Editorial
It is at once both a problem and a privilege to edit a journal with no backlog, yet with high quality submissions. On the one hand, we can offer a quick turnaround and (so far) a 100% acceptance rate. On the other hand, we have no planning horizon and no control over thematic content. This makes it unpredictable what “theme” any given issue will focus on. And yet, so far, a theme has seemed to emerge, just in time for each issue in turn. Or perhaps more precisely, it has been possible each time to construct a theme around the submissions ready for publication.
This time, the theme that has sprung to my mind as I read this issue’s submissions in sequence is that of the fate of Science in times of geo-political upheaval. Be it war, or revolution, or sweeping global trends – radical geopolitical changes have impacts on the practices and contents of Science. Changes result in individual mobility: People (and not least, intellectuals) find themselves at risk. Some find the resources to flee, taking with them their intellectual capital. Windows of opportunity and communication open; others shut. Governments open one ear to science-based advice, and close another; extend funding in one direction, and close off other channels. The results of these shifts are not pre-determined, yet neither are they inconsequential.
This point is made in this issue, first with a richly documented and illustrated article by Arin Namal and Arnold Reisman on the fates and impacts of refugee scientists from Nazi Germany. Germany’s arrogant wastefulness of its intellectual capital, and the similarly xenophobic resistance of for instance the US towards receiving them as refugees, was embraced by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as an opportunity to modernize Turkey. Focusing on one of these refugee scientists – Friedrich Dessauer – Namal and Reisman evoke much of the tragedy, relief, and irony of this particular path of science and technology transfer. In our own time, the fall of the “Iron Curtain” has opened paths for far less tragedy-tainted exchanges. Olga Stoliarova invites us all to participate by engaging with her in the development of STS studies in Russia. In exchange we may draw new impulses from Russia’s long-standing programmes in philosophy, which may well have new thoughts to offer us as we have been conducting our thinking in relative isolation from one another until recently.
Not unrelated to the fall of the “Iron Curtain”, the “West” (and not least the US) has taken a radical swing to the right. This neo-conservative, neo-liberal, neo-fundamentalist shift has also had an impact on Science. The third piece in this issue is Jon Hovland’s review of Norman K. Denzin and Michael D. Giardina’s edited volume, Qualitative Inquiry and the Conservative Challenge. Denzin, Giardina, and co-authors “rant” against the neo-conservative’s insistence on and misuses of quantitative methods, while also inviting critical reflections on qualitative research practices.
As editor, I hope this issue will engender debate. As you may note, this is a double issue. This issue includes some longer pieces than usual. Releasing it as a double issue will, I hope, free some time this Fall for me to get a discussion forum up and running. Tune in to our web page from time to time and look for this new feature, probably after the 4S meeting. Perhaps such a forum will finally be a channel through which readers will participate in active discussions, maybe even in the cover guessing game. No guesses this time either, sigh. So here’s the solution to the past two issues’ cover: An artist’s rendition of an event in a particle accelerator. But I still think it would have made a lovely dinner service pattern for the Royal Horological Society. I’ll make this issue’s game easier. The cover image is of monodisperse particles, aka. “Ugelstad spheres”. The challenge: How many uses for/ interpretations of these can we come up with?
Abstract:
Starting in 1933, Turkey reformed its health care delivery system as well as its system of higher education using refugees fleeing the Nazis and given a safe haven by way of formal government invitations. For these souls America was out of reach because of restrictive immigration laws and wide spread anti-Semitic hiring bias at its universities. One of radiology’s pioneers Friedrich Dessauer was not able to emigrate to the US even with Albert Einstein’s personal quests and recommendations. However he was invited to Turkey along with a team of radiological doctors, physicists, engineers, and nurses where he played a large role in westernizing the new republic’s education and practice of radiology. Dessauer’s contributions to knowledge (radiology, philosophy in general, and philosophy of technology, social justice, and political science) are well documented; this paper concentrates on his saga in fleeing the Nazis and his years in exile.
Key words:
Turkey; Medical History; History of radiology: Educational Policy; Government Policy; Nazi persecution; Nazism; Holocaust; Migration; Diaspora; Exile.
Contact authors: ainnamal2002 (at) yahoo.com; arnoldreisman (at) sbcglobal.net
INTRODUCTION: Historical Background
In 1923 the newly declared Republic of Turkey inherited a ruined country from the Ottoman Empire with a backward system of health care delivery and the teaching of the same. This was totally incompatible with the tenets of the modern state that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s (1881–1938) and his collaborators wanted to establish. At the time Turkey was exhausted and poor. Atatürk knew full well that the country had to go through a fast metamorphosis. The Young Republicans were full of idealism and enthusiasm and while there was a myriad of constraints to achieving their ideals, their means of doing that were limited.
In order to make a new and modern country out of the ashes of the Ottoman state a series of daring changes were instituted. Moving Turkey from a theocratic to a secular state had the greatest urgency. In 1924 the Office of the Khalif was abolished. Another reform came about with respect to education and attempted to change the attitude and mores of Turks. The medreses (religious colleges)[1], tekkes (dervish lodges) and zaviyes (dervish cells) were closed and the trikats (religious orders of sufis) were banned. In 1927 the law of unification of education was enacted eliminating all religious teaching.[2] Then in 1928 came the change in the alphabet from the Arabic script to a Latin-based one[3], and the old legacy of the fez and charshaf (a kind of chadoor) was banned as apparel. These reforms did not require a well-prepared cadre to execute them.
A much more difficult task was to change the medical education and practice inherited from the Ottomans. This was especially acute in the emerging field of Roentgenology/ Radiology. There were not enough medical doctors, physicists, engineers, nurses, and supporting staff in the academic community with the appropriate knowledge and dexterity to carry out the structural changes that Atatürk and his colleagues were contemplating.
