NEW: dkplus goes marathon! Four members of the DK-plus program ran the 29. Vienna City Marathon on Sunday 15 April 2012 in a relay team (
check out!).
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And don't forget our 
Colloquium Schedule (Summer Term 2012)
Mission Statement
This DK-plus program funded by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) combines historical, philosophical and cultural studies of the sciences in international and transnational context and brings together the natural sciences and mathematics with the humanities in a common, focused curriculum. The aim of the program is the development and coordinated discussion of research in history, philosophy and cultural studies of the sciences, as well as the acquisition of skills needed for later professional success.
The program builds upon the Initiativkolleg entitled “The Sciences in Historical Context”, which was funded internally by the University of Vienna from 2006 to 2010. Faculty members come from History, Philosophy, Physics, Life Sciences, and Mathematics. Central features of the program are: a structured curriculum including intensive conceptual and research seminars; interdisciplinary discussion and academic guidance in the weekly Colloquium; one semester of required study or research visits outside Austria; and, most importantly, joint supervision of dissertations by a historian or philosopher and a natural scientist or mathematician, so far as this is feasible.
Featured Project
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Pictures of the soul machine: Psychomechanics as an aestheticized social utopia
Martin WieserRising at the interception point of western science, technology and culture history, academic psychology bound itself repeatedly to a “thought style” (Fleck) which here is referred to as Psychomechanic. It is characterized by a transparent and controllable machine-model of the mind, which changed its terminology and delineation synchronously to the technological turnovers in the 19th and 20th century. The technological Innovations of the steam engine, the photo-, tele- and holograph and the rise of electronical and computer devices gave decisive impulses for the dominant metaphors for the measurement of mental acts and processes in the theory of western psychology.
The psychological pictures, models and diagrams of the mind reflect the history of the industrialized western society, the desire for a machine-supported subjugation of nature, in which a techno-political utopia of a controllable and governable man-machine can be detected as a decisive factor for the repeated success of the Psychomechanic. Analysing the entanglement of scientific social disciplinarization and mastery of nature, this project aims to expose the political implications of the diagrammatically visualized machine-metaphors of the mind. The mechanical image of the mind always structures spheres of activity and normativity, in this respect this project can be centered to around the questions: Which psycho-logical normativities are operated (and set as evident) by the Psychomechanic and which political imperatives are attended to by the metaphor of the soul machine?
Upcoming Events
The Colloquium started March 14th with a lecture from Jan Surman (University of Vienna). Guests of the DK Plus Colloquium in the new semester will include Britta-Marie Schenk (Universität Hamburg), James Robert Brown (University of Toronto), Sybilla Nikolow (Universität Bielefeld), John Krige (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta), Michael Gordin (Princeton University) and others.
"The Sciences in Historical, Philosophical and Cultural Contexts"
Institut für Geschichte
Maria-Theresien-Straße 3/27
1090 Vienna