Mannheim Forum

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Mannheim Forum . A Panorama of the Natural Sciences was a yearbook founded by Hoimar von Ditfurth in 1972 and edited by him, published in the Boehringer Mannheim study series . It was a continuation of the quarterly magazine n + m ( natural science and medicine ), which has also been published by Ditfurth since 1964 . "His motive is the attempt to make it easier for the doctor who is overburdened by specialist required reading to 'look over the fence', the opportunity to find out about the most important and interesting developments in research areas outside his own field." (V. Ditfurth, first preface 1972)

In the Mannheim forum , "well-known scientists from home and abroad" published on scientific, medical, educational, philosophical, historical, archaeological and general scientific topics. Each volume consisted of around 200 pages with around three to six articles and many, often colored, illustrations and photographs. The years 79/80, 80/81 and 81/82 were published by Hoffmann and Campe in addition to Boehringer . With volume 88/89 , Ernst Peter Fischer was added as an additional editor. The following volume 89/90 was published for the first time by Piper Verlag , it was also the last volume with Hoimar von Ditfurth as co-editor. Since the year 92/93, the Mannheim Forum has been published partly as Neue Horizonte by Piper Verlag. The last year of publication was 1999 (the Mannheim Forum was discontinued immediately after the pharmaceutical company Boehringer-Mannheim was taken over by Hoffmann-La Roche ), or the volume 98/99 .

Contents of the yearbooks

72

  • Konrad Lorenz : Science, ideology and the self-image of our society . Critical comments on the "empty organism" doctrine of the behaviorist school.
  • Theo Herrmann : Psychology and the "meaningless organism" . A reply to the above article by K. Lorenz.
  • Max Delbrück , Edward Lipson and Carol Lipson : Beginnings of Perception . Investigations into the mechanism of the change of sensory signals in Phycomyces.
  • Maarten Schmidt : The riddle of the quasars . A comprehensive report on these cosmic objects that have so far defied all attempts at explanation.
  • James Mellaart : Older Than Babylon . The story of the discovery and excavation of Çatalhöyük, a city from the Stone Age.
  • Bernhard Hassenstein : Behavioral aspects of early childhood development and their socio-political consequences . Recent research in behavioral research makes some of our educational and legal norms appear questionable.

73/74

  • Günther Osche : The "essence" of biological evolution . Basic principles, ways and possibilities of ancestral development.
  • Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler : Ludus vitalis . The theoretical analysis shows that the development and course of the "evolutionary game" are neither subject to chance nor exclusively to legal necessity. Creation seems to have taken a third way.
  • Georges Ungar : The molecular code of memory . The study of brain extracts, with which certain experiences can be transferred from one test animal to another, suggests that the brain stores information according to a principle that is analogous to that of the genetic code.
  • Alfred Rust : Craftsmanship and way of life of the Stone Age people . The comparative evaluation of the artefacts enables an astonishingly detailed reconstruction of the living conditions and the development of our prehistoric ancestors.

74/75

  • Hans Jürgen Eysenck : Psychoanalysis - Science or Ideology? . An attack brought forward with committed polemics against the scientific nature of Sigmund Freud's teaching.
  • Alexander Mitscherlich and Lutz Rosenkötter : Hans Jürgen Eysenck or the fiction of pure science . Two well-known psychoanalysts respond to the polemics presented in the previous article.
  • Earl Frieden : On the biochemical evolution of "essential" elements . Biochemical considerations today provide explanations for the reasons why, in the course of evolution, only very specific elements were used to build biological structures and, in particular, to develop today's enzyme systems.
  • David M. Gates : The Flow of Energy in the Biosphere . New data make it possible to trace the path of the energy coming from the sun to the end consumer at the end of the food chain and to quantitatively estimate the limits for the biological productivity of the earth's surface.
  • Franz Georg Maier : Methods of Archeology . Modern archaeological research makes use of a large number of tools borrowed from a wide variety of disciplines to track down, secure and evaluate the relics of perished cultures, the optimal use of which requires a carefully planned strategy.

