On 7 November 1917, Max Weber gave his lecture Wissenschaft als Beruf, Science as a Vocation, in a Munich bookshop. Science, he said, had entered a stage of specialization. Work that reaches into a neighboring field carries a resigned awareness. At best it gives the specialist useful questions, but the work itself must remain highly imperfect. Nur durch strenge Spezialisierung kann der wissenschaftliche Arbeiter tatsächlich das Vollgefühl, einmal und vielleicht nie wieder im Leben, sich zu eigen machen: hier habe ich etwas geleistet, was dauern wird. Only through strict specialization can the scholar have, once and perhaps never again, the full feeling that he has done something that will last. Eine wirklich endgültige und tüchtige Leistung ist heute stets: eine spezialistische Leistung. A truly final and sound achievement today is always a specialist’s achievement.
science
A License to Teach One Subject
At many German universities, the Habilitation brings with it the venia legendi, the license to teach at a university. The license covers one named field. The habilitation rules of the Technical University of Braunschweig are an example. The candidate must state in the application the field for which the license is sought. The certificate names that field. To extend the license to another area of the subject, the scholar must apply again and show special academic work in the new area.
Merkel and the Reproduction Number
On 15 April 2020, after a meeting with the state premiers, Chancellor Angela Merkel explained why most pandemic restrictions would stay in place and easing would be slow. At the end of the press conference, she did it with arithmetic. The reproduction number then stood at about one. If it rose by only a tenth to 1.1, she said, the health system would reach its limit in October. At 1.2 it would reach it in July. At 1.3 it would reach it in June.
Doubt Your Own Results
On 3 July 2019, the German Research Foundation, the DFG, adopted its code for safeguarding good research practice. The explanations to its first guideline ask researchers to work by the rules of their discipline and to keep strict honesty about their own contributions and those of others. They also ask them alle Ergebnisse konsequent selbst anzuzweifeln, to doubt all their results themselves, consistently.
The Smallest Common Reality
In March 2021, the chemist and science journalist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim published Die kleinste gemeinsame Wirklichkeit, The Smallest Common Reality. The subtitle is Wahr, falsch, plausibel? Die größten Streitfragen wissenschaftlich geprüft. True, false, plausible? The biggest disputes, checked by science. The book reached number one on the Spiegel bestseller list in the month it came out. Later that year, Nguyen-Kim won the Grimme Prize for her explanations of the coronavirus.
The Self-Taught Merchant’s Doctorate
Heinrich Schliemann, the excavator of Troy, spent only a quarter of a year at a Gymnasium. He became an apprentice and assistant in a shop in Fürstenberg and taught himself languages, Russian without a teacher. He made a fortune as a merchant. In 1869 he still applied for a doctorate, and the University of Rostock awarded it to him in his absence, on 27 April 1869. The examiner’s report suggested that the university might set aside the normal procedure, because Schliemann was an autodidact.
Few, but Ripe
Pauca sed matura, few but ripe, was the motto of the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. His seal showed a tree loaded with fruit, with the motto around it. Gauss offered nothing to the public until it had received its last finishing touches. In 2005, the Tagesspiegel estimated that he published only about half of his ideas.
The Agency for Leaps
In 2019, the federal government founded SPRIND, the Federal Agency for Leap Innovation, in Leipzig. Its task was to find and fund research ideas with the potential for leap innovation. Soon the agency was held back by the rules of public administration. According to its director, the Federal Court of Audit made sure that, contrary to the plan, all its hires fell under the Besserstellungsverbot, a rule that bars pay above public sector levels. In May 2021, Chancellor Merkel criticized the structures created for the agency as allowing too little movement. In November 2023, the Bundestag passed a law to free it, the SPRIND-Freiheitsgesetz, the SPRIND Freedom Act. The agency for leaps needed its own law before it could move.
The Rubicon Model
The psychologists Heinz Heckhausen and Peter M. Gollwitzer described action in four phases. Their model is named after the river Caesar crossed. In the first phase, a person weighs the options. Then the person decides and crosses the Rubicon. The second phase is planning: In der Planungsphase bereitet sich die Person auf das Handeln vor. (In the planning phase, the person prepares to act.) The question is no longer what to achieve, but how. Only the third phase is action. The fourth is evaluation.
The Göttingen Eighteen
On 5 April 1957, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer told the press that tactical nuclear weapons were only a Weiterentwicklung der Artillerie, a further development of artillery. A week later, on 12 April, eighteen nuclear scientists published a declaration. Among them were the Nobel laureates Otto Hahn, Max Born and Werner Heisenberg. It began: Die Pläne einer atomaren Bewaffnung der Bundeswehr erfüllen die unterzeichnenden Atomforscher mit tiefer Sorge. (The plans to arm the Bundeswehr with nuclear weapons fill the undersigned nuclear researchers with deep concern.) They explained why they spoke: Deshalb können wir nicht zu allen politischen Fragen schweigen. (That is why we cannot stay silent on all political questions.) None of them, they wrote, would take part in making, testing or using nuclear weapons. Adenauer was outraged and rejected the scientists’ interference in politics. He met them on 17 April. The German Wikipedia states that public pressure led Adenauer to give in, and that the Federal Republic renounced nuclear weapons.