Jan Surman
Biographic Data
| ID | 1050659 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jan Surman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jan |
| FAMILY NAME | Surman |
| SIGNATURE | SURMAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Czech Academy of Sciences, Masaryk Institute and Archives |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1499-3122 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Quest for the Language of Socialist Modernisation
This article examines the development and transformation of Ukrainian scientific terminology during the early 20th century, particularly under Soviet rule. It traces the roots of terminological efforts in the 19th century, when language planning in Galicia and Ukraine reflected competing imperial influences and nationalist aspirations. The study underscores the nexus of cultural, political and epistemic interests in the shaping of scientific lang…
The Formal and the Informal in the History of Socialist Scholarly Interconnectedness in East Central Europe
Between Westernization and Traditionalism
2021 saw the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and there is a growing interest in the historicization of the past 30 years of transformation. Taking this anniversary as a point of departure, we want to look into a specific area that has markedly changed in the last three decades – the scholarly community. The interest of analysing the academia in a period of transformation is not new, and the 1990s are amply covered by th…
Imperial Science in Central and Eastern Europe
The history of imperial science has been a growing topic over recent decades. Overviews of the imperial history of science have rarely included the Russian, Habsburg, and German empires. The history of Central and Eastern Europe has embraced empire as an analytical and critical category only recently, having previously pursued national historiographies and romanticised versions of imperial pasts. This article highlights several key narratives of …
Julian Ochorowicz's experiments with Eusapia Palladino 1894
Julian Ochorowicz (1850-1917) belonged to the first generation of psychologists who regarded this discipline as a scientific, positive endeavor. At the same time, he was a representative of psychic sciences, following a strictly positivist attitude to researching psychic phenomena. This article discusses the key event of his career, experiments with the famous medium Eusapia Palladino, in Warsaw, between late 1893 and early 1894. Ochorowicz's séa…
New dissidence in contemporary Russia
The essay is devoted to the specifics of the contemporary Russian opposition and civil society. We describe the characteristics of contemporary ‘intellectual activism’ and the growing network of small civil and political groups in today’s Russia. We show that Russian civil society remains fragile and fragmented; the public discussion is not focused on strategies of resistance to arbitrariness but on constructing moral categories such as the wide …
Introduction
What sounds like a laborious set up for a shallow joke actually hits the core of the problem this issue covers: What do the leading archaeologist of the former German Democratic Republic in re-unifying Germany, Bulgarian scientists in the late 1960s and some recent discussions about representations of Polish ancient history have in common? They all operate along fractures in the crust of scientific authority, they mark moments in time when classi…
Translation in Knowledge, Knowledge in Translation
Debate on Pieter M. Judson’s The Habsburg Empire
Since its publication, Pieter M. Judson’s history of the Habsburg Empire: A New History has sparked discussion and debate as a result of its novel reframing of the relationship between nationalism and empire in the Central European polity. Judson offers a new narrative of a vibrant and adaptive state that had the ability to balance empire and nationality, and thus was not doomed to fail, as has been one of the well-worn interpretations of the emp…
Science and Terminology in-between Empires
Ukrainian science and its terminology in the nineteenth century experienced a number of twists and turns. Divided between two empires, it lacked institutions, scholars pursuing it, and a unified literary language. One could even say that until the late nineteenth century there was a possibility for two communities with two literary languages to emerge - Ruthenian (Habsburg Empire) and Ukrainian (Russian Empire). Eventually, both communities and l…
The Worlds of Positivism
This book is the first to trace the origins and significance of positivism on a global scale. Taking their cues from Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, positivists pioneered a universal, experience-based culture of scientific inquiry for studying nature and society?a new science that would enlighten all of humankind. Positivists envisaged one world united by science, but their efforts spawned many. Uncovering these worlds of positivism, the volu…
Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918
Combining history of science and a history of universities with the new imperial history, Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space by Jan Surman analyzes the practice of scholarly migration and its lasting influence on the intellectual output in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire.\n\nThe Habsburg Empire and its successor states were home to developments that shaped Central Europe's scholarship wel…
University scandals and the public sphere of Imperial Austria
Between 1907 and 1911, Imperial Austria experienced two major controversies concerning entanglements of science and religion. In 1907, the Innsbruck specialist in church law, Ludwig Wahrmund, publicly criticized the new ‘antimodernist’ and antiscientific trends of Catholic science, causing semester-long protests, fights, university closures and heated parliamentary debates. Antagonized in Innsbruck, Wahrmund relocated to Prague. The controversy t…
Sprachen - Grenzen - Übersetzungen
Poza centrum
Co wyróżnia nauki w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej? Z jakimi problemami konfrontują się historycy nauki piszący o tym regionie? Czy nauka ta różni się od nauki uprawianej w centrach i w jakim zakresie? Jak bardzo imperialna jest nauka reprezentantów nacji dominujących i niedominujących? To tylko niektóre tematy poruszone w rozmowie z Michaelem Gordinem z Princeton University, jednym z wiodących historyków nauki.