While reforms in the primary and secondary eduction were relatively easy, tertiary education required special attention. In the early thirties there were three higher learning institutions of some substance, Darülfunun (the House of Knowledge), a Higher School of Engineering, and the School of Public Administration, which was designed strictly to train the civil servants and was set up in the late 19th century. The Darülfunun was almost a medieval institution where sinecure teachers repeated the same lectures year after year from their worn-out notebooks. They rarely carried out research or published scientific books. Atatürk knew full well that in order to carry out his reforms he needed not only a well-prepared cadre, but at the same time an academic institution, at par with those in western European, that would prepare such cadres. A man of action and fond of radical decisions, Atatürk knew that university reform, the reform of Darülfunun, had to be quick and fundamental. With one order on July 31, 1933 the Darülfunun was closed, all teachers with tenure were fired the University of Istanbul was established on August 1, 1933 with its doors opening to the students in November of 1933. The new university, which was fashioned on the prevailing German university model, was heralded in all the existing media of the country, not only in big cities but even in a small town like Yozgat in the center of Anatolia, whose weekly newspaper carried in its front page the title “Darülfunun Assigned to History, New University Founded”. [4]
(image) Front page of an August 2 1933 edition of Yozgat, a provincial town’s newspaper. “Based on new legislation passed by the National Assembly, the Istanbul Darülfunun was closed and Istanbul University established in its place. Reşit Galip Bey, [Minister of Education] notified the Anadolu Agency on this occasion, about the manner and circumstances of Istanbul Darülfunun’s having been assigned to history as of yesterday. He went on to say that the Istanbul University had nothing to do with the Istanbul Darülfunun; the University is a new institution. Its tradition will begin with itself. The institution will carry the name “üniversite” until the Turkish language research society will find a suitable authentic Turkish name for it. Above all, Istanbul University will be a gathering place commensurate with the meaning of its name. It will be an institution that will sustain and create superior science and specialization within its mission. The new university will be composed of the Faculties [schools] of medicine, law, science, and humanities. The Faculty of theology has been converted into a Research Institute on Islam. All conditions have been created to facilitate cooperation in science and culture among different science constituencies. Besides the Research Institute on Islam, there are seven other institutes which are instititions of Turkish revolution, national economy and sociology, Turkish geography, morphology, chemistry and electromechanics. Neşet Ömer Bey has been appointed to lead the university. The faculty of medicine will be headed by Tevfik Salim Paşa, humanities by Köprülüzade Fuat and law by Kerim Bey.”[5]
The new university rehired a number of the Darülfunun professors who had proven themselves to be worthy of teaching in the new institution. However 157 of Darülfünun’s 240 professors were relieved of their duties and retired.[6] Many positions, especially in disciplines such as medicine, the hard sciences, economics and law needed new teachers that were difficult, if not impossible, to find in the country. What was to be done?
While Atatürk and his collaborators were moving about in the maze of impossibilities, Germany self-destructively was eliminating the employment of hundreds of university professors, simply because they were Jewish or had Jewish connectivity, were socialists or communists, or were people of honor who could not and would not accept Nazism. Germany in one coup barred some 1200 men of science from its learning institutions in 1933-1934. Of these about 650 managed to emigrate.[7] While the action of the Nazis was a disgrace for Germany, it was a window of opportunity for Turkey. Dr. Reşit Galip, the Minister of Education, called Atatürk’s attention to the fact that there was a shortage of qualified teachers at the University of Istanbul, while there was a great number of unemployed German professors whose future was perilous in their own country. Could Turkey find a mechanism to bring them and place some of them at the University of Istanbul and others as advisors in various ministries? Atatürk’s response was positive.[8] After a quick needs assessment the government began to negotiate with the German professors who were willing to come to Turkey.
A select group of Germans with a record of leading-edge contributions in their respective disciplines was invited with the Reichstag’s backing to transform the new Turkish state’s entire infrastructure including its legal and higher education systems. Occurring before the activation of death camps this arrangement, served the Nazis’ aim of making their universities, professions, and arts not only Judenrein, cleansed of Jewish influence, but also free from intelligentsia opposed to fascism. Because the Turks needed the help, Germany could use this fact as an exploitable chit on issues of Turkey’s neutrality during wartime.[9] Thus, the national self-serving needs of two disparate governments served humanity’s ends during the darkest years of the 20th century. In that process the Minister Reşit Galip (1893–1934) was helped by Swiss professor Albert Malche (1876-1956) and Frankfurt pathologist Philipp Schwartz (1894-1977).
The Hungarian born Frankfurt pathologist, Dr. Philipp Schwarz fled with his family to Switzerland. Schwartz’s father-in-law, Professor Sinai Tschulok (1875-1945) had taken refuge in Switzerland after the 1905 Russian Revolution and was a close friend of Albert Malche a Swiss professor of pedagogy who in 1932 was invited to Turkey to prepare a report on the Turkish educational reform. Malche’s Rapport sur l’universite´ d’Istanbul was submitted on May 29, 1932. Malche recognized the double opportunity of saving lives while helping Turkey, contacted Schwarz. In March 1933, Schwarz established the Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland (The Emergency Assistance Organization for German Scientists) to help persecuted German scholars secure employment in countries prepared to receive them.[10]
The closure of old Ottoman schools had several objectives, one of which was to provide a means of canceling all existing good-for-life faculty contracts.[11] As indicated Istanbul University was opened the very next day using Dar-ül Fünun’s physical plant, a small fraction of the original faculty, and more than thirty world-renowned émigré German professors who were on their way to Turkey.
Incredibly, courses began on November 5, 1933, as reported in various media:
“New professors invited from Europe to teach at the University have started to arrive in Istanbul. Professor Hirsch who will teach Commercial Law at the Law Faculty arrived the day before at the university where he had talks with the dean and his colleagues. He stated that he will reside in a Turkish milieu in Istanbul so that he can learn Turkish within three years and that he considered Turkey as his own country. All the foreign professors will be at their posts by 25th of October.”
(image)
-Le Journal d’Orient, October 20, 1933.
The Role of the Emigré professors
The emigré professors who chose to live and teach in Turkey show a wide spectrum. On the one hand there were renowned musicians and stage directors like Paul Hinderminth (1895-1963) and Carl Ebert (1821-1885), on the other eminent physicians and surgeons like Rudolf Nissen (1896–1981), inventor of the Nissen fundoplication procedure that is still widely used, well known philosopher of science, and logical positivist Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953), mathematician Richard von Mises (1883-1953), Physicist Arthur R. von Hippel (1898 - 2003) the father of Nanoscience and Nanotechnlogy, among others.
Ultimately some 190 eminent intellectuals were rescued [12] – a fact hardly known outside of Turkey. [13] Among them was a small contingent of radiology professionals. Their collective impact on all aspects of Turkey’s radiology education, and practice was monumental. On reflection, “in its essence, the affair that we call or understand as Atatürk’s Üniversite Reformu was not merely a university reform, but the ultimate apex of the Atatürk cultural movement started in the years 1925 to 1926.” [14]
This article does not pretend to give an account of all the émigré professors, since that was done elsewhere. [15] The weight of this article is on drawing the portrait of but one of the émigrés who was very influential in bringing cutting edge western knowhow to Turkey.
Turkey’s Health Care Delivery Reforms
By contemporaneous western standards circa 1930s, the Ottomans’ medical legacy left much to be desired. Much of the medical “practice” was not based on recent science or on science at all. Infant mortality was known to be high and longevity short. Epidemiologic “data” were rudimentary and based primarily on anecdotal information. There were public health issues, such as concern for local water quality standards. In the countryside, and much of Turkey was just that, all food distribution, preparation, consumption were quite traditional having remained the same for many genarations.
In an agrarian society where meat was scarce or predominantly consumed by the upper class, protein was limited unless one lived on a seacoast. There were too few doctors and too few clinics for the rural population. Those who attempted to establish a practice did not have access to the latest technology, especially in in radiology. It was obvious that Turkey desperately needed medical schools based on Western medical standards. She needed major infusions of western medical technology, the know-how to use it and her doctors needed to be educated in modern medical methods.
