Henning Schmidgen
Biographic Data
| ID | 281388 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Henning Schmidgen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Henning |
| FAMILY NAME | Schmidgen |
| SIGNATURE | SCHMIDGEN H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bauhaus-Universität Weimar |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9326-6902 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 49 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Planetary Experiment: A History and Theory of Science at Scale
The article introduces and discusses the concept of planetary experimentation, its history, and its implications for understanding the relationship between humans and the environment, highlighting the need for a better understanding of knowledge production in the face of global warming and other human-driven environmental changes. We use a historical approach to understand the development of planetary experimentation, from its early phases to its…
La folie est une forme de vie: À propos de la rencontre entre Tosquelles et Canguilhem
Innovation is a multidimensional concept. It encompasses the introduction of new elements in various fields, ranging from products and processes to organizational and marketing methods. Innovation can be seen as a process, a mindset, a result, or an end goal. It can be radical or incremental, and its value can be perceived differently depending on the aspirations and roles of economic actors. Innovation involves successful implementation and the …
Vitalist Marxism: Georges Canguilhem and the Resistance of Life
Following Hannah Arendt's insights into the affinities between Marxism and the philosophy of life, this article reconstructs a theoretical position that we propose to call 'vitalist Marxism'. This position conceives of life not only as an essential foundation of the production process, but also as a critical resource for resistance to the capitalist logic of exploitation. We highlight the role Georges Canguilhem (1904-95) played in developing thi…
From the Archive to the Computer: Michel Foucault and the Digital Humanities
Michel Foucault famously introduced the method of “discourse analysis” in the humanities, especially in historiography. In his _Archaeology of Knowledge_, originally published in 1969, in particular, Foucault argues for making the history of knowledge the object of discourse analyses. In the context of the current surge of interest in discourse analysis in the field of computer science, however, there are hardly any references to Foucault, partly…
Symmetries of Touch: Reconsidering Tactility in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing
Engaging with the specific ways current media technologies interact with, or directly access the human body, we suggest developing a 'symmetrical' theory of touch. Critically referring to Bruno Latour's invocation of 'symmetrical anthropology', we reconsider tactile agency as 'technological agency', arguing that the concept of touch - traditionally viewed as an exclusively human ability - should be extended to non-human actors and analysed in vie…
Surface Media: McLuhan, the Bauhaus and the Tactile Values of TV
Marshall McLuhan understood television (TV) as a tactile medium. This understanding implied what Bruno Latour might call a 'symmetrical' conception of tactility. According to McLuhan, not only human actors are endowed with the sense of touch. In addition, TV, digital computers and other 'electric media' use light beams and similar scanning techniques for ceaselessly 'caressing the contours' of their surroundings. This notion of tactility was cruc…
Bruno Latour in Pieces: An Intellectual Biography
One. Exegesis and Ethnology
Cybernetic times: Norbert Wiener, John Stroud, and the ‘brain clock’ hypothesis
In 1955, Norbert Wiener suggested a sociological model according to which all forms of culture ultimately depended on the temporal coordination of human activities, in particular their synchronization. The basis for Wiener’s model was provided by his insights into the temporal structures of cerebral processes. This article reconstructs the historical context of Wiener’s ‘brain clock’ hypothesis, largely via his dialogues with John W. Stroud and o…
Grundlagentexte der Medienkultur: Ein Reader
Jean Oury et la conation esthétique. Un parcours entre Sartre, Goldstein et Lacan
Le psychiatre français Jean Oury (1924-2014) est bien connu à la fois comme l’un des principaux promoteurs de la « psychothérapie institutionnelle », comme fondateur et directeur de la clinique psychiatrique de La Borde, et comme un important défenseur de la psychanalyse lacanienne. Cet article se concentre sur la thèse de médecine soutenue par Oury en 1950 à la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, ayant pour objet la créativité artistique. Notre but es…
Successful Paranoia: Friedrich Kittler, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and the History of Science
With studies like Discourse Networks 1800/1900 and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Friedrich A. Kittler contributed significantly to transforming the history of media into a vital field of inquiry. This essay undertakes to more precisely characterize Kittler's historiographical approach. When we look back on his early contributions to studies of the relationship between literature, madness and truth - among others, his doctoral dissertation on the …
Aramis: Oder Die Liebe zur Technik
»Aramis ist eine automatische Metro, die fast im Süden von Paris gebaut worden wäre. Ich habe daraus den Helden eines Dossiers in Szientifiktion gemacht. Alle Abenteuer dieses nicht-menschlichen Helden werden wahrheitsgetreu berichtet. Aber sie erscheinen nie wahrscheinlich, weil wir es nicht gewohnt sind, die Liebe und den Hass einer Spitzentechnologie im Detail zu erforschen. Zum ersten Mal, glaube ich, entfaltet sich vor unseren Augen die Gesc…
Aramis: Oder Die Liebe zur Technik
Aramis, or the Love of Technology
Leviathan and the Myograph: Hermann Helmholtz's "Second Note" on the Propagation Speed of Nervous Stimulations
ArgumentIn the winter of 1849-1850 in Königsberg, German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) conducted pioneering measurements concerning the propagation speed of stimulations in the living nerve. While recent historians of science have paid considerable attention to Helmholtz's uses of the graphic method, in particular his construction of an instrument called "myographion," this paper draws attention to theinscription surfacesthat he …
Cerebral Drawings between Art and Science: On Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Concepts
In What Is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari distinguish the functions of philosophy, art and science. According to this distinction, the primary purpose of philosophy is to invent concepts, the purpose of art to bring forth percepts, or sensorial aggregates, and that of science to delineate functions. This article aims to show that these distinctions are not as clear-cut as they appear. Using Deleuze and Guattari's proposition that …
The life of concepts: Georges Canguilhem and the history of science
Camera Silenta: Time Experiments, Media Networks, and the Experience of Organlessness
In order to communicate with isolated test subjects in physiological and psychological laboratories in the late nineteenth century, scholars such as Wilhelm Wundt, Edward W. Scripture, and Hendrik Zwaardemaker used modern technologies, in particular telegraphy. In a similar vein, Marcel Proust equipped his apartment with a soundproof room and a network of cables and switches in order to conduct his famous “research” on lost time. The combined use…
Rezension: Erkenntnisagenten. Gaston Bachelard und die Reorganisation des Wissens von Monika Wulz
The materiality of things? Bruno Latour, Charles Péguy and the history of science
This article sheds new light on Bruno Latour's sociology of science and technology by looking at his early study of the French writer, philosopher and editor Charles Péguy (1873-1914). In the early 1970s, Latour engaged in a comparative study of Péguy's Clio and the four gospels of the New Testament. His 1973 contribution to a Péguy colloquium (published in 1977) offers rich insights into his interest in questions of time, history, tradition and …
Inside the Black Box: Simondon's Politics of Technology
Inside the Black Box: Simondon's Politics of Technology Henning Schmidgen (bio) In 1923, Paul Valéry created an artificial world of antiquity. In it the sea could wash up things which, because of their brilliance, hardness, and unfamiliar form, interrupted and irritated well-established habits of thought. Nature or art? Given or created? Earthly or heavenly? Eupalinos, the architect, does not find himself in the position to decide. He throws back…
The Spectatorium: On Biology's Audiovisual Archive
April 01 2011 1900—The Spectatorium: On Biology's Audiovisual Archive Henning Schmidgen Henning Schmidgen Henning Schmidgen is a Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He has published on Deleuze, Canguilhem, and the problem of lost time and is co-founder of the Virtual Laboratory (http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Artic…
Passagenwerk 1850. Bild und Zahl in den physiologischen Zeitexperimenten von Hermann von Helmholtz
Arcades Project 1850. Image and Number in the Physiological Time Experiments of Hermann von Helmholtz. In January 1850, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) published a short report about his measurements concerning the propagation speed of “stimulations” in the living nerve. Historians of science such as Frederic Holmes and Kathryn Olesko have reconstructed the “investigative pathway” that led Helmholtz from his initial work on muscle action to the…
Parasiten und Sirenen: Zwischenräume als Orte der materiellen Wissensproduktion
Zwischenräume sind jene Schnittstellen, Intervalle und Abstände, in denen sich elementare Prozesse der Wissensproduktion ansiedeln. Zwischenräume sind eine epistemologische Kategorie für sich. Das gewohnte Bild geordneter Wissenschaftlichkeit schwindet, wenn die Produktion von Wissen auf spezifische materielle Kulturen zurückgeführt wird: auf die Begegnung von Instrumenten, Schreibgeräten und experimentellen Verfahren, aber auch auf das Zusammens…
Physics, Ballistics, and Psychology: A History of the Chronoscope in/as Context, 1845-1890
In Wilhelm Wundt's (1832-1920) Leipzig laboratory and at numerous other research sites, the chronoscope was used to conduct reaction time experiments. The author argues that the history of the chronoscope is the history not of an instrument but of an experimental setup. This setup was initially devised by the English physicist and instrument maker Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) in the early 1840s. Shortly thereafter, it was improved by the German…