75/76

  • Karl R. Popper : From the sources of our knowledge and our ignorance . Can "truth" be recognized? Can we know if what we know is "true"? Which paths lead to "true" knowledge?
  • Peter Sitte : Cellular and Molecular: Biology of Minimal Organisms . Biochemical and electron-optical findings open up new insights into the fine structure of cell organelles and thus into the relationship between structure and function.
  • Kenneth J. Hsü : When the Mediterranean was a desert . Report of a research trip that led to a revolutionary geological discovery.
  • Wolfhard Schlosser : Stars and stones . Primeval forms of astronomy and time determination from the Stone Age to today.

76/77

  • Feodor Lynen and Guido R. Hartmann : On the structure and mode of action of enzymes . Using the example of biological fatty acid synthesis, the principle of the enzymatic effect and the structure of multi-enzyme complexes is described.
  • Arthur Kornberg : DNA synthesis - a pivotal point in the biological revolution . The knowledge about the mechanism of the translation of genetic information heralds a revolutionary turning point in the possibilities for medical therapy.
  • Paul Bach-y-Rita : Brain Plasticity and Sensory Substitution . Attempts to replace unusual sensory functions with electronic aids resulted in an astonishing functional adaptability of the central nervous system.
  • Vassos Karageorghis : Kition - a Phoenician port city of the late Bronze Age . The excavations of the Cypriot city have brought to light not only unique cultural documents but also traces of the fact that three millennia ago the struggle for supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean was no less persistent than it is today.

77/78

  • John C. Eccles : Brain and Consciousness . The neurohistological and neurophysiological findings available today prompt the author to draw up a scientific hypothesis about the connection between spirit and matter.
  • Wolfgang Wickler and Uta Seibt : On the egoism of genes . A revolutionary new cognitive principle makes the special features of the evolution of social behavior understandable for the first time.
  • Klaus Schmidt-Koenig : Orientation and navigation in birds . Despite extensive efforts in numerous institutes and despite many new discoveries, the central questions in this research area are still unanswered.
  • Hartwig Altenmüller : On the survival of ancient Egyptian symbols in western culture . If some of the ancient Egyptian symbols seem strangely familiar to us, it is because they have survived through tradition over millennia to the present, albeit in a variety of forms and meanings.

78/79

  • Rupert Riedl : On the biology of cause-thinking - an evolutionist, systems-theoretical attempt . An analysis of the interaction of the four Aristotelian causes in the layered structure of the real world shows that the thought structures we have acquired from tribal history by no means completely correspond to reality.
  • Heinrich K. Erben : About extinction in evolution . The extinction of a tribal line is just as inevitable an event as individual death, but it is still an evolutionary-specific phenomenon that cannot really be compared with it. The factors on which it is based are still far from being fully known.
  • James A. Hopson : Were the dinosaurs warm blooded? . Today paleontologists are no longer satisfied with the mere reconstruction of morphological features and evolutionary processes, but also infer the physiological properties and habits of extinct species. In the case of the dinosaurs, this novel approach has led to some surprising results.
  • Franz Kollmansperger : Erosion - a global danger . What is no longer new is the recognition that an excessively multiplying human race threatens to unbalance the biosphere and thus its own livelihood. What is new and alarming, however, is the discovery that even well-intentioned "helping" interventions in the environment are increasingly leading to large-scale destruction, because our ecological knowledge is still too incomplete.

79/80

  • Bernhard Katz : The functional mechanisms of the synapse . In modern research, the location of the internal impulse transmission is increasingly presented as a molecular microcosm, the complexity of which does not lag behind that of the cellular structure of the central nervous system.
  • Anthony CH Durham : How do viruses cause cancer? . Viruses are becoming part of the genome of the infected cell more frequently than was believed until recently. With this they are inherited in order to possibly contribute to the "transformation" of a cell that precedes its cancerous degeneration until generations later.
  • Wolfgang Gentner , Hildegund Gropengiesser and Günter A. Wagner : Lead and silver in the Aegean region . The possibility of determining the exact isotope distribution in the metal of ancient coins allowed for the first time its proof of origin and also the reconstruction of trade routes and economic dependencies in the Aegean in the 5th century BC.