From Roentgenology to Radiology
In the early 1930s, radiology was still in its infancy. Media everywhere were fascinated with its potential for diagnostics and even more so as a cure. Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845-1923) received his Nobel award in 1901 and Madame Curie (1867-1934) received her second such prize in 1911. In 1933, the latest medical X-ray technology in all of Turkey involved two machines which “were brought in 1902 and 1904 and used in Istanbul.” [16] Among the physicists and engineers invited to Turkey, several had worked in the emerging field of “roentgenology.” They were invited to Istanbul to set up the university’s Institute of Radiology and Biophysics. Turkey’s founding fathers were keenly aware of the usefulness for X-rays in medical diagnostics. Naturally it would have been folly to simply invite physicians who knew something about the extant X-ray techniques. As a result of their fast paced scientific developments in the West, these techniques each had short lifespans as they were being constantly improved. It would have also been folly to bring the best and the latest equipment to a country without the infrastructure to maintain and upgrade it. This wisdom proved to be more critical during the ensuing wartime years.
THE INDIVIDUALS INVOLVED
It was decided to invite research physicists and experienced engineers along with knowledgeable doctors and nurses. Friedrich Dessauer (1881–1963) was the most senior of the “Roentgen machine” pioneers and was the first physicist invited with Carl Weissglass (1898-?) Nikolaus Wolodkewitsch, and Kurt Lion (1904-1980) as his engineers. Additionally, Erich Uhlmann, born in 1901 was a radiologist with a record of scientific publications in radiotherapy dating back to 1923. He was brought from Frankfurt University in November 1934. [17] Uhlmann and Dessauer were the first instance of a physicist/physician collaboration in the field of radiotherapy in Turkey. Later on, Dr. Hans Salomon participated in this team as a physician. The “Frankfurt” team also included Grete Lindenbaum, a nurse who was experienced in radiology.
THE RADİOLOGY INSTİTUTE
For his Institute, Dessauer was given a pre-war [WWI] constructed building located near the Gureba Hospital and on the European side of the city. It had been used as a tobacco warehouse. The building was restored starting April of 1934. Dessauer said that they used the smaller machine to take the simple X-rays while for the complicated X-ray examinations they used the Titanos unit made by Koch & Sterzel in Dresden (Germany). [18] Opposite the roentgen diagnostic department there was the deep therapy hall. Both locations had the 200kV and 400kV machines and both were equipped with full protection units. In addition to the built-in protection systems, a 4mm-thick lead protection was added to the 200 kV machine, and the 400 kV machine had a 6mm-thick lead protection for safety of its users. The room prepared for the operators was also arranged to enable 20 students to observe the treatments. The building contained a room for the Chaoul method close-range radiation, a skin treatment room and a darkroom for endoscopic examinations. Dessauer made sure that the majority of the patients under radiation therapy were admitted to the hospital, and this notion was incorporated into the layout of the clinic. Resting areas were reserved for those patients who because of the effects of radiation had to spend long periods of time in the clinic during the day due to but went home in the evenings. The basement had a room for storing radium and two radium laboratories with the necessary equipment. Dessauer had the transformer unit, laboratories, a measurement hall, and a research room placed in the basement. Patients had no access to the basement floor. The first floor housed the Finsen unit made by Finsen-Lombholt, and the diathermy room. The electrodiagnostic, electrotherapy and light therapy units were located in proximity of the waiting room as well as a laboratory for patient tests and microscopic examinations were also on the first floor. In space reserved for those who were going to specialize in radiology, students would be engaged in various applications, starting with simple electrical circuit connections and electric current measurements to building their own X-ray machine, evaluating spectrograms and doing absorption analysis. From a scientific and environmental point of view it is interesting to note that Dessauer also mentioned his future plans for conducting climatologic research on the large balcony of the clinic.[19] According to the Dessauer curriculum, for two hours a week the students in the 4th preclinical term were educated on matters of physics that they would encounter in their upcoming clinical work. For example; the student had to provide an opinion about an electrocardiogram, diathermy and obtaining ultraviolet rays. When shown an X-ray film the student would not only have to recognize the normal shadow of an X–ray but also how it was obtained. The students were taught medical physics, especially radiation physics. The students in the 6th and 8th terms had to take a one hour lesson every week in order to learn what the staff physician (not a radiology specialist) should know about radiology. [20]
This Institute would also train specialists who passed an exam following two years of residency. Post graduate education in radiology was offered as well and towards this end, yearly course programs were planned. The evening conferences at the Radiology Association were among the planned activities. Technicians were assigned for the maintenance and repair of the X-ray equipment and other related equipment, in the Institute importance was given to the training of X-ray nurses. [21]
Dessauer and colleagues decided that Institute operations had to be carried out in cooperation with the clinics so in accordance with that decision [22] he planned treatments in cooperation with the clinic physicians and described his activities at the Institute as follows: “As the Institute was beginning to be famous, patients from all over the world began to come. We had established an institute which had no peer in Europe. Sometimes there were 80 people waiting in the queue for treatment. All of them had cancer.”
(image) Istanbul University Institute of Radiology and Biophysic – 1935 [24]
FRIEDRICH DESSAUER
Born in Aschaffenburg, Germany, Friedrich Dessauer studied at the Goethe university in Frankfurt am Main where his design of high-energy X-ray power supplies earned him a doctorate in 1917. Dessauer was also famous for his work on the philosophy of technology, defending it and describing it as “a new way for human beings to exist in the world”. As an inventor and entrepreneur Dessauer developed techniques for deep-penetration X-ray therapy in which weak rays are aimed from different angles to intersect at a point inside the body where their combined energy can be lethal to a tumor while having less of an effect on the surrounding tissues. He dedicated most of his life to the study of radioactivity. [25]
Interested in politics, Dessauer registered as a member of the Catholic Central Party in the year 1918. As an intellectual businessman arguing catholic and social policies, he gained prestige in a party to which everyone was welcome. In 1923 he started the Rhain-Main Public Gazette, in which he published articles on economy under the umbrella of the Carolus Publishing House. He was elected a deputy to Reichstag in 1924 and served there as the representative of the left wing. Due to the various accusations by the National Socialists, he was under political arrest for 104 days. He was articulate in defending himself in court and was released. Because of the decree establishing restrictions upon civil servants [26] implemented on April 7, 1933 he was suspended from his office. Late one February 1934 night, he was assaulted in his home; the door and windows of his house were broken. He was informed that an investigation on him would be carried out although he was a practicing Catholic because his roots went back to Judaism. He was banned from issuing publications and declared persona non-grata by the Union of Nazi Professors. It is supposed that while Dessauer was under arrest, he applied to the Notgemeinschaft in Switzerland for a position in Istanbul. [27]
As a leading member of the Catholic Central Party, he had taken part in negotiations between the Weimar Republic and the fledgling NS Party (Hitler, Göring, Strasser, Frick und Goebbels). He thought that a coalition might be established with the Nazis, thus holding them in bounds (in retrospect a very naïve assessment of the situation). The only result of the negotiations was Dessauer’s arrest. It appears that his imprisonment was terminated because of his appointment and invitation by the government of Turkey.[28]
On December 3, 1933, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to David L. Edsall, Dean of the Harvard Medical School. [29]
“I take the liberty to write to you, because I feel strongly a need to do what I possibly can to relieve the misery of those in Germany who are suffering despite being innocent. I am referring to Prof. Dr. Friedrich Dessauer, University of Frankfurt who has made a name for himself in the field of experimental physics applied to Medicine. The man is in prison on a trumped up charge, in reality because of his activity in the Center Party. I consider it our human responsibility to do the utmost to save this esteemed individual. I think it would help the man’s fate if the Hitler regime would learn that people abroad were interested in this man. Of course there is no hope that he would be released soon or permitted to leave the country but it would be a loud and human gesture on his behalf, if one could send some letter of interest from an American university.”
