Epistemological Modernism: the empirical turn in natural science and culture around 1830

该项目调查了1820年至1850年之间文化知识体系的根本变化。这样，这个被低估的时代就可以从一个全新的角度来看待：它呈现了一种认识论的现代主义，对1900年前后狭义的现代化产生了形成性的影响。该项目的起点是1830年左右整个知识领域对现实的新开放，这在几十年前仍然是不可想象的。这种经验转向可以用概念对Erfahrungsdruck和Empirisierungszwang（Lepenies）来理解。该项目将表明，这一新的丰富经验与现代生命科学的发展有关，特别是比较解剖学和现实地质学。然而，它在科学和文学文本中留下的痕迹远远超出了这一领域。研究假设是，我们发现文学的生物化和生命科学的文学化是相互的，这将首先在科学和文学共享的范式体裁：旅行散文中进行研究。从《前进报》和《地理学》的论述中，重新认识和被遗忘的旅行叙事都将成为研究的主题，例如，从海因里希·海涅、鲁道夫·维恩巴格、西奥多·穆特、阿德尔伯特·冯·查米索、理查德·朔姆伯克和爱德华·波伊皮格那里。它们都有一个共同点，那就是它们把各种各样的、物质的和抽象的物体--鱼鳍、诗歌语录和政府制度--联合收割机组合成一个色彩缤纷的、现象的统一体。其次，该项目将在媒体层面上寻找相似之处-基于自然哲学家Lorenz Oken编辑的期刊Isis（1816-1848）。这本杂志还没有被彻底研究过。在既要统一知识的总体性，又要抛弃学者文化的矛盾愿望的驱使下，该杂志也呈现了一个异质的万花筒--从动物学文章到诗歌和哲学反思。该项目将逐步重建具体的再现实践：它们将感知的丰富性、加速性和秩序的丧失转化为文本性，从而使混乱的现实变得可见。从不相容的对象或体裁的组合，到游记散文叙事、描写和解释之间的不断变化，再到语言符号系统、图像符号系统和数字符号系统的连接，以及对体裁惯例的有意打破。这种混合形式指出了这样一个事实，即一个溢出的现实和它产生的知识只能通过蒙太奇技术来把握。这种具有符号物质性的模仿艺术形式，使同时作为创作者和复制者的创作主体边缘化。总而言之，该项目旨在通过讨论表征的分离类型和与之相关的主体的矛盾心理来揭示认识论现代主义的实际现代性。

The project investigates the fundamental changes in the system of cultural knowledge between 1820 and 1850. In this way, this underestimated epoch can be viewed in an entirely new light: it presents an epistemological modernism with a formative influence on modernization in the narrow sense around 1900. The starting point of the project is a new openness towards reality in the whole intellectual sphere around 1830 which was still unthinkable decades earlier. This empirical turn can be grasped with with the conceptual pair Erfahrungsdruck and Empirisierungszwang (Lepenies). The project will show that this new wealth of experience is linked to the development of modern life sciences, especially comparative anatomy and actualistic geology. However, it leaves its traces far beyond that realm in scientific and literary texts. The research hypothesis is that we find a reciprocal biologisation of literature and literarisation of the life sciences.This will firstly be investigated in a paradigmatic genre that science and literature share: travel prose. Both reknowned and forgotten travel narratives from the Vormärz and the biogeographical discourse will form the subject of research, e.g. from Heinrich Heine, Ludolf Wienbarg, Theodor Mundt, Adelbert von Chamisso, Richard Schomburgk und Eduard Poeppig. They all have in common that they combine heterogenous, material and abstract objects - fish fins, poetry quotations and systems of government - into a colourful, phenomenal unity. Secondly, the project will look for parallels on the level of media - based on the encyclopedic journal Isis (1816-1848) edited by the natural philosopher Lorenz Oken. This journal has not yet been researched thoroughly. Driven by the paradoxical aspiration both to unite the totality of knowledge and to abandon the culture of savants at the same time, the journal presents a kaleidoscope of the heterogenous, too - from zoological articles to poetry and philosophical reflexion. Step by step, the project will reconstruct specific practices of representation: they transform perceptual richness, acceleration and the loss of order into textuality and thereby make a chaotic reality visible. The spectrum ranges from the combination of incompatible objects or genres and the constant change between narration, description and explanation in travel prose to the connection of linguistic, iconic and numeric sign systems and the deliberate break of genre conventions. Such hybrid formats point to the fact that a overflowing reality and the knowledge it generates can only be grasped by techniques of montage. Such artistic forms of mimesis with the materiality of signs marginalize the auctorial subject who appears as creator and copyist at the same time. All in all, the project aims to uncover - by discussing dissociative types of representation and the ambivalence of the subject associated with it - the actual modernity of epistemological modernism.