80/81

  • Ilya Prigogine : Time, Entropy and the Concept of Evolution in Physics . The author's studies, which were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1977, for the first time build a fundamental bridge between physics and biology: temporal processes and evolution also prove to be central terms for understanding the physical world.
  • Bernd Küppers : Evolution in the test tube . Experiments with molecular systems show that selective optimization processes do not only play a role in living organisms. The evidence of selection mechanisms and the evolutionary processes in molecular structures controlled by them contribute to the understanding of the origin of life.
  • Egon-Horst Schröter : Portrait of a Star . A summary report of the current state of research on the sun. Despite a multitude of observation techniques, some of which are completely new, the conditions and processes that prevail on our central star are still largely unclear.
  • Ann Rosalie David : Egyptian Mummies . The author reports on the results so far of the Manchester Museum Egyptian Mummy Research Project, which she directs, the systematic investigation of a large collection of ancient Egyptian mummies by a multidisciplinary research team.

81/82

  • Werner Arber : The E. coli bacterium under the microscope of molecular geneticists . A summary of the current state of knowledge about genes, chromosomes, plasmids and viruses of the preferred research object in molecular biology with an outlook on the future prospects of genetic engineering.
  • Werner Nachtigall : Flying machine fly . "Resynthetic" consideration of a flying insect taking into account anatomical, structural-mechanical, dynamic flight, cybernetic and energetic aspects.
  • Helmut Kyrieleis : The Hera sanctuary on Samos . Report on the previous and very latest excavation results on the area of ​​a temple complex that was one of the most important religious centers in the ancient world for over a millennium.

82/83

  • Gunther S. Stent : Ethical Dilemmas in Human Biology . It is not only their practical consequences that are increasingly confronting biological research with ethical problems, the concepts of ethology and sociobiology also raise irritating questions about the fundamentals of moral behavior.
  • Hubert Markl : Fall or Transition - Nature as a Cultural Task . A scientific analysis and quantitative description of the ecological dangers threatening our expanding society together with well-founded references to existing ways out.
  • Norbert Hilschmann : Immunity - a preprogrammed reaction to the unexpected . A molecular biological answer to the seemingly paradoxical question of how it is possible to genetically acquire the ability to react specifically to any, even to naturally non-occurring antigens.
  • Klaus Nohlen : The rebuilding of the Traian sanctuary in Pergamon . A report on the preservation-related, historical and technical aspects of the rebuilding of a Roman temple complex at a classical excavation site of German archeology.

83/84

  • Paul CW Davies : Birth and Death of the Universe . Nothing lasts forever - not even "the world" itself. A summary of the current state of cosmology, our knowledge of the beginning and the end of the cosmos.
  • David T. Lykken and Thomas J. Bouchard : Genetic Aspects of Human Individuality . The investigation of identical twins grown up separately, in as different milieus as possible, is of particular importance in the old discussion about the influence of genetic disposition and formative environmental factors. The authors present the preliminary results of the largest such study to date, which has been underway in Minneapolis since 1979.
  • Wolfram Schüffel : Self-help of the patient - a challenge for the doctor and for the citizen . In view of the tendency of certain patient categories to join together in "self-help groups", which has been observed for years, the editorial team asked an experienced psychosomatist and medical sociologist to give an overview of the history and structure of these groups and their practical importance for the doctor.
  • Jan Assmann : War and Peace in Ancient Egypt: Ramses II and the Battle of Kadesch . The formal and content-related analysis of contemporary picture reports on an ancient Egyptian battle provides unexpected and impressive insights into the world of imagination and the self-image of the Egyptians at the time of the 19th dynasty.

84/85

  • Heinrich Schipperges : Medicine in the Panorama of the Last Hundred Years . Today, skepticism and doubts do not only arise in view of further scientific and technical progress in general. They are also being heard in medicine, at a time when this discipline has objectively passed the most successful century in its history. The author investigates the reasons for this paradoxical phenomenon and dares to look forward to further developments.
  • Friedrich Vogel : We are not the slaves of our genes . A critical response to Lykken and Bouchard who, in the previous edition of this series, argued that the role of hereditary factors should be given priority in the development of the human personality, based on research on separated twins.
  • Hans-Georg Schweiger : In search of the molecular mechanism of the circadian clock . All living beings that have been examined so far have an "internal clock" that enables them to anticipate the part of the daily routine that is objectively upcoming. Over several years of work, a working group led by the author has succeeded in fundamentally elucidating the nature of the "clockwork" on which this innate timer is based.
  • Wolfgang Wickler and Uta Seibt : Form series from ancient times . Examples of the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary cooperation are no longer the exception in archeology. The authors report on a particularly original case: it was only zoological knowledge and experience acquired through the analysis of biological development series that enabled the correct socio-psychological interpretation of pictorial representations on old Ecuadorian spinning whorls.