Einstein concluded his letter to Dean Edsall by asking him to write such a declaration for Dessauer. By design or happenstance, Edsall misinterpreted the plea [30] and responded by pointing out that there were no positions open at Harvard at that time. Undaunted, Einstein replied: “It seems that I have not properly expressed my intentions. I was not talking about a real invitation for Professor Dessauer, just a pretended one. The idea is to show that there is an interest abroad for this person. The aim is to stop the legal proceedings against him which were intiated on spurious grounds. It is known that these things often occur for political reasons.” [31]
(image) A 1923 Dessauer Monograph on Radiotherapy
(image) Friedrich Dessauer, 1937
(image) Dessauer informs the Dean of Medical Faculty that Workshop chief Gerneth and Dr. Lion had arrived. İstanbul University Istanbul Medical Faculty Personnel Department’s Archive. Gerneth, File Nr: 58
(image) F. Dessauer, T. Berkman, Röntgen şualarıyla derin tedavinin hal ve istikbali [About the current state of the art and the future of deep therapy with x-rays]. Tıb Dünyası 1936 (IX) 11-103: 3313-3319
DEPARTURE FROM TURKEY
For reasons not fully known Dessauer left Turkey in 1937 having been appointed professor of experimental physics at Fribourg, Switzerland. His entire “Frankfurt” team left as well and was quickly replaced by a team from Austria [32] headed by Max Sgalitzer (1884-1974). According to fellow emigre eminent surgeon Rudolf Nissen (1896-1981): “Dessauer was an X-Ray pioneer during the period when no protection was applied against rays in the field of radiography. All of these persons were exposed to more or less heavy burns. There were burns on Dessauer’s hands, face and feet. These men lost their lives because of cancers caused by the rays, as the victims of their occupations, almost without exception. I don’t know whether this was the reason for the death of Dessauer, who died in 1963. But I suppose it was.” [33] Friedrich Dessauer died in Frankfurt am Main. From archival documents it is possible to conclude that during 1940 Dessauer was again attempting to immigrate to the US. The New School for Social Research in New York City was his standard bearer this time around. In July of that year the School prepared the following dossier and Alvin Johnson its Director sent out a number of letters of inquiry requesting funding, placement opportunities, and references.
(image) A July 27, 1940 letter of inquiry from the New School requesting funding, placement opportunities, and references for Dessauer. Courtesy Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives in Albany, New York.
On November 23, 1940 a response was received from Otto Glasser of the Cleveland Clinic:
(image) A November 23, 1940 response from Otto Glasser of the Cleveland Clinic. Courtesy Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives in Albany, New York.
And on December 30 1940 Alvin Johnson wrote the following letter to Thomas Appleget at the Rockefeller Foundation. The sentence in the middle of the paragraph bears special significance: “He has a chair at Friburg but he is in grave danger of dismissal and perhaps of a worse fate.” As the handwritten annotation in the right hand corner indicates the Rockefeller Foundation rejected the request. A good assumption based on other evidence was the age issue. In those times age discrimination in hiring was a matter of university policies. [34]
(image) A December 30 1940 letter from Alvin Johnson to Thomas Appleget at the Rockefeller Foundation. Courtesy Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives in Albany, New York.
In his last letter to Albert Einstein Dessauer congratulated the “Master” on his Day of Honor and expressed sorrow that the two did not have many opportunities to meet since the pre war years. However Dessauer assures Einstein that he has been following his work with intense interest.
(image) A March 29, 1954 letter from Dessauer to Albert Einstein Einstein Archives Document No. 301148
PERCEPTIONS OF THE ÉMİGRÉS IN TURKEY TODAY
Memories of the émigré professors and the appreciation of their contributions to Turkey’s modernization linger on in that country and among the educated Turkish Diaspora. Recently several symposia were devoted to keeping the memories alive. One conference organized by the Turkish Academy of Science (TÜBA), was devoted to “The Evolution of the Concept of University in Turkey (1861-1961)” (November 18, 2006).. Much of the discussion focused on Atatürk’s university reforms, the realization of which was attributed to the émigrés from Germany.
On April 7, 2006, the University of Istanbul conducted a symposium on the 1933 University Reform. The conference opened with a welcoming speech by Dr. Mustafa Keçer, the dean of the Istanbul Medical Faculty, who reiterated that “Turkey owes a great debt to the émigrés. They did great work here, although some jealous colleagues tried to denigrate them.” Reiner Möckelmann (b. 1941), Germany’s recently retired Consul General in Istanbul, organized a symposium at the Consulate conducted on August 6, 2006, dealt with the contributions of the medical contingent. [35]
Additionally Turkish media have recently published a number of articles on the larger subject of the émigré professors. One of these was carried as a first-page article by Hürriyet, a high-circulation secular, centrist, nationalist, Turkish daily, on October 29, 2006, when Turkey celebrated its 83rd anniversary as a Republic. The headline by Murat Bardakçı read: “A Request From the Great Genius to the Young Republıc.” The article described Einstein’s appeal to İsmet İnönü to accept 40 German intellectuals who were ready to come and work for one year at no pay,[36] and went on to juxtapose the spirit contained in Einstein’s letter to Turkey’s current body politic and its preoccupations with those prevalent during the early ideological Republican years:
“Now, here is the difference between the Turkey of the time when the Republican regime was only 10 years old and the Turkish Republic now aged 83. The first one is a young state with great promise for the future from which Einstein requests jobs for his friends; the other is where the daily agenda is shaped only by discussions about parks restricted to women, and wearing of the ‘cübbe’[37] by sect members, or whether shaking women’s hand is sinful or not….” [38]
This article kindled renewed interest in the 1933 émigrés and their reception in Turkey. Within a week of the Bardakçı article, Melih Aşık published an article in Milliyet, another mass-circulation Tukish paper, which juxtaposed the attention given by Turkish media to the Einstein letter stressing the lack of awareness of this episode outside of Turkey. This discussion was continued in an article published in yet another large circualtion Turkish daily.
