The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin was established in March 1994. Its research is primarily devoted to a theoretically oriented history of science, principally of the natural sciences, but with methodological perspectives drawn from the cognitive sciences and from cultural history. All three departments of the Institute aim at the construction of a 'historical epistemology' of the sciences.
Historical epistemology deals with the historical development of knowledge and the technical, social, intellectual, and cultural processes surrounding the acquisition of knowledge in context. Building upon detailed studies from the history of particular sciences, historical epistemology investigates the emergence and evolution of key concepts such as 'number', 'force', 'motion', 'gene', 'organism', and 'field', as well as central categories and practices like 'representation', 'probability', 'causality', 'experiment', 'deduction', 'determinism', and 'objectivity'. The combination of highly specific historical inquiries within this more global framework of inquiry permits comparisons and generalizations spanning numerous disciplines.
The institute is affiliated with the Max Planck Society and is located in the Berlin neighborhood of Dahlem.
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—Arnold Phillips, Max Nosseck (1902–1972)
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—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)