babylonian Diaries . In: Swerdlow, N. (Ed.): Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination . MIT Press, 1999, p. 97-147 .
  • Graßhoff, G .: Hertzian objects in Wittgenstein's tractatus . In: British Journal for the History of Philosophy . 1997.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Graßhoff, Gerd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German science historian and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Moers