“[In 1933] about 50 scientists, close to 1000 German (Jews) in total, began taking refuge in Turkey. Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk] was in the process of having the ‘University Reform’ implemented. In rebuttal to those who think that ‘all Mustafa Kemal accomplished was of native origin’, the reform was prepared by Swiss Professor Malche. Darülfünun was abolished, along with some of its teachers, and Istanbul University was founded. Refugees such as Neumark, Hirsch, Hinderminth established faculties and made laws. They trained great numbers of good students. This was ‘a wonderful country where the Western plague of fascism had not penetrated’.” [39]
The History and Mission statements as posted on the web by the original three Turkish universities document the prevailing national pride in the legacy that was left by the émigré professors. [40]
Concluding remarks
“Professor Dessauer came to Istanbul when the X-Ray Institute of the Faculty of Medicine was moved to the Gureba Hospital and was reestablished there. He was one of the professors who came from Europe, we met him there. He was not a medical doctor; he was a worldwide famous, and esteemed physicist. I worked with him for a while. Especially on Tuesdays, he used to follow the x-ray treatments of cases performed in my clinic. He was closely interested in skin cancer. We benefited from his knowledge very much. Due to early exposures he had wounds on various parts of his body which turned to cancer. He used to have them removed from time to time by means of surgeries. He did not stay long. He received invitations from Europe and he left.”[41]
Dessauer’s colleague, Turkish national, Prof. MD Tevfik Berkman, who worked on deep treatment as part of Dessauer’s team, assessed Dessauer’s studies for Turkey as follows:
“The history of actual radiotherapy in Turkey began with Atatürk’s university reform and the foundations of this history were laid by Friedrich Dessauer. He showed the principles of organization, theoretical, practical and academic studies and created a scientific atmosphere in our country in the field of radiotherapy in a short time. We worked with him for three years in a sense of a family. Our debt of gratitude to him is great.” [42]
Dessauer began to write about philosophy while in Switzerland. His German citizenship was revoked in 1941 as was his “Dr” title. He was granted Swiss citizenship in 1949. Dessauer was invited to manage his former department in Frankfurt University in 1947 but he rejected this offer. He moved to Frankfurt in 1953 where he lectured on the basis of philosophy and on the philosophy of science between the years 1954-60, using the title of Retired Professor. He became so ill in 1960 that he could not get up from his bed. Though he continued to read and talk with people around him about scientific issues until he died in 1963.
Epilogue
Decades later, taking a more detached look at Turkey it is fair to say that while the émigrés’ sojourn in Turkey was definitely an episode, their impact on that country and their legacy is much closer to being an epoch. Significantly, it is so recognized by knowledgable people in Turkey and among the educated in the Turkish Diaspora today. When the émigrés arrived, Turkey had two fledgling universities one having no Faculty of Medicine. It now has over seventy and most offer medical curricula. At least two generations of educated Turks owe their status to the implementation of those reforms and all of Turkey’s population owes its health status to those reforms. Unfortunate as it may be for Turkey its brain-drain has had its impact on medical eduaction and practice in all western countries.
(image) F. Dessauer, the year he came to Turkey (1934) in the courtyard of Şişli Etfal Hospital with T. Berkman and M. Gökmen. [43]
(image) Dessauer and his treatment staff (Photograph courtesy Dr. Seyfettin Kuter archives).
Notes
⊕ This paper is partially based on Arnold Reisman, Turkey’s Modernization: Refugees from Nazism and Atatürk’s Vision. New Academia Publishers, Washington, DC (2006). Many of the quotes, photos and correspondence however are from more recently discovered documents obtained from Istanbul University Personnel Office Archives, The Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives in Albany, New York and from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
1 ) Medreses were considered higher learning institutions where law and canonical jurisprudence were taught in addition to religion. The Republic had inherited no less than 300 medreses. See E. Ihsanoglu, “The Medreses of the Ottoman Empire,” Publication 4055, Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, Manchester, UK (2004).
2) Until that date there were separate religious schools as well as secular ones. However, secular schools included religion in their curriculum as a separate subject. The law not only closed religious schools, but also eliminated the teaching of religion in the secular schools. See O.S.Bahadir and H.A.G. Danisman, “Late Ottoman and Early Republican Science,” in Turkish Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, ed. G.Irzik and G.Guzeldere (Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science, Berlin & New York: Springer, 2005), p. 290.
3) M.O. Williams, “Turkey Goes to School,” The National Geographic Magazine, January (1929), pp. 94-108 offers 17 photos and an essay depicting the process of implementing the legislation.
4) Anonymous, Yozgat Newspaper, No. 603, (city weekly printed on Wednesdays) August 2, 1933, No. 603.
5) Ibid.
6) Ilhan Elmaci, “Dr. Rudolph Nissen” Journal of Neurological Sciences (Turkish), NOROL BIL D 18: 4, 2001, http://www.med.ege.edu.tr/norolbil/2001/ NBD17901.html.
7) Norman Bentwich: The Rescue and Achievement of Refugee Scholars: The Story of Displaced Scholars and Scientists, 1933-1952, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1953.
8) It is impossible not to remember that Bayazıt II had invited all the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 to come and settle in the realm of the Ottomans. Reputedly he had said: “Let’s bring them here; Spain’s loss is our gain.” . Viewed Nov. 9, 2005.
9) The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles held strategic importance. So did an uninterrupted supply of chromium and other scarce materials needed by Germany’s munition factories.
10) F. Neumark, Zuflucht am Bosphorus: Deutsche Gelehrte, Politiker und Künstler in der Emigration 1933-1953 [Escape to Bosphorus: German scholars, politicians, and artists in exile 1933-1953], Frankfurt: Knecht, 1995: p. 13, noted that three revolutions came together to make the 1933 “miracle” happen in Turkey: Russian in 1905, Turkish in 1923, and Nazi in 1933.
11) On September 26 1933, Lorrin A. Shepard M.D. Director of the American Hospital of Istanbul wrote to R. A. Lambert at the Rockefeller Foundation European Office: In order to have an effective reorganization however it was necessary to abolish the old University because according to law all the professors held office for life. With the abolition of the University the old Arabic name “Dar-ülfünun” has also been abolished. (emphasis added) Rockefeller Archives Center.
12) Of the 190 who found their way to Turkey a small number came from Austria after the 1938 Anschluss, and one each came from Czechoslovakia and France.
13) See A. Reisman “Turkey’s Invitations to Nazi Persecuted Intellectuals Circa 1933: A Bibliographic Essay on History’s Blind Spot.” Working paper, 2007. Available on request from its author.
14) A. Kazancıgil, A., I. Ortaylı, and U. Tanyeli, “Türkiyenin Yabancıları,” Cogito, Istanbul:Yapı Kredi Yayınları, Üç Aylık Düşünce Dergisi, Sayı:23, 2000, pp. 119-132.
15) See Reisman (2006) op cit.
16) N. Bilge, History of Radiotherapy in Turkey. International Journal of of Radiation Oncology and Biologic Physics, 35(5) pp 1069-1072. (1996).
17) Some of Uhlmann’s publications at the time of his invitation to Turkey are shown below. [Uhlmann specified only the titles of the articles in the publication list he submitted to Istanbul University. He did not specify in what periodical the articles were published.] “Soll man in der Röntgenoberflächentherapie filtern oder nicht” (1928), “Über die sogenannten Grenzstrahlen”(1928), “Histologische Untersuchungen über die Wirkung der Grenzstrahlen auf die Haut” (1929), “Über die Abhängigkeit der Pigmentbildung von der Wellenlaenge der Strahlung” (1929), Indikationen und Methodik der Strahlenbehandlung bei Hautkrankheiten. Verlag Georg Stilke 1930, “Zur Behandlung der Röntgenspätschäden” (1930), “Über die Möglichkeit der Vermeidung von Strahlenschäden der Haut” (1930), Wesen und Bedeutung von Grenzstranlen” (1931).