General Physiology, Experimental Psychology, and Evolutionism: Unicellular Organisms as Objects of Psychophysiological Research, 1877-1918
This essay aims to shed new light on the relations between physiology and psychology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by focusing on the use of unicellular organisms as research objects during that period. Within the frameworks of evolutionism and monism advocated by Ernst Haeckel, protozoa were perceived as objects situated at the borders between organism and cell and individual and society. Scholars such as Max Verworn, Alfr…
The materiality of things? Bruno Latour, Charles Péguy and the history of science
This article sheds new light on Bruno Latour's sociology of science and technology by looking at his early study of the French writer, philosopher and editor Charles Péguy (1873-1914). In the early 1970s, Latour engaged in a comparative study of Péguy's Clio and the four gospels of the New Testament. His 1973 contribution to a Péguy colloquium (published in 1977) offers rich insights into his interest in questions of time, history, tradition and …
Physics, Ballistics, and Psychology: A History of the Chronoscope in/as Context, 1845-1890
In Wilhelm Wundt's (1832-1920) Leipzig laboratory and at numerous other research sites, the chronoscope was used to conduct reaction time experiments. The author argues that the history of the chronoscope is the history not of an instrument but of an experimental setup. This setup was initially devised by the English physicist and instrument maker Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) in the early 1840s. Shortly thereafter, it was improved by the German…
Cerebral Drawings between Art and Science: On Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Concepts
In What Is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari distinguish the functions of philosophy, art and science. According to this distinction, the primary purpose of philosophy is to invent concepts, the purpose of art to bring forth percepts, or sensorial aggregates, and that of science to delineate functions. This article aims to show that these distinctions are not as clear-cut as they appear. Using Deleuze and Guattari's proposition that …
The life of concepts: Georges Canguilhem and the history of science
Time and noise: The stable surroundings of reaction experiments, 1860–1890
Symmetries of Touch: Reconsidering Tactility in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing
Engaging with the specific ways current media technologies interact with, or directly access the human body, we suggest developing a 'symmetrical' theory of touch. Critically referring to Bruno Latour's invocation of 'symmetrical anthropology', we reconsider tactile agency as 'technological agency', arguing that the concept of touch - traditionally viewed as an exclusively human ability - should be extended to non-human actors and analysed in vie…
Successful Paranoia: Friedrich Kittler, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and the History of Science
With studies like Discourse Networks 1800/1900 and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Friedrich A. Kittler contributed significantly to transforming the history of media into a vital field of inquiry. This essay undertakes to more precisely characterize Kittler's historiographical approach. When we look back on his early contributions to studies of the relationship between literature, madness and truth - among others, his doctoral dissertation on the …
The Donders Machine: Matter, Signs, and Time in a Physiological Experiment, ca. 1865
The Donders Machine:Matter, Signs, and Time in a Physiological Experiment, ca. 1865 Henning Schmidgen (bio) The history of experimentation in physiological and psychological laboratories is a history of machines—of spatially circumscribed and temporally limited installations that connect a vast number of heterogeneous components: partial objects derived from the experimenter and the experimental subject (eyes, hands, voices, etc.), more or less i…
Vitalist Marxism: Georges Canguilhem and the Resistance of Life
Following Hannah Arendt's insights into the affinities between Marxism and the philosophy of life, this article reconstructs a theoretical position that we propose to call 'vitalist Marxism'. This position conceives of life not only as an essential foundation of the production process, but also as a critical resource for resistance to the capitalist logic of exploitation. We highlight the role Georges Canguilhem (1904-95) played in developing thi…
Surface Media: McLuhan, the Bauhaus and the Tactile Values of TV
Marshall McLuhan understood television (TV) as a tactile medium. This understanding implied what Bruno Latour might call a 'symmetrical' conception of tactility. According to McLuhan, not only human actors are endowed with the sense of touch. In addition, TV, digital computers and other 'electric media' use light beams and similar scanning techniques for ceaselessly 'caressing the contours' of their surroundings. This notion of tactility was cruc…
Leviathan and the Myograph: Hermann Helmholtz's "Second Note" on the Propagation Speed of Nervous Stimulations
