Publications

The chapter discusses the use of photographs in research on Linguistic Landscape. Based on the observation of a widespread use of photographic documentation, the status of photographs is critically reflected. The focus lies on a reading of Susan Sontag’s ([1977] 2014) Melancholy Objects. Here, conceptions of description and documentation are questioned, as they are common for some linguistic works, especially in the field of Urban Studies. Of particular importance is the examination of the tension between realism and surrealism as well as the question of the extraction of reality. The text, which is a remix of Susan Sontag’s ([1977] 2014) thoughts, is complemented by twenty photographs that address the limits of photographic representation in the linguistic text.
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“She was a poet as great as Joseph Brodsky and a human rights activist as fearless as Andrei Sakharov. Unlike Brodsky, however, she did not receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, and unlike Sakharov, she did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. However, her name is associated with a unique event in the Soviet Union: On August 25, 1968, she and seven other young people came to Red Square to demonstrate openly against the regime – and against the suppression of the Prague Spring by tanks from the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries.”

In the face of growing populism and right-wing radicalism, the fight against historical forgetfulness in thought and action is once again highly topical. At first glance, however, forgetting history – at least in relation to the pre-modern era – hardly seems to be an issue: The Middle Ages, Renaissance and early modern period are experiencing a boom in novels, dramas and popular media. But here in particular, there is an urgent need for an active response to simplifications, mythifications and falsifications. The contributors to this volume show that it is essential for a critical consciousness to recognize historical difference and media filters and to reflect on their effects.

When calculating structural or spectroscopic properties of molecular crystals, the question arises whether it is sufficient to simulate only a single molecule or a small molecular cluster or whether the simulation of the entire crystal is indispensable. In this work we juxtapose calculations on the high-pressure structural properties of the (periodic) HCN crystal and chains of HCN molecules of finite length. We find that, in most cases, the behavior of the crystal can be reproduced by computational methods simulating only around 15 molecules. The pressure-induced lengthening of the C−H bond in HCN found in calculations on both the periodic and finite material are explained in terms of orbital interaction. Our results pave the way for a more thorough understanding of high-pressure structural properties of materials and give incentives for the design of materials that expand under pressure. In addition, they shed light on the complementarity between calculations on periodic materials and systems of finite size.

Zeit spielt eine grundlegende Rolle im menschlichen Leben. Zu bestimmen, was ihr Wesen ausmacht, ist bekanntermassen nicht einfach – und ist vielleicht auch nicht die philosophisch interessanteste Herausforderung. Wichtiger scheint es, verschiedene Lebensbereiche zunächst auf ihre unterschiedlichen Zeitauffassungen hin zu untersuchen und sich zu fragen, wie sie sich aufeinander beziehen. Für unseren Umgang mit Zeit ist das Entscheidende: Wie lassen sich Ereignisse sinn- und taktvoll aufeinander abstimmen?

Dealing with auditory oddities and ambiguities is not only entertaining, it is also an important driver for basic auditory research. The same acoustic stimulus can actually be perceived in different ways. We not only hear “with our ears”, but various other physical, physiological and cultural factors also play an important role. This directly gives rise to broader philosophical questions, for example on perception – and the enduring appeal of pieces of music is also based in many places on such ambiguities [13].

This volume offers a systematic and generally understandable introduction to philosophical questions in physics and its historical development. It begins with a presentation of important stages in the history of physics in antiquity, the early modern period and the past two centuries, and uses them to illustrate central epistemological features of physics. It discusses typical explanatory strategies, the role of experiments and predictions, the procedure for forming concepts and theories and the importance of mathematics.

Der Band behandelt in interdisziplinärer Perspektive Widerspruch unter anderem als einen konzeptionellen Anker von Diskursanalyse und -theorie. Widerspruch ist eine Figur der Ordnung von Wissen und damit Ausdruck von Machtverhältnissen. Akteur*innen, die Widersprüche identifizieren und als solche erst wahrnehmbar machen, sind ebenso in Dynamiken der Widerspruchsdeklaration verwoben wie das, was in einer Zeit als widersprüchlich bestimmt und bezeichnet wird. Die performative Dimension von Widerspruch unter Einschluss des Widersprechens verweist auf historische Normalitätsproduktionen und soziale Hierarchien, in denen das Widersprüchliche stets als Anlass zu seiner Auflösung verstanden wird.

Carving out the paradoxes of underground urban infrastructure, this paper attempts to establish a dialog between infrastructure studies, on the one hand, and Contradiction Studies, on the other hand. It starts from the premise that the technical and political characteristics of infrastructure are only thought of and made visible in case of failure or breakdown.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly being applied in drug discovery. While some protagonists point to vast opportunities potentially offered by such tools, others remain sceptical, waiting for a clear impact to be shown in drug discovery projects. The reality is probably somewhere in-between these extremes, yet it is clear that AI is providing new challenges not only for the scientists involved but also for the biopharma industry and its established processes for discovering and developing new medicines. This article presents the views of a diverse group of international experts on the ‘grand challenges’ in small-molecule drug discovery with AI and the approaches to address them.

This article discusses marginalisation in internet forums and blogging platforms using the example of asexuality blogs and discussion threads. While large corpora of both English and German, such as COCA and DeReKo, contain hardly any mention of asexuality and these few instances of asexuality and related expressions typically refer to plant biology, online communities do discuss aspects of life as an asexual person and their experiences of marginalization even within the LGBTQ community. Definitions of asexuality, including its delineation from other identities, and how asexual people articulate conflicts and other issues on these online platforms are discussed in detail. Particular attention is paid to how this particular group is constructed by others, how they construct themselves as not being part of the mainstream, and the role (self-)marginalisation plays in this context.

Contradictory characters are characters whose internal characterization in the text is contradictory or who are designed in and as a contradiction to discourses and traditions external to the text. The volume contains case studies from Virgil to the early New High German prose novel and the modern reception of the Nibelungen, combined with methodological considerations in the field of tension between character narratology, dialog research, historical anthropology and discourse analysis. The peculiarities of medieval-early modern narrative (above all the trans-textuality of many characters and their connection to plot or script) become just as clear as the necessity of reflecting on epochal clichés. The contributions invite us to think further about contradiction as a category of character narratology.

The aim of this paper is to sketch an approach for integrating the historiography of the sciences and of philosophy. More precisely, the paper suggests a method for investigating interactions within transdisciplinary constellations of researchers working in philosophy and in the exact sciences. I start off by introducing specific notions of analogy, variation, and conceptual space which provide the main ingredients of this method. The notion of a conceptual space, as well as other characteristics of the present approach, are adaptations from so-called constellation research. Originally, constellation research was developed for the historiography of philosophy – especially in the context of the origins of German idealism. However, as I will argue in the second half of the paper, it is adaptable to the historiography of science, especially of the exact sciences. To support this claim and to illustrate the integrative power of the present approach, I will (i) compare the notions of a constellation and a conceptual space with Ludwik Fleck’s notions of a »thought collective« and a »style of thought«, (ii) critically evaluate the distinction between contexts of discovery and of justification in a historiographical context, and (iii) relate the notions of analogy and variation, as introduced in the first part of the paper, to current debates about what is sometimes called »invariantism« in the philosophy of science.