18) F. Dessauer, 1936: 389-396.
19) Ibid.
20) Ibid.
21) Ibid.
22) T. Berkman Atatürk’ün Yüzüncü Doğum Yılında Türkiye’de Radyoterapi Tarihine Genel Bakış (1933-1982). Istanbul 1982, p. 37.
23) F. Dessauer, F Auszug des Geistes, (Hrsg. Radio Bremen) Bremer Beiträge Bd. 4 (Hrsg. Lutz Bresch) 1962, p. 101.
24) Seyfettin Kuter’s Archive.
25) Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics on Dessauer, Friedrich.
26) The Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums or the Reestablishment of the Civil Service Law.
27) C. Kleinholz-Boerner, Friedrich Dessauer 1881-1963. Bibliographie eines nichtärztlichen Röntgenpioniers. Inaugural Dissertation aus dem Institut für Geschichte der Medizin der Freien Universität Berlin, 1968, pp. 7-21.
28) There are other examples. In 1933 the Nazis had taken Public Health Dentist Alfred Kantorowicz “into ‘Protective Custody’ and had kept him for four months in the prison at Bonn. He was then transferred to the Gestapo, S.A., and S.S. run Boergermoor hard labor concentration camp near Papenburg. There he spent another four months after which he was transferred to the concentration camp for prominent socialists, Jews, and intellectuals in Lichtenburg.” A. Reisman, Turkey’s Modernization: Refugees from Nazism and Atatürk’s Vision. New Academia Publishers, Washington DC. (2006) p 167.
29) Courtesy Albert Einstein Archives, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Document 49 476-1 and 2.
30) At the time Harvard University had very strong ties with Nazified Germasn universities under the leadership of its president James Bryant Conant. Reisman (2006) op.cit. p. 515-516. Also, A. Reisman, “Harvard University’s Tercentenary celebrations and Albert Einstein: 1936.” Working Paper (2007).
31) Courtesy Albert Einstein Archives, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Document 49 477.
32) See Reisman (2006) op. cit.: pp 208-209. Also see Namal, A. and Reisman A. (2007) They Introduced Modern Radiology into Turkey: Refugees from Nazism 1933-1945, Working paper.
33) R. Nissen, Helle Blätter-Dunkle Blätter. Stuttgart 1969, pp. 215-216.
34) The first sentence of the letter states “despite the fact that he is 59 years old” indicating a sensitivity on the part of Johnson in having to state that fact up front. For additional evidence on the matter of age discrimination see Reisman, Turkey’s Modernization: Refugees from Nazism and Atatürk’s Vision. p. 316-317.
35) Reiner Möckelmann, Discussionsabend im Generalkonsulat am 06.08.2006 zum Thema Exil und Gesundheitswesen: Deustche Mediziner in der Türkei ab 1933. Generalkonsulat der Bundesrepublik Deutchland in Istanbul.
36) See A. Reisman, “What a Freshly Discovered Einstein Letter Says About Turkey Today” HNN, http://hnn.us/articles/31946.html, posted November 27, 2006. For a clearer image of the letter see http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2006/11/ 1243-what-freshly-discovered-einstein.html. Also see: A. Reisman “Saving German Intellectuals: Albert Einstein’s 1933 Attempt to Influence Turkey’s Prime Minister” Forthcoming in History News Network.
37) Loose kımono-lıke garment worn by Moslem clerics for prayer.
38) See M. Bardakçı “A Request From the Great Genius to the Young Republıc.”Hürriyet, October 29, 2006.
39) U. Talu, “On University Reform” Sabah Newspaper, October 30, 2006.
40) Reisman (2006) op. cit.: 471-473.
41) A. R. Altogan, Deontology and History of Medicine, University professors archives, Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul University, 13.1.1956.
42) T. Berkman, Atatürk’ün Yüzüncü Doğum Yılında Türkiye’de Radyoterapi Tarihine Genel Bakış (1933-1982). Istanbul 1982: p. 38.
43) T. Berkman, Engelli-Engebeli Uzun yollar. Bir Hayat Anıları 1900-1987.Selar Ofset, Istanbul 1988: p. 155
The author’s preliminary thoughts
“Science and Technology Studies: From Ontology to Epistemology and Vice Versa” is the first Russian course on STS and it is now being prepared in order to start in the first term of 2007-2008.
The following text is written for the rubric of “Journal of Course Design” on the course web site I am running under the Central European University Course Portfolio Project. On this web site one can find an extended syllabus of the course, preliminary plans of seminars, the course bibliography and other appropriate materials (http://www.cfkeep.org/ html/snapshot.php?id=38931006043154). In offering this text for EASST review I seek to enlarge the circle of my possible readers so as to elicit critical response and advice from STS colleagues that might help me to correct the course. I really feel myself a bit lonely with my STS course in Russia where STS has not yet been established as a specific field and where a critical reflection on STS is nearly absent.
How I have come to be teaching a course on philosophy of STS.
To answer this question I probably, should retell my life – from kindergarten (where my first acquaintance with science and technology came about, and where the nurses often used to say each other: Don’t you think that this little girl will teach something like an STS course in future? …– Mmm, yes, it seems so …) through the school years (when I hated sciences to such an extent that I hardly dragged myself through school completion) and the university years (when I suddenly became interested in all sorts of sciences, and especially in philosophy) up to my present job which is teaching and learning…. It would be a long story and so, to save time I will dwell only on the most crucial points.
My dissertation (PhD; 2000) was dedicated to phenomenology and, more precisely, to phenomenological perspectives on science and technology. Thus, I read Husserl and Heidegger who were not very optimistic about science and technology and, for the second part of my thesis, I read American “phenomenologists” who were much more optimistic about science and technology but could hardly be considered as “phenomenologists” in the initial sense of the term. This mess at first made me quite disoriented but later disposed me to a critical perspective and strengthened me in the thought that philosophy played with words like a juggler did with balls. But then what do words refer to? It was probably at this point that I began to think about the problem of realism and truth.
Trying to resolve the contradiction between phenomenology and love of science and technology I sent an e-mail to Professor Don Ihde – an American phenomenologist and a philosopher of technology – and in the course of exciting consultations with him I heard about STS for the first time (many thanks to Professor Ihde!). By the way, the contradiction remained unresolved, but it stopped troubling me for some reason and I moved on.