85/86

  • Max Delbrück : A Conspiracy of Nature . A scientific-historical consideration of the transition from the clear worldview of "classical physics" to the anti-intuitive, abstract worldview of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics from the perspective of one of the most important natural scientists of our time.
  • John Cairns : The History of Mortality . The comprehensive examination of the changes in human life expectancy not only opens up revealing perspectives on the living conditions of past epochs. Their statistical analysis also leads to surprising findings with regard to the evaluation of medical discoveries.
  • Hans Wilhelm Jürgens : Population Explosion and Death of Nations . The exponential growth of the population in some regions of the world and the decline in the birth rate in most developed industrial countries form the background of this investigation of the main psychological, social and cultural factors that regulate the size of a population.
  • Adrienne L. Zihlmann : The reconstruction of the evolution of humans . Using the results of various disciplines, a renowned paleoanthropologist creates a comprehensive picture of the current state of knowledge about our biological history.

86/87

  • Gerhard Vollmer : Science with Stone Age Brains? . Why and within what limits is our genetically established knowledge, which has been around for around 30 millennia, sufficient to cope with today's scientific and social problems?
  • Günter Osche : On the "appearance" of flowering plants . It is well known that the colors and shapes of plant flowers correspond to specific behaviors of very specific flying insects. The author reconstructs the course of the development that led to today's amazingly detailed "fit".
  • Karl Steinbuch : The flood of information - its causes and its consequences . All cultural and civilizational progress is based on the constant increase in the amount of information available to a society. In this area too, however, the pace of growth has recently increased to an alarming extent.
  • Hermann Kienast : The Eupalinos Tunnel on Samos . The rediscovery of the measurement methods and the project planning, with which it was possible two and a half millennia ago to penetrate the castle hill of the Polykrates with a tunnel more than 1000 meters long, shows it as the archaeological trace of an unprecedented intellectual venture.

87/88

  • Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt : Models of the Brain - Models of the Mind? . One of the scientists who contributed significantly to these findings summarizes the current state of our knowledge of the structure and function of the cerebral cortex, including the hypotheses offered on the basis of the available results about the connection between neurophysiological structure and psychological facts.
  • Ernst Peter Fischer : An entangled world . An introduction to the conceptual world of quantum physics, which opens up the significant philosophical consequences of this extremely difficult discipline for our conception of space, time and reality also for the understanding of the non-specialist.
  • Michael J. Benton : Current problems in evolutionary research from the perspective of the paleontologist . The discussion about the scope and explanatory power of the theory of evolution has become lively and in some points controversial in the past two decades, not least under the influence of palaeontological series investigations and development models.
  • Heinz Rembold : The elucidation of crate formation in the bee colony . A decade-long search for a mysterious biological agent leads to the discovery of previously unknown connections between diet and the endocrine control of the growth and development of insect larvae.

88/89

  • Wulf Rehder : Artificial Intelligence . A summary of the most important attempts to date to imitate human intelligence and other psychological achievements with the help of cybernetic devices, as well as the reasons worth considering that have pushed this lofty goal further and further into the distance for several years.
  • Hans-Peter Harjes : Structure and dynamics of the earth . New seismic analysis methods, in particular "seismic tomography", have recently given geophysicists the opportunity to map the structure of the earth's interior with a wealth of detail that was unthinkable just a few years ago.
  • Hermann Flohn : Will our climate change? . A synopsis of global data makes it increasingly likely that the earth's climate will begin to change on a large scale. The main cause can be assumed to be civilizational influences. The consequences could be drastic.
  • Cornelia Weber-Lehmann : Images of the Etruscans . An evaluation summarizing all previous grave finds in the Tarquinia area provides new indications of the everyday life and culture of the Etruscan people, which we have so far not recognized in many ways.

