Project Epistemology Production of Knowledge between Contingency and Disposition using the example of Collaborative Research

• Applicant: Thomas Krämer
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: Funded in 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 423225684

The study draws up a methodological synopsis of concepts from Science Studies and New Materialism, in order to conceptualize collaborative research as an own field of research using the example of three cardiovascular Collaborative Research Centres (CRC) in Düsseldorf between 1968 and 2012 - among others with authors like Bachelard/Heidegger, Canguilhem, Latour, Rheinberger, Keating/Cambrosio. Along the lines of tension between institutional and methodological platforms (dispositions) and unpredictable results during the conduction of the CRCs (contingencies), the first chapter establishes a "project epistemology" which assumes that science does not discover but produces mutable drafts. With Bachelard, scientific projects are understood as dynamic intermediate spaces between the researching subject and the knowledge object to be produced in the research process, together with its instrumental-pictorial representations. With Latour translation chains are conveyed from the matter of the organism to the form of inscriptions in the life sciences. Epistemic things and technical objects in experimental systems (Rheinberger) are identified with CRCspecific experimental contingencies and institutional dispositions. The presentation of institutional history and clinical research at the Düsseldorf site is based on the platform concept of Keating/Cambrosio. In the second chapter, the local dispositions of the scientific and medical history of the hospital are clarified, which allowed to set up the first cardiovascular CRC 30 (1968-1985) in Düsseldorf. The analysis of the archive documents of the CRC 30 shows the historical-contingent initiation phase of the CRC funding program, the resonances between the optimization of the DFG Rules of Procedure and the development of cooperation structures as well as the research program of the CRC 30. Based on the presentation of the methodological spectrum of experimental cardiology, the second chapter concludes with the characterization of "translational gaps" - i.e. physiological incomparabilities between animal models and the clinical situation in humans. As a result, cardiovascular collaborative research focuses on the oscillation between holistic pathophysiological perspectives of clinicians and the reductive molecular biology perspectives of natural scientists: a CRC must translate these perspectives into a common problem horizon and bring them into synopsis for further research applications. DFG-Vordojck 54.011 - 03/18 Seite 4 von 8 Whether the laboratory mouse has the potential to close these translational gaps and act as a bridge between laboratory and clinic is answered in the third chapter. The study focuses on the transgenic mouse models used in CRC 612 (2002-2012). As hybrids between epistemic things and technical objects, the mice display their own possibilities due to their experimental materiality and resistance and change the understanding of normal and pathological of the CRC researchers.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants