Franz Unger-Sigmund Exner- Eugen Steinach: Nature's Flexibility and Physiology's Agenda for Humanity

     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: June 15, 2005
     Presentation date: 07/14/2005 4:00 PM in MACK 238
     (View Schedule)

Abstract
This session aims to present important aspects to the narrative for scientific and cultural modernism in fin de siecle in Vienna and before. Each of the three contributions deal with eminent physiologists, who gained great international attention. So far, historical reconstructions of their work do not reflect any common background. But, all three biologists addressed the same problem, to wit, to determine the factors and the mechanisms of environmentally induced modifications of biological structures and functions. We do not want to provide a new synthesis for another big narrative for Viennas famous fin de siecle 1900, but we base our session on a simple methodological starting point: place matters. According to this we want to highlight the mental maps of 3 distinguished Viennese scholars. Franz Unger is known mostly for being the admired teacher of Gregor Mendel, although Mendel did not manage to pass his exams successfully. Little is known about his use of apparatuses for experiments, nothing about his theories of acclimatisation. Marianne Klemun will demonstrate the intellectual tradition, which he picked for his research basis and what kind of school in biological thinking and experimenting he happened to establish in Vienna and elsewhere. Veronika Hofers paper on Sigmund Exner demonstrates some of the significant effects of the methodological shift, which started in the 1860ies in the faculty of medicine with his teacher Ernst von Brücke and with Carl Ludwig, both brother in arms with Hermann von Helmholtz and Du Boi Reymond. Like Sigmund Freud and Ernst Mach, he made a fresh start for biological thinking. This meant that physiologists in the department of medicine now formulated their theories also in physical and mathematical terms, a shift which required and prompted intensive contact with other disciplines and intellectual capacities different from Ungers teaching. Hofers paper is focused on the multiple epistemological and cultural effects of Exners reading of John Stuart Mills philosophy.
Cheryl Logan shows how the intellectual capacities, which sprang from this fresh climate in biological research have introduced ideas about the mechanisms of induction of sexuality with hormones and the ideas of mechanisms of genetics. The terrain for Przibram and Steinach have been the Vivarium, an outstanding research laboratory with only loose connection to the University in Vienna. The impact as well as the sometimes sensational outcome of this research institute wed significant knots in the mental map of biological thinking in Vienna. This in turn effected some debates about the new status of biology for culture and western civilization in general. (416 words)

Multiple Paper Session:
Papers in this session:
The multiple agendas of a physiologist. Sigmund Exner's reading of John Stuart Mill
Resources of Useful Plants and Patterns of Their Worldwide Distribution. Franz Unger's Bromatorische Linie (1857) between Humboldt's Plant Geography and the Vavilovian Gene Centres
The Double Gonad, die Umwelt des Keimplasmas, and the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics