It is generally accepted that the development of the modern sciences is rooted in experiment. Yet for a long time, experimentation did not occupy a prominent role, neither in philosophy nor in history of science. With the „practical turn“ in studying the sciences and their history, this has begun to change. This paper is concerned with systems and cultures of experimentation and the epistemic objects that are generated within such systems and cultures. I will look at the forms of historical and structural coherence that characterizes the experimental approach to epistemic objects. In particular, I will show how it is driven to permanently transgress its boundaries.

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Wichtige Publikationen:

• Toward a History of Epistemic Things (1997)
• Experimentalsysteme und epistemische Dinge (2001)
• with Frederic L. Holmes and Jürgen Renn: Reworking the Bench: Research Notebooks in the History of Science (2003)
• with Jean-Paul Gaudillière: Classical genetic research and its legacy: the mapping cultures of twentieth-century genetics, and: From molecular genetics to genomics: the mapping cultures of twentieth century genetics (2004)
• Iterationen (2005)
• Epistemologie des Konkreten (2006)
• with Staffan Müller-Wille (ed.): Heredity Produced: At the Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture, 1500-1870 (2007)
• with Staffan Müller-Wille: Vererbung. Geschichte und Kultur eines Konzepts (2009)
• with Staffan Müller-Wille: Das Gen im Zeitalter der Postgenomik (2009)
• On Historicizing Epistemology (2010)
• An Epistemology of the Concrete (2010)
• with Staffan Müller-Wille: A Cultural History of Heredity (2012)

Kontakt

e-Mail: rheinbg@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de