Reenchanted Science Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler / Anne Harrington.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harrington, Anne, 1960- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Philosophy.

Mind and body--Philosophy.

Medicine--Philosophy.

Life (Biology)--Philosophy.

Holism.

Holisme--Philosophie.

Holisme.

Esprit et corps--Philosophie.

Esprit et corps.

Science--Allemagne--Philosophie--Histoire.

Science.

Medecine--Allemagne--Philosophie--Histoire.

Medecine.

Vie (Biologie)--Philosophie.

Vie (Biologie).

Psychophysiology--history.

Psychophysiology.

Philosophy--History.

Philosophy.

Biological Science Disciplines--history.

Biological Science Disciplines.

Mind and body.

Science--Germany--Philosophy--History.

Medicine--Germany--Philosophy--History.

Medicine.

Life (Biology).

Germany.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiv, 309 pages) : illustrations, maps

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1999.

Summary:

By the 1920s in Central Europe, it had become a truism among intellectuals that natural science had "disenchanted" the world, and in particular had reduced humans to mere mechanisms, devoid of higher purpose. But could a new science of "wholeness" heal what the old science of the "machine" had wrought? Some contemporary scientists thought it could. These years saw the spread of a new, "holistic" science designed to nourish the heart as well as the head, to "reenchant" even as it explained. Critics since have linked this holism to a German irrationalism that is supposed to have paved the way to Nazism. In a penetrating analysis of this science, Anne Harrington shows that in fact the story of holism in Germany is a politically heterogeneous story with multiple endings. Its alliances with Nazism were not inevitable, but resulted from reorganizational processes that ultimately brought commitments to wholeness and race, healing and death into a common framework. Before 1933, holistic science was a uniquely authoritative voice in cultural debates on the costs of modernization. It attracted not only scientists with Nazi sympathies but also moderates and leftists, some of whom left enduring humanistic legacies. Neither a "reduction" of science to its politics, nor a vision in which the sociocultural environment is a backdrop to the "internal" work of science, this story instead emphasizes how metaphor and imagery allow science to engage "real" phenomena of the laboratory in ways that are richly generative of human meanings and porous to the social and political imperatives of the hour.

Contents:

Insights from Brain-Damaged Soldiers: Actualization and Wholeness

Changing Theoretical Orientations: From Reflex Theory to Gestalt

Reason, Courage, and the Making of a Weimar Hero

The Call for a Holistic Clinical Practice

The Goethean ""Schau"": Toward a Holistic Epistemology

Goldstein's Persecution and the Biology of Fascism

Goldstein in America: The ""Wholeness"" in the Human Encounter

The Lessons of Goethe in the Post-Hiroshima Age

Chapter Six: Life Science, Nazi Wholeness, and the ""Machine"" in Germany's Midst

Gestalt, Goethe, and the Fiihrerprinzip

Max Wertheimer: Claiming Gestaltfor Science and Rational Enchantment

The Mind's Laws of ""Immanent Structuralism

A Peacefully Blossoming Tree: Wertheimer's Vision for Weimar

Attacks on the Berlin Gestalt Vision

The Rise of National Socialism and Wertheimer's Emigration to America

Wolfgang Kohler's Case to Americans for the Reality of Values in a World of Facts

Wertheimer's ""Gestalt Logic"" as an Antidote to Demagoguery

Chapter Five: The Self-Actualizing Brain and the Biology of Existential Choice

The Imperative of Regeneration in the Clinic and Society

Shock, Recovery, and the Localization of Time in the Brain

World War I: Degeneration and Renewal

The Biology of Instincts and the Evolutionary Arrow

The ""World of Orientation"" versus the ""World of Feeling

Morality in the Cells: The ""Syneidesis "" or Biological Conscience

An Answer to ""Ignorabimus"": Monakow's Neurobiology of Scientific Knowledge

Chapter Four: ""A Peacefully Blossoming Tree"": The Rational Enchantment of Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt versus Chaos: The Voice of Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Gestalt versus Chaos: The Voice of Christian von Ehrenfels

World War I and Its Aftermath: Science as Cultural Critique

Chapter Two: Biology against Democracy and the ""Gorilla-Machine

On the Way to a Biology of Subjects

Scientists in Their Soap Bubbles: Uexktill 's Kantian Challenge to Science

Revitalizing Life: Umweltlehre and the Vitalist-Mechanist Controversy

The Shocks of World War I and Weimar

Toward a ""Biology of the State

Uexkiill on the ""Jewish Question

The Fight against the ""Gorilla-Machine

Uexkiill's Relationship to National Socialism

Chapter Three: World War I and the Search for God in the Nervous System

Cover Page

Half-title Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One: The ""Human Machine"" and the Call to ""Wholeness

The Original Goethean Vision of ""Wholeness

A Fractured Nation and the Mechanists' Quest for Unity in Nature

Necessary Ways of Knowing and the Mechanization of Mind and Brain

Wholeness Betrayed: Political Unification and the Rise of the ""Machine"" Society

The Place of ""Wholeness"" in the Fin de Siecle Upheavals

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691218083

0691218080

OCLC:

1196194166