ArgumentIn the winter of 1849-1850 in Königsberg, German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) conducted pioneering measurements concerning the propagation speed of stimulations in the living nerve. While recent historians of science have paid considerable attention to Helmholtz's uses of the graphic method, in particular his construction of an instrument called "myographion," this paper draws attention to theinscription surfacesthat he …
Camera Silenta: Time Experiments, Media Networks, and the Experience of Organlessness
In order to communicate with isolated test subjects in physiological and psychological laboratories in the late nineteenth century, scholars such as Wilhelm Wundt, Edward W. Scripture, and Hendrik Zwaardemaker used modern technologies, in particular telegraphy. In a similar vein, Marcel Proust equipped his apartment with a soundproof room and a network of cables and switches in order to conduct his famous “research” on lost time. The combined use…
The Spectatorium: On Biology's Audiovisual Archive
April 01 2011 1900—The Spectatorium: On Biology's Audiovisual Archive Henning Schmidgen Henning Schmidgen Henning Schmidgen is a Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He has published on Deleuze, Canguilhem, and the problem of lost time and is co-founder of the Virtual Laboratory (http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Artic…
Aramis: Or the Love of Technology
Das Unbewußte der Maschinen: Konzeptionen des Psychischen bei Guattari, Deleuze und Lacan
General Physiology, Experimental Psychology, and Evolutionism: Unicellular Organisms as Objects of Psychophysiological Research, 1877-1918
This essay aims to shed new light on the relations between physiology and psychology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by focusing on the use of unicellular organisms as research objects during that period. Within the frameworks of evolutionism and monism advocated by Ernst Haeckel, protozoa were perceived as objects situated at the borders between organism and cell and individual and society. Scholars such as Max Verworn, Alfr…
Aramis ou l'amour des techniques
« Aramis est un métro automatique, que l'on a failli construire au Sud de Paris. J'en ai fait le héros d'un dossier de scientifiction. Toutes les aventures de ce héros non humain sont véridiques. Mais elles n'apparaissent jamais vraisemblables, parce que nous ne sommes pas habitués à enquêter en détail sur les amours et les haines des techniques de pointe. Pour la première fois, je crois, l'histoire d'une enquête de sociologie et l'histoire amour…
Time and noise: The stable surroundings of reaction experiments, 1860–1890
The Virtual Laboratory: A new on-line resource for the history of psychology
The authors provide a description of the Virtual Laboratory at Department III of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. The Virtual Laboratory currently provides Internet links to rooms that present texts, instruments, model organisms, research sites, and biographies. Existing links provide access to a library of journals, handbooks, monographs, and trade catalogues; research institutes and laboratories; biographies and bi…
Physics, Ballistics, and Psychology: A History of the Chronoscope in/as Context, 1845-1890
In Wilhelm Wundt's (1832-1920) Leipzig laboratory and at numerous other research sites, the chronoscope was used to conduct reaction time experiments. The author argues that the history of the chronoscope is the history not of an instrument but of an experimental setup. This setup was initially devised by the English physicist and instrument maker Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) in the early 1840s. Shortly thereafter, it was improved by the German…
The Donders Machine: Matter, Signs, and Time in a Physiological Experiment, ca. 1865
The Donders Machine:Matter, Signs, and Time in a Physiological Experiment, ca. 1865 Henning Schmidgen (bio) The history of experimentation in physiological and psychological laboratories is a history of machines—of spatially circumscribed and temporally limited installations that connect a vast number of heterogeneous components: partial objects derived from the experimenter and the experimental subject (eyes, hands, voices, etc.), more or less i…
Parasiten und Sirenen: Zwischenräume als Orte der materiellen Wissensproduktion
Zwischenräume sind jene Schnittstellen, Intervalle und Abstände, in denen sich elementare Prozesse der Wissensproduktion ansiedeln. Zwischenräume sind eine epistemologische Kategorie für sich. Das gewohnte Bild geordneter Wissenschaftlichkeit schwindet, wenn die Produktion von Wissen auf spezifische materielle Kulturen zurückgeführt wird: auf die Begegnung von Instrumenten, Schreibgeräten und experimentellen Verfahren, aber auch auf das Zusammens…
The Spectatorium: On Biology's Audiovisual Archive
April 01 2011 1900—The Spectatorium: On Biology's Audiovisual Archive Henning Schmidgen Henning Schmidgen Henning Schmidgen is a Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He has published on Deleuze, Canguilhem, and the problem of lost time and is co-founder of the Virtual Laboratory (http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Artic…
Passagenwerk 1850. Bild und Zahl in den physiologischen Zeitexperimenten von Hermann von Helmholtz
