In media studies it is often argued that the emergence of new media inevitably leads to anxieties among devotees of old media who suspect that these media become irrelevant: photography menaces painting, film executes photography, tv menaces film, and the Internet finishes everything else. The printed book is no exception from this logic. Long before the invention of ebooks and Open access, various prophets predicted the decline of the Gutenberg Galaxis. Even without subscribing to such apocalyptic visions, we can not overlook the fact that the humanistic book has come under pressure. Being the unquestioned and primordial scientific medium in the 20th century, an assembly of habituations and practices has shifted within a few years. That implies institutions of advanced studies, publishers, research communities and the scholars themselves. The question, thus, is: Which role will the printed book play within and without the humanities?
Archiv des Tags «TransFormations»
“A time must come when there will be a science of the future, just like there is a science of the past – and when by virtue of this science the noblest humans calculate for the future as well as for themselves,” writes German philosopher and theologist Johann Gottfried Herder in his 1797 essay On Knowing and Not-Knowing the Future.
In my talk, I will discuss Herder’s and other concepts of futurity that were advanced around the year 1800. Thereby, an epistemological TransFormation par excellence will be observed – the one to bridge knowledge about the future with a general futurization of knowledge.
When: 22-27 January 2012
Where: Schloss Münchenwiler near Berne, Switzerland
Languages: English (main), German, French
ECTS: 6 | Costs: 500.- Swiss francs (travel and accommodation covered by organizer)
Application deadline: 27 November 2011
In post-industrial societies, due to the impact of globalisation and technological development, we are witnessing a growth and diversification of the sites of knowledge production and the ways in which a variety of actors articulate and circulate knowledge. As a result, the privileged position of ‘scientific’ knowledge is contested, making knowledge the symbolic and material capital not only of academic ‘experts’. By the same token, the authorization of ‘knowledge’ becomes a matter of debate and changing power structures. The Winter School analyses and discusses these changes from a historical, sociological, cultural and philosophical perspective. It reflects in particular on the challenges thereof for the humanities and the social sciences regarding their role in the knowledge society of (post)modernity and their contribution to larger processes of transformation.
From 2012 to 2015, with the IASH as the leading institute, the Philosophical-Historical Faculty of the University of Bern organizes four international Winter Schools of one week each. Under the thematic umbrella “TransFormations”, the Winter School concentrates on the analysis and shaping of local and global processes of change in its various forms and formations at the intersections of knowledge, history, culture and society.