Beyond the center
Co wyróżnia nauki w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej? Z jakimi problemami konfrontują się historycy nauki piszący o tym regionie? Czy nauka ta różni się od nauki uprawianej w centrach i w jakim zakresie? Jak bardzo imperialna jest nauka reprezentantów nacji dominujących i niedominujących? To tylko niektóre tematy poruszone w rozmowie z Michaelem Gordinem z Princeton University, jednym z wiodących historyków nauki.
Postkolonialismus
Paris-Wien-St. Petersburg oder Alger-Brno-Charkiv
The exchange of science and knowledge between capital cities has dominated research in recent decades. Imperial provinces have played only a minor role in recent works partly because as independent states, their histories are analyzed by other historians. In this article, I propose an alternative model to conceptualize and describe the contacts between both centers and provinces and between empires. Following ideas of Jurij Lotman, Andreas Kappel…
The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Central Europe
Nomadic concepts in the history of biology
Nomadic Concepts
This article introduces a collection of studies of biological concepts crossing over to other disciplines and nonscholarly discourses. The introduction discusses the notion of nomadic concepts as introduced by Isabelle Stengers and explores its usability for conceptual history. Compared to traveling (Mieke Bal) and interdisciplinary (Ernst Müller) concepts, the idea of nomadism shifts the attention from concepts themselves toward the mobility of …
The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848–1918
Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures The Authors The Nationalisation of Scientific Knowledge in Nineteenth-century Central Europe: An introduction M.G.Ash & J.Surman Science and its Publics. Internationality and National Languages in Central Europe J.Surman 'Staatsnation', 'Kulturnation', 'Nationalstaat'. The Role of National Politics in the Advancement of Science and Scholarship in Austria from 1848 to 1938 J.Feichtinger 'National Agreem…
La Galicie au temps des Habsbourg (1772-1918)
LA GALICIE, territoire annexé par la monarchie autrichienne à la faveur des partages de la Pologne (de 1772 à 1795), fut à la fois une terre de conflits (répression du mouvement national polonais dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle, tensions entre Polonais et Ruthènes ou Ukrainiens à l'époque de l'Empire libéral, antisémitisme, problèmes sociaux liés à la légendaire misère galicienne...) et un microcosme pacifié et « civilisé » par la politiqu…
Nomadic Concepts
This article introduces a collection of studies of biological concepts crossing over to other disciplines and nonscholarly discourses. The introduction discusses the notion of nomadic concepts as introduced by Isabelle Stengers and explores its usability for conceptual history. Compared to traveling (Mieke Bal) and interdisciplinary (Ernst Müller) concepts, the idea of nomadism shifts the attention from concepts themselves toward the mobility of …
La Galicie au temps des Habsbourg (1772-1918)
LA GALICIE, territoire annexé par la monarchie autrichienne à la faveur des partages de la Pologne (de 1772 à 1795), fut à la fois une terre de conflits (répression du mouvement national polonais dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle, tensions entre Polonais et Ruthènes ou Ukrainiens à l'époque de l'Empire libéral, antisémitisme, problèmes sociaux liés à la légendaire misère galicienne...) et un microcosme pacifié et « civilisé » par la politiqu…
The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848–1918
Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures The Authors The Nationalisation of Scientific Knowledge in Nineteenth-century Central Europe: An introduction M.G.Ash & J.Surman Science and its Publics. Internationality and National Languages in Central Europe J.Surman 'Staatsnation', 'Kulturnation', 'Nationalstaat'. The Role of National Politics in the Advancement of Science and Scholarship in Austria from 1848 to 1938 J.Feichtinger 'National Agreem…
The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Central Europe
Nomadic concepts in the history of biology
Nomadic Concepts
This article introduces a collection of studies of biological concepts crossing over to other disciplines and nonscholarly discourses. The introduction discusses the notion of nomadic concepts as introduced by Isabelle Stengers and explores its usability for conceptual history. Compared to traveling (Mieke Bal) and interdisciplinary (Ernst Müller) concepts, the idea of nomadism shifts the attention from concepts themselves toward the mobility of …
Paris-Wien-St. Petersburg oder Alger-Brno-Charkiv
The exchange of science and knowledge between capital cities has dominated research in recent decades. Imperial provinces have played only a minor role in recent works partly because as independent states, their histories are analyzed by other historians. In this article, I propose an alternative model to conceptualize and describe the contacts between both centers and provinces and between empires. Following ideas of Jurij Lotman, Andreas Kappel…
Poza centrum
Co wyróżnia nauki w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej? Z jakimi problemami konfrontują się historycy nauki piszący o tym regionie? Czy nauka ta różni się od nauki uprawianej w centrach i w jakim zakresie? Jak bardzo imperialna jest nauka reprezentantów nacji dominujących i niedominujących? To tylko niektóre tematy poruszone w rozmowie z Michaelem Gordinem z Princeton University, jednym z wiodących historyków nauki.
