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The article wants to show the connection between the enriched personal papers of Emil von Behring (1854-1917) in the Behring archives in Marburg (established in 1927) and the history of the first biography of the scientist, which was published by Heinz Zeiss and Richard Bieling during Nazi era in 1940. One focus is placed on Behring's widow Else von Behring (1876-1936), who was active in arranging Behring's papers in proper order and in searching a biographer of her husband's life. The paper also presents new discoveries from the Behring Works archives in Marburg which show Behring--founder of the serum therapy and first winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1901--as an entrepreneur who was fighting for control and influence in the field of science and of business: maybe another narration of Behring's life.

Practical Knowledge, Science and Disasters. The History of Social Science Disaster Research, 1949-1979. During the second half of the twentieth century several US-American social science "disaster research groups" conducted field studies after earthquakes, factory explosions and "racial riots". Their aim was to provide practical knowledge that could be applied in the planning and managing of future disasters of both peace- and wartime nature. In this paper, I will elaborate on how this research goal conflicted with some scientists' aspirations to develop more theoretical knowledge and their own ideals of "scientificity". I will also show how the generated research results came to be 'impractical knowledge', which was difficult or impossible to apply. Furthermore this paper analyzes the scientific practices that were involved at different stages of the knowledge production process and contributed to disaster research's 'precarious' character., (© 2017 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

"Sacra à Deo in corde discenda, natura ex natura." Johann Christian Senckenberg's Observationes as a Medico-Theological Writing Method. In his early diaries, the pietist physician Johann Christian Senckenberg has taken down large amounts of observation data which mostly concentrated on his own body and soul. Earlier research has mistaken his diligent self-observation for hypochondria and unworldliness, especially since the author had never endeavoured to analyze and publish his work. The article shows that both his writing practice and his reluctance to process and share its results are due to his deeply religious and firmly anti-rationalist conviction. The main purpose of his journal keeping was the attainment of religious self-knowledge and professional self-perfection. Scientific publications he considered to be hypothetical and dogmatic, be it in theology or medicine; moreover, their authors were often enough driven by their self-love and desire for fame. In his eyes, the only godly way of knowledge acquisition was the humble, diligent and minute study of divine creation according to the Hippocratic method. The most immediate and reliable way of achieving true wisdom, however, was the observation of God's work within one's own body and mind, which were subject to the effects of God's grace and punishment as well as to atmospheric, environmental and dietetic circumstances., (© 2017 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Labeling, Recovering and Reactivating: The Role of Labels on Microscope Slides in the Finding System on the Basis of Alzheimer's Auguste D. Preparations. This study discusses the role of labels in the process of the reactivation (Rheinberger) of preparations. Labels on slides together with corresponding lists on cards or sheets build what is here called a specific finding system. In the sciences of the archive (Daston) the disciplinary memory together with such a finding system are the basis to the ability of the sciences today to reactivate preparations from the beginning of the last century as it occurs with the Auguste D. preparations. The case of Alzheimer's micropreparations of brain parts of Auguste D. - the case that he used to show that hers was a specific brain disease unknown before - serves to describe Alzheimer's writing on the labels. It is compared to slides and labels prepared by other medical researchers between the 1890s and 1920s and the respective finding systems. Being an epistemologicum, micropreparations, as they are data, in their hybrid status of both image and material in one, cross the boundaries between icon and index. This is proven by the reactivation of Auguste D. micropreparations in molecular biological studies over 100 years after their production., (© 2017 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Linus Pauling, Roger Hayward, and the Value of Visualizations. Linus Pauling's work was intrinsically linked to visualizations. While his use of three- and two-dimensional inscriptions has been the focus of much scholarly research, the production of visualizations remains a rather poorly studied subject. This article focuses on the cooperation between Pauling and Roger Hayward, an architect by profession who came to scientific illustration in the late 1920s. By concentrating on the papers of Pauling and Hayward I describe the workflow between scientist and illustrator. Although Hayward's visualizations were epistemically indispensable and economically profitable, they were never fully acknowledged as such. This was due to the ongoing conflicts caused by the economic strategies pursued by Pauling and his publisher, Hayward's personal style, and science's general disregard for images as epistemic instruments. I suggest that these contentious relationships between scientist, illustrator, and publisher are paradigmatic for the history of scientific visualization., (Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

The Reshaping of Phytogeographical Knowledge as the "Transition zone" Wallacea: An American Expansion Project in the Philippines, 1902-1928. This paper examines the development of a concept that to this day plays an important role in biogeography: the region Wallacea. Focussing on the work of the American tropical botanist Elmer D. Merrill in the Philippines, I argue that his research on the geographical movement and settlement of Philippine plants reflects a shift in the United States' scientific and cultural understanding of the Pacific area towards a notion of "American tropics". While inventorying plants for the American administration from 1901 to 1923, the composition of Philippine flora prompted Merrill to question biogeographical regionalization in Wallace's Malay Archipelago. Not being able to situate the Philippine flora within "Asian" or "Australasian" biota, Merrill described the islands as an area of trans-regional plant migration. Together with the paleontologist Roy E. Dickerson, he later conceptualized the region Wallacea as biogeographical "transition zone" between the Philippines and Australia. In addition to the scientific conceptualization, Wallacea constitutes a space between two biogeographical subregions, whose flora was considered as being part of both, but could not be unambiguously attributed to either of these regions. In this respect, the plants resembled the inhabitants of the United States' insular overseas territories, who were legally defined neither as aliens nor as citizens. In this sense, Wallacea embodies epistemic as well as geopolitical boundaries, while its case also illustrates some of the ways in which colonial interests in the usability of plants found expression in botanical research during the early period of American overseas expansion., (© 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Resolving Nebulae - Life in Sight! While in the second half of the 19th century astrospectroscopy and -photography had contoured new objects of investigation like nebulae, the debate among astronomers about extraterrestrial life intensified. Images did not only play a key role in uprising popular astronomical magazines at that time, they also served as arguments or even as evidence in controversial debates about the nature of nebulae or of planets' surfaces. These debates were not restricted to academic astronomers, on the contrary, amateurs and popularisers were among the most active disputants. Photos and images published in popular magazines were more intensively retouched or manipulated than when they were used in academic communication about astronomy. But the practices of interpretation and speculation, based on drawings and images, stemmed from academic communities. Far reaching conclusions relying on unclear features of astronomical pictures, like in the case of Martian canals, have not only been criticised by other academics. History shows that the ability to scrutinise imaginations about evidence of life in space or about the forming of the solar system was due more to tacitly knowing how images were produced than to having an encyclopaedic recall in astronomy., (Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

History and Philosophy of Science. Between Description and Construction. Taking into consideration the huge amount of programs and departments in 'History and Philosophy of Science' (HPS), partly including also technology and sociology of science, the rather weak theoretical conceptualization of this field seems surprising. HPS is conceived of neither as a mere addition of history of science and philosophy of science, nor as a good will parallel action. Therefore, the question arises about the genuine subject and method of this trans- and interdisciplinary field of research and teaching. The recent postulate of an "integrated HPS" indicates the need of a closer and more intrinsic cooperation and interaction between history of science and philosophy of science (covering also the social and cultural sciences) from a theoretical and practical point of view. In addition, there should be no more privileging of any part in this joint scholarly enterprise by overcoming the context of discovery and the context of justification. Some best practices and desiderata are mentioned together with the forgotten history of the philosophy of science itself. Based on the description of the scholarly field an ideal-typical model of HPS is offered., (Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)