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Testing Times: Experimental Counter-Conduct in Interwar Germany

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Geographies of Science

Part of the book series: Knowledge and Space ((KNAS,volume 3))

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Abstract

Writing at the end of their now classic study on the experimental landscape of Restoration England, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer reflect on what they believe to be “the origins of a relationship between our knowledge and our polity that has, in its fundamentals, lasted for three centuries” (Shapin & Shaffer, 1985 p. 342). It is, they insist, “far from original to notice an intimate and an important relationship between the form of life of experimental natural science and the political forms of liberal and pluralistic societies” (p. 342). But as they go on to suggest, “we are no longer so sure that the traditional characterization of how science proceeds adequately describes its reality, just as we have come increasingly to doubt whether liberal rhetoric corresponds to the real nature of the society in which we now live” (p. 343). Although written over 20 years ago, their remarks still seem on the surface to be tellingly apposite.

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Acknowledgment

I am grateful to Pion Limited, London, for permission to publish an abridged version of an essay that first appeared as “Experimental Embodiments, Symptomatic Acts: Theatres of Scientific Protest in Interwar Germany,” Environment and Planning A, 39, (2007), 1812–1837.

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  1. School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Alexander Vasudevan

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  1. Alexander Vasudevan
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Correspondence to Alexander Vasudevan .

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  1. Abt. Geographie, Universität Heidelberg, Berliner Str. 48, Heidelberg, 69120, Germany

    Peter Meusburger

  2. School of Geography, Archaeology &, Palaeoecology, Queen's University Belfast, Elmwood Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1NN, United Kingdom

    David Livingstone

  3. Dept. Geography, Loughborough University, East Park, Loughborough, Leics., LE11 3TU, United Kingdom

    Heike Jöns

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Vasudevan, A. (2010). Testing Times: Experimental Counter-Conduct in Interwar Germany. In: Meusburger, P., Livingstone, D., Jöns, H. (eds) Geographies of Science. Knowledge and Space, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8611-2_11

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