When, after my defense, I left the quicksands of phenomenology I set foot on the rippled surface of science and technology studies having a secret hope to learn how words referred to things and whether it was true that all knowledge was nothing but a social construction (this truth too being a case in point). Bruno Latour captivated me by promising to keep both words and things (I did not want to part with either of them). While I cut my way through STS materials and the accompanying social constructivist stuff, I realized to my surprise that “things” were often used as reference points for models that would explain where our “constructions” came from. The so-called “practical turn” of contemporary thought meant that we considered our “constructions” as originating in our operations with “things”, regardless whether these are “natural” or “artefactual” ones. But what were these “things”? If they were, again, only our “perceptions” of “things”, then we remained within the limits of an epistemological circle and the reference to “things” was superfluous. If they were more than “only perceptions”, then we reverted back to an objectivistic ontology and, thus, ruined a constructivist stance. However, when considered more deeply this hard contradiction turned out to be not so hard. This very constructivist “neglect of things” originated from the definite attitude toward “things” that was nothing but a metaphysical attitude. Yes, it was, rather, negative, nihilistic, metaphysics denying “things” their own goals but, nevertheless, this attitude was obviously extra-empirical. Thus, I got a strange outcome: the prohibition on metaphysics in European thought resulted from certain metaphysical premises which could never be revised simply because metaphysics was prohibited. Really, philosophy is full of strangenesses; stand firm all those who study philosophy!
So, my attention shifted from the “objectivist-constructivist conflict” to the conflict between two ontologies, one of which disconnected the truth from subjectivity while another one joined them opening the way to save both “things” and “words”. I found the latter kind of ontology in the texts of great ancient dialecticians from Plato to Proclus as well as in the Russian philosophical tradition that inherited the holistic outlook from antiquity via the Alexandrinian school and Orthodox theology. As for the modern Western philosophy – it had too long persisted in its opinion that, as Whitehead regretted to notice, studying “how we know” was much more important than studying “what we know”. The trajectories of critical thought resulting in social constructivism had showed that a negative metaphysics about “things” gave birth to a monstrous positive metaphysics about “culture” and “society”. A subject who failed to bear the whole weight of being alone shared it with the same others and turned into a “collective subject”, which nevertheless failed to save the situation. References to “things” more and more often appear in the social constructivist texts marking what I call “an ontological turn” which, it seems, has come into being in the depths of “practical turn”.
But as long as I cast away the “objectivist-constructivist” opposition I have not seen here a return of social constructivists to “naïve objectivism’ along with the loss of constructivist main points. I have seen a hint at the kind of ontology which gives the way “to know both an archetype and a demiurgic art” (using Proclus’ words). And although I could find next to nothing about dialectics in this stuff – poor term, it has become too cluttered with irritant connotations! – I have found a lot of references to so called “relational ontologies” which counterbalance “ontology of subject” with “ontology of things”.
As far as ontology starts with “objects” and relational ontology does the same I become interested in the question: What is this new type of objectivity born by relational ontology, or what is now a “thing” which has got back the belongings negative metaphysics took away from it? And so, I decided to trace a philosophical (first of all, ontological) basis of science and technology studies to try to answer this question. The choice of STS is by no means accidental. Firstly, STS has been formed (in its present-day, of course, not final contours) on the very peak of a constructivist wave, when coming up to the extreme point with its neglect of “things” it could see the whole depth of “thingsless” absurdity. The reaction was to save both “things” and constructivist perspective, which I would treat as the core feature of STS. Secondly, caring for science and technology STS deals with “objects”/”things” as well as with the processes of their technosciencific creation that, by definition, puts them in between “natural” and “human” components of the world. And here it is also important that contemporary natural philosophy (ontology) that is attached to contemporary natural sciences translates the image of “thing” which is quite different from “things” that forced Kant to invent his critical paradigm. All of this makes STS a unique place where, probably, (who knows!) a “new objectivity” will grow.
So, I have planned the course on philosophy of STS and subtitled it “From ontology to epistemology and vice versa” in order to stress a present-day convergence of ‘explanatory’ and ‘hermeneutical’ models of knowledge that underlines a possible synthesis of natural and human sciences. And since teaching is always at the same time self-learning I hope that in the course of my STS course I will reach myself the better understanding of what relational ontologies and a “new objectivity” may be.
Structuring the course
When I was planning my STS course, besides the difficulties that referred to its essential topics I faced with some of the other-order problems. Since 1999 I traveled abroad to participate at STS seminars and conferences; in 2002-2003 I worked as a Research fellow at IAS-STS in Graz, Austria and, thus, I was often surrounded with people who were doing STS, adopted and used their vocabulary. But each time I returned to Russia I found an “STS vacuum”. No relevant texts, no books, no translations and a perplexity at best. It seemed that the Russian reception/criticism of postpositivist stuff had stopped at the line of sociology of scientific knowledge and the strong programme’s issues. In spite of (or owing to?) the very solid Russian philosophical school and in spite of the very strong Russian philosophers who tackled and explored the problems of sociology of science and postpositivist epistemology, STS-specific strategies remained nearly unnoticed. Step by step, very slowly, the situation started changing but even now STS has not yet been marked as a special field. Actually, in Russia my course will be the first teaching course dedicated directly to STS.
This imposes some additional terms upon me. Before discussing the STS ontological issues I have to “introduce” this trend to my audience, to tell about its pre-history and the various traditions that forewent it, to draw its present-day contours, to outline a “canon” of STS (as A. Pickering put it), to survey the STS network and so on. That is why I decided that my course would consist of two parts – preliminary and main ones. The first one will introduce STS and acquaint students with its history whereas the second one will be devoted to the theoretical (philosophical) aspects of STS current practices. And the crucial point is that this structure must reflect the meta-goal of my course – tracing an inter-relation between ontology and epistemology. Therefore, I have built up the syllabus in the following way:
When I teach the first part of my course I try to present all the historical material as referred to the two great modern “traditions” – “ontology of nature” (natural sciences and metaphysics) and “ontology of culture” (social sciences and critical theories) – tracing their paths up to “nature-culture ontology” of the XXth century (philosophies of process, complexity and system theories). I consider (of course, briefly enough as it is appropriate to the propedeutic part) “history of science”, “philosophy of science”, “sociology of science” and “philosophy of technology” as the predecessors of STS and try to inscribe my historical sketch in the context of “nature-culture division”. When teaching the second, “contemporary”, part I dwell on contemporary STS issues/practices and their ontological, epistemological, and methodological dimensions, reserving a special space for the STS reading of scientific experiment, the place where technologies, people, ideas, and things meet. Here I accentuate relational ontologies and the “mixed objects” that they entail. I do understand the difficulties this multilayered program poses for me. However, if one does not make an attempt, he/she fails automatically. At least I will try. Another trap which threatens me lies in the very idea of doing philosophy of a subject (or investigatory practices) that is quite suspicious of philosophical generalizations and opposes “case study” method to them. But here S. Fuller invigorates me when he says in his new book The Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies (Routledge, 2006; p. ix): “philosophy’s most astute and potent allies are often found outside the discipline”. I agree with him and the more so that I am convinced of a ubiquity of ontology which gleams even where it has been refused, and, therefore, I believe, philosophy always finds work.