Beyond the center
Co wyróżnia nauki w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej? Z jakimi problemami konfrontują się historycy nauki piszący o tym regionie? Czy nauka ta różni się od nauki uprawianej w centrach i w jakim zakresie? Jak bardzo imperialna jest nauka reprezentantów nacji dominujących i niedominujących? To tylko niektóre tematy poruszone w rozmowie z Michaelem Gordinem z Princeton University, jednym z wiodących historyków nauki.
Postkolonialismus
Sprachen - Grenzen - Übersetzungen
The Worlds of Positivism
This book is the first to trace the origins and significance of positivism on a global scale. Taking their cues from Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, positivists pioneered a universal, experience-based culture of scientific inquiry for studying nature and society?a new science that would enlighten all of humankind. Positivists envisaged one world united by science, but their efforts spawned many. Uncovering these worlds of positivism, the volu…
Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918
Combining history of science and a history of universities with the new imperial history, Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space by Jan Surman analyzes the practice of scholarly migration and its lasting influence on the intellectual output in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire.\n\nThe Habsburg Empire and its successor states were home to developments that shaped Central Europe's scholarship wel…
University scandals and the public sphere of Imperial Austria
Between 1907 and 1911, Imperial Austria experienced two major controversies concerning entanglements of science and religion. In 1907, the Innsbruck specialist in church law, Ludwig Wahrmund, publicly criticized the new ‘antimodernist’ and antiscientific trends of Catholic science, causing semester-long protests, fights, university closures and heated parliamentary debates. Antagonized in Innsbruck, Wahrmund relocated to Prague. The controversy t…
Debate on Pieter M. Judson’s The Habsburg Empire
Since its publication, Pieter M. Judson’s history of the Habsburg Empire: A New History has sparked discussion and debate as a result of its novel reframing of the relationship between nationalism and empire in the Central European polity. Judson offers a new narrative of a vibrant and adaptive state that had the ability to balance empire and nationality, and thus was not doomed to fail, as has been one of the well-worn interpretations of the emp…
Science and Terminology in-between Empires
Ukrainian science and its terminology in the nineteenth century experienced a number of twists and turns. Divided between two empires, it lacked institutions, scholars pursuing it, and a unified literary language. One could even say that until the late nineteenth century there was a possibility for two communities with two literary languages to emerge - Ruthenian (Habsburg Empire) and Ukrainian (Russian Empire). Eventually, both communities and l…
Translation in Knowledge, Knowledge in Translation
New dissidence in contemporary Russia
The essay is devoted to the specifics of the contemporary Russian opposition and civil society. We describe the characteristics of contemporary ‘intellectual activism’ and the growing network of small civil and political groups in today’s Russia. We show that Russian civil society remains fragile and fragmented; the public discussion is not focused on strategies of resistance to arbitrariness but on constructing moral categories such as the wide …
Introduction
What sounds like a laborious set up for a shallow joke actually hits the core of the problem this issue covers: What do the leading archaeologist of the former German Democratic Republic in re-unifying Germany, Bulgarian scientists in the late 1960s and some recent discussions about representations of Polish ancient history have in common? They all operate along fractures in the crust of scientific authority, they mark moments in time when classi…
Between Westernization and Traditionalism
2021 saw the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and there is a growing interest in the historicization of the past 30 years of transformation. Taking this anniversary as a point of departure, we want to look into a specific area that has markedly changed in the last three decades – the scholarly community. The interest of analysing the academia in a period of transformation is not new, and the 1990s are amply covered by th…
Imperial Science in Central and Eastern Europe
The history of imperial science has been a growing topic over recent decades. Overviews of the imperial history of science have rarely included the Russian, Habsburg, and German empires. The history of Central and Eastern Europe has embraced empire as an analytical and critical category only recently, having previously pursued national historiographies and romanticised versions of imperial pasts. This article highlights several key narratives of …
Julian Ochorowicz's experiments with Eusapia Palladino 1894
Julian Ochorowicz (1850-1917) belonged to the first generation of psychologists who regarded this discipline as a scientific, positive endeavor. At the same time, he was a representative of psychic sciences, following a strictly positivist attitude to researching psychic phenomena. This article discusses the key event of his career, experiments with the famous medium Eusapia Palladino, in Warsaw, between late 1893 and early 1894. Ochorowicz's séa…
The Formal and the Informal in the History of Socialist Scholarly Interconnectedness in East Central Europe
The Quest for the Language of Socialist Modernisation
This article examines the development and transformation of Ukrainian scientific terminology during the early 20th century, particularly under Soviet rule. It traces the roots of terminological efforts in the 19th century, when language planning in Galicia and Ukraine reflected competing imperial influences and nationalist aspirations. The study underscores the nexus of cultural, political and epistemic interests in the shaping of scientific lang…
Political science (18 works) · History (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (8 works) · Central European national history (7 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Ancient history (6 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (6 works)