Arcades Project 1850. Image and Number in the Physiological Time Experiments of Hermann von Helmholtz. In January 1850, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) published a short report about his measurements concerning the propagation speed of “stimulations” in the living nerve. Historians of science such as Frederic Holmes and Kathryn Olesko have reconstructed the “investigative pathway” that led Helmholtz from his initial work on muscle action to the…
Rezension: Erkenntnisagenten. Gaston Bachelard und die Reorganisation des Wissens von Monika Wulz
The materiality of things? Bruno Latour, Charles Péguy and the history of science
This article sheds new light on Bruno Latour's sociology of science and technology by looking at his early study of the French writer, philosopher and editor Charles Péguy (1873-1914). In the early 1970s, Latour engaged in a comparative study of Péguy's Clio and the four gospels of the New Testament. His 1973 contribution to a Péguy colloquium (published in 1977) offers rich insights into his interest in questions of time, history, tradition and …
Inside the Black Box: Simondon's Politics of Technology
Inside the Black Box: Simondon's Politics of Technology Henning Schmidgen (bio) In 1923, Paul Valéry created an artificial world of antiquity. In it the sea could wash up things which, because of their brilliance, hardness, and unfamiliar form, interrupted and irritated well-established habits of thought. Nature or art? Given or created? Earthly or heavenly? Eupalinos, the architect, does not find himself in the position to decide. He throws back…
Camera Silenta: Time Experiments, Media Networks, and the Experience of Organlessness
In order to communicate with isolated test subjects in physiological and psychological laboratories in the late nineteenth century, scholars such as Wilhelm Wundt, Edward W. Scripture, and Hendrik Zwaardemaker used modern technologies, in particular telegraphy. In a similar vein, Marcel Proust equipped his apartment with a soundproof room and a network of cables and switches in order to conduct his famous “research” on lost time. The combined use…
The life of concepts: Georges Canguilhem and the history of science
Leviathan and the Myograph: Hermann Helmholtz's "Second Note" on the Propagation Speed of Nervous Stimulations
ArgumentIn the winter of 1849-1850 in Königsberg, German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) conducted pioneering measurements concerning the propagation speed of stimulations in the living nerve. While recent historians of science have paid considerable attention to Helmholtz's uses of the graphic method, in particular his construction of an instrument called "myographion," this paper draws attention to theinscription surfacesthat he …
Cerebral Drawings between Art and Science: On Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Concepts
In What Is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari distinguish the functions of philosophy, art and science. According to this distinction, the primary purpose of philosophy is to invent concepts, the purpose of art to bring forth percepts, or sensorial aggregates, and that of science to delineate functions. This article aims to show that these distinctions are not as clear-cut as they appear. Using Deleuze and Guattari's proposition that …
Aramis: Oder Die Liebe zur Technik
»Aramis ist eine automatische Metro, die fast im Süden von Paris gebaut worden wäre. Ich habe daraus den Helden eines Dossiers in Szientifiktion gemacht. Alle Abenteuer dieses nicht-menschlichen Helden werden wahrheitsgetreu berichtet. Aber sie erscheinen nie wahrscheinlich, weil wir es nicht gewohnt sind, die Liebe und den Hass einer Spitzentechnologie im Detail zu erforschen. Zum ersten Mal, glaube ich, entfaltet sich vor unseren Augen die Gesc…
Aramis: Oder Die Liebe zur Technik
Aramis, or the Love of Technology
Grundlagentexte der Medienkultur: Ein Reader
Jean Oury et la conation esthétique. Un parcours entre Sartre, Goldstein et Lacan
Le psychiatre français Jean Oury (1924-2014) est bien connu à la fois comme l’un des principaux promoteurs de la « psychothérapie institutionnelle », comme fondateur et directeur de la clinique psychiatrique de La Borde, et comme un important défenseur de la psychanalyse lacanienne. Cet article se concentre sur la thèse de médecine soutenue par Oury en 1950 à la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, ayant pour objet la créativité artistique. Notre but es…
Successful Paranoia: Friedrich Kittler, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and the History of Science
With studies like Discourse Networks 1800/1900 and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Friedrich A. Kittler contributed significantly to transforming the history of media into a vital field of inquiry. This essay undertakes to more precisely characterize Kittler's historiographical approach. When we look back on his early contributions to studies of the relationship between literature, madness and truth - among others, his doctoral dissertation on the …
Bruno Latour in Pieces: An Intellectual Biography
One. Exegesis and Ethnology
Philosophy (15 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · History (8 works) · Philosophical and Theoretical Analysis (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Art history (6 works) · Cybernetics and Technology in Society (6 works)