Biological Times. Media, Technologies, and Architectures of Epistemic Temporality

生物时报.

• 批准号: 319407508
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Henning Schmidgen
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Professur Theorie medialer Welten
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Priority Programmes
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2015-12-31 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/319407508?language=en
• 关键词: Biological; Times.; Media; Technologies; Architectures

In recent years, molecular biology, brain research, biomedicine, and similar disciplines have provided ample evidence that time is not simply an exterior means for measuring life but crucially functions as its internal operator. Our project aims at historically reconstructing important aspects of this development by focusing on the media, technologies, and architectures of the modern life sciences. Drawing on recent sociology of science and the tradition of historical epistemology we hypothesize that the production and representation of specifically biological times cannot be separated from the emergence, evolution, and propagation of complex research machines configuring site-specific materials and matters (instruments, model organisms, recording surfaces, etc.) and typical regimes of signs (e.g., numbers, curves, images). In addition, we assume that these research machines can be used as guiding threads for re-inscribing the specific times of biology - the Eigenzeit of research practice as well as the Eigenzeit of organisms - into the history of modern culture and society. Focusing on paradigmatic configurations in the history of the life sciences during the 19th and 20th centuries, we aim at showing (1) that time-based media such as cinematography shaped the research agenda of disciplines such as General Physiology and Animal Psychology, while also defining a new aesthetics of life that can be traced to the cinema of Surrealism and beyond; (2) that single technologies, e.g. the heart-lung machine as it was developed in the 1930s, contributed to extend the life span of individual organisms and resulted in new representations of biological as well as technological processes; and (3) that, starting in the 1870s, the architecture of biological laboratories was shaped to favor the visualizing biological facts (e.g., by means of lecture halls with projection facilities), while the developing structure of their interior expressed another time image of life. As a result, the principal aim of our project is to demonstrate that the epistemic temporalities of the modern life sciences cannot be separated from an aesthetics of time extending far beyond the realm of laboratory science.

近年来，分子生物学、脑研究、生物医学和类似学科提供了充分的证据，表明时间不仅仅是衡量生命的外部手段，更重要的是发挥其内部运算符的作用。我们的项目旨在通过关注现代生命科学的媒体、技术和架构，从历史上重建这一发展的重要方面。借鉴最近的科学社会学和历史认识论的传统，我们假设，特定生物时代的产生和表现，与配置特定地点材料和物质(仪器、模型生物、记录表面等)的复杂研究机器的出现、进化和传播是分不开的。和典型的符号制度(例如，数字、曲线、图像)。此外，我们假设这些研究机器可以被用作将生物学的特定时代--研究实践的本征以及生物体的本征--重新载入现代文化和社会史的指导线。聚焦于19世纪和20世纪生命科学史上的典型形态，我们的目标是展示(1)以时间为基础的媒体，如电影，塑造了普通生理学和动物心理学等学科的研究议程，同时也定义了可追溯到超现实主义电影和更远的新的生命美学；(2)单一技术，如20世纪30年代开发的心肺机，有助于延长个体生物体的寿命，并导致生物和技术过程的新表现；(3)从19世纪70年代开始，生物实验室的建筑被塑造成有利于将生物事实可视化(例如，通过带有投影设施的演讲厅)，而其内部不断发展的结构表达了另一种生命的时间图像。因此，我们项目的主要目的是证明，现代生命科学的认识时间性与远远超出实验室科学领域的时间美学是分不开的。