Preparing the course
Last winter I finished the program of the course and applied with it to the Faculty’s academic council. I did not encounter any problems with acceptance of the program in my Faculty’s curriculum. The only thing was a gentle recommendation to change the title of the course replacing “Science and Technology Studies” with “Postpositivist Approaches to Science and Technology” or something like this. The point is that, as I have already written, STS does not figure as a special trend in Russian scholarly standards, besides which, when translated into Russian “science and technology studies’ sounds a bit heavy and not quite discipline-like. But since an introduction of STS as STS was my important point, I maintained the title. As for the rest – the program received approval and support from the Dean of Faculty, the Head of my Department, the colleagues who got acquainted with it and the course was planned for the first term 2007-2008. I am very much grateful to my Faculty which, along with “classical” philosophical education, encourages an advancement of courses covering current developments in Western social sciences.
At the same time I applied with my syllabus to the Central European University Course Development Competition Program (CDC), which supports faculty’s innovative courses at their home universities … and I won the grant! Due to this grant I could provide myself with material resources for the course, first of all with a great amount of relevant books that had been entirely absent in Russia. Now I have at my faculty quite a library for STS literature — the only one of its kind in Russia!
My teaching method is based on lectures (14) and seminars (7). Seminars are an essential part of the course because they are expected to be discussions of basic texts on philosophy of science, sociology of science, history of science, science and technology studies. Students are expected to read the required texts and present papers on their crucial problems. This means that I have (and that is what I am doing now) to select relevant texts and themes for discussion, to produce the course reader and to choose among the very “hot” STS controversies for the seminars disputes.
My other strong concern is my future audience. The course is of the advanced-level and planned for the four-year philosophy students – about 20 in number. The course is optional (one of three) and so, I will get just a part of all students. How many students and of which sort will come to learn of STS, whose very name sounds alien? To complicate matters further, I have never taught anything for exactly these students before and we little know each other. I have written a brief announcement of the course and sent it to my potential audience. In September we shall see what happens…
Course Portfolio Project
When got the CEU grant I was offered to participate at the CDC subprogram – the so called Course Portfolio Project the goal of which is making the work of teaching visible. The project supposes a creation and running the web site of the course for a monitoring of the course from its underlying motives to final results. I agreed on this project because I thought that it would be a nice opportunity to question my intentions, ideas and teaching philosophy again and eventually to analyze my possible successes and failures. This too is a reason why I am writing this now.
Olga Stoliarova is Assistant Professor, State University – Higher School of Economics, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Ontology, Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Moscow, Russia, olgprin hotmail.com.
Book Review: Qualitative Inquiry and the Conservative Challenge. Edited by Norman K. Denzin and Michael D. Giardina.
“Why did science stray from the path of truth? I think it is because we ceased educating the men of science with a knowledge of religion - a knowledge, that is, of genuine truth, genuine reason, and the relationship of man to creation, and his Creator.” (www.BlogsforBush.com)
Is there politics in method? Can we say something useful about our choices of methods in science and what we want our research to be? This book is an attempt to do just that, essentially to fight for the right to do research in ways its authors regards to be - if not per se always the truest or the always best - doubtlessly ways that are needed. This is in other words probably one of the most frustrated and angry method books you will ever read. The text is ablaze with frustration — frustration over never gaining the status that quantitative science enjoys; frustration over lousy use of numbers in the name of science; frustration over governments that are restricting science through administration, in the name of quality control. The title also promises a discussion of the connection between this restricting of science on the one hand, and conservative politics on the other, however this is more or less left to the reader to figure out. We are reminded of the co-existence of a government that to very little degree accepts other truths than its own. We are also thoroughly introduced to an administration that accepts very little other science than randomized experimental designs or similar kinds of lab-like tests. But the logic of the connection, the mechanism, is not offered explicitly. That would probably also have been contradictory, when the point made is to defend qualitative inquiry against the pressure for production of absolute and robust facts. This again shows how difficult and important this book is; a qualitative inquirer would have to worry that this could turn into an attempt to “guard the castle” (Ryan and Hood, ibid). Part 1 consists of seven articles that in seven different ways emphasise two things: 1. Governments in US, UK and Australia are narrowing down science to a narrow spectrum of testing procedures 2. Qualitative methods are essential to science, in a number of different ways and reasons. We are case-wise introduced to the world of abbreviations that is activated in attempts to control what kind of science should be classified good science and funded thereafter. The American ‘Scientifically Based Research’ (SBR) and its derivate guidelines SIE (‘Scientific Inquiry in Education’), The British ‘Research Assessment Exercise’ (RAE) and the Australian ‘Research Quality Framework’ (RQF), all of which are shown as more or less based on the assumption that since medical research is successful, and randomized experimental designs are used and appreciated in medical science, this should be the blueprint for all good research. Many administrative regulations and institutions that the authors introduce us to, are activated to make sure this happens.
The justification for this harsh demand is encountered in different ways. House (ibid.) names it methodological fundamentalism, and compares basic definitions of fundamentalism with a belief in One true science (and One true conservative ideology). Lather (ibid.) offers alternative discourses of knowing to that of evidence-based research, and argues for their use. Morse (ibid) notes that “The compendium of signs and symptoms […] was dependant on observations and descriptions. This continues, particularly in the identification of new diseases,[…]. New medical procedures are documented using case study design, […]. But pointing out such obvious inconsistencies is not enough. This basic research (and I use the term deliberately) is not adequate for our critics – they need to see the numbers!” (p. 85), and follows by using ideas from qualitative method to suggest expanded types of evidence. And so on. In short, this part could, for a different audience, be titled: “Eat Shit. Why and How. A Guide to Overcoming SBR-Fanatics.”
Parts 2 and 3 might therefore be somewhat puzzling, because here we find some quite critical accounts of mainstream qualitative inquiry as well. Part 2, “Decolonizing Methodologies”, is on Otherness in science, and how science has been, and often still is, a colonizing instrument of western male culture. Part 3 “Contesting Regulation”, is both in its poetical form and its content – a consistent reluctance to accept formalization and framework as anything more than just that, and therefore potentially (and likely) representative of (white male) power – an homage to non-regulated academic thought as a road to emancipation and justice.
These are critical over mainstream (malestream – whitestream) qualitative inquiry. When other, more natural-science-like forms of inquiry are not an issue, one may suggest this is because they are so far from the position taken in the debate that they are a useless opponent. Inside qualitative inquiry this language exists, and therefore this critique can also serve as testimony of the strength and the scope of wavelengths in science – not SBR, SIE, RQF and so on, but the scientific community as a whole. Furthermore, they are implicit arguments in themselves. Not all standardized and evidence-based research is necessarily colonialist; it may be quite the opposite, as Ted Porter notes in Trust in Numbers (1995). Not everybody will agree that centrally regulated research is per se repressive. Still, there may often be reason to suspect it, and these chapters give wise input on what that means and why and how it should be avoided.
It is quite a coincidence that the last book review here in EASST review (July 07) was of Lehoux’ “The problem of health technology”, a book that attempts to ”develop an alternative conceptualization of health technology as it is used in industrial health care systems,” and asks: “[H]ow and when do we know that a given innovation is better?” Lehoux’s answer: Through explicitness, articulation, transparency and objectivity. These are the kinds of words that Giardina and Denzin want their readers to contest. What is explicit, what is objective and what does it mean to be transparent? This question is not answered, but is refreshingly left for the reader consider.