89/90

  • Martin Heisenberg : About universals of perception and their genetic basis . Genetics and perception research meet in studies on the fly 'Drosophila'.
  • Gert Eilenberger : Complexity . A new paradigm in science.
  • Wolfgang Gerok : The endangered balance between chaos and order in the human body . Health and illness as complex life phenomena.
  • Christian Pfister : Weather forecast . What historical data reveal about fluctuations and changes in our climate since the High Middle Ages.

90/91

  • Gerhard Vollmer : Thoughts - What are and what can algorithms .
  • Hans-Peter Vosberg : Constancy and variability in the human genome - the new methods of genetics and their possible applications .
  • Doris Bischof-Köhler : Beyond the Rubicon: The emergence of specifically human forms of knowledge and their effects on social behavior .
  • Don Robins : Archeology with electrons - the measurement of the past with physicochemical tools .

91/92

  • Max F. Perutz : Living atomic structure . The X-ray structure analysis of biomolecules and their importance for medicine.
  • Karin Mölling : The genes and cancer . Findings of virus research on the development of tumors.
  • Ernst-Detlef Schulze : Forest damage - research into its causes and effects .
  • John S. Morrison : The Athenian Trireme - the reconstruction of a warship from ancient Greece .

92/93

  • Dirk Hellhammer : When the body speaks to the soul . Approaches to a neuroimmunopsychobiology.
  • Gunther S. Stent : The autonomy of humans . Complexity and Complementarity of Mind.
  • Hans Primas : A whole that does not consist of parts . Complementarity in the exact natural sciences.
  • Halton C. Arp : The continuous cosmos . Past and future of the universe.
  • David Gibbins : The Museum Hidden in the Mediterranean . Underwater archeology and the ancient world in the Mediterranean.

93/94

94/95

  • U. Benjamin Kaupp : At the beginning of seeing . The conversion of the light stimulus into an electrical signal.
  • Adolf-Henning Frucht and Joachim Zepelin : "The tragedy of spurned love" . The story of the German-Jewish physical chemist and Prussian patriot Fritz Haber.
  • Hans-Albert Kolb : Molecular machines and membranes . Transport routes and channels in biological cells and the engines that operate them.
  • Sarah L. O'Hara : No Garden of Eden . What lake sediments tell us about environmental changes in central Mexico.
  • Ernst Peter Fischer : The art of not having it . About the responsibility of scientists and the public.

95/96

  • Adolf Grauel : Neural Networks . An insight into the attempts to understand the brain as a neurocomputer.
  • Erika Hagelberg : Molecular Archeology . A window into the past.
  • Bernhard vom Brocke : The inheritance given away . About the neglect of the history of science in Germany.
  • Linda Schele : In the age of the fourth creation . Religion and Cosmology in the Maya World.
  • Helmut Bachmaier : The possibility of old age . Age culture and education.

96/97

  • Albrecht Schöne : The collective work Faust . Physicians and scientists working on Goethe's world game.
  • Wolfgang Schumann : The molecular answer to stress . The heat shock proteins and their role in biology and medicine.
  • Martin Egli : And yet it moves us . Gregor Mendel taken at his word: a reading hour.
  • Georg Franck : The Economy of Attention . Another look at the sciences.
  • Judith Martin and Gunther S. Stent : Bioetikette . About decency and good manners in science.

97/98 ("Memory and Remembrance")

  • Ernst Peter Fischer : Memory and Remembrance . Comments on the new Mannheim Forum 1997/98 and the changed perception of science.
  • Ernst Florey : Time and Thinking . Old and new about memory.
  • Aleida Assmann : On the metaphor of memory . A tour through the historical museum of the imagination.
  • Hans J. Markowitsch : The memory of the people . Psychology, Physiology and Anatomy.
  • Wolfgang Hell : Memory illusions . Failure to remember in experiments and in everyday life.

98/99 ("Birth and Death")

  • Bernd Warkentin : The evolution of human birth . Medical, biological and anthropological aspects.
  • William R. Clark : Sex and the Origins of Death . A consideration of the biological level.
  • Arthur E. Imhof : Ars moriendi . The art of letting go of life at the right time.
  • Lutz Röhrich : "And if you haven't died ..." . Birth and death in fairy tales and legends.
  • Fritz Graf : "Common to all living beings". Birth and death in ancient times.
  • Jürgen Busche : Take death seriously. The provocation of Socrates in the dialogue Krition.

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