Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Founded in 1994, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin is one of the more than 80 research institutes administered by the Max Planck Society in the sciences and humanities.

Since its inception, the institute has approached the fundamental questions of the history of knowledge from the Neolithic era to the present day. Researchers at the institute pursue an historical epistemology in their study of how new categories of thought, proof, and experience have emerged in interactions between the sciences and their ambient cultures.

The institute’s research projects span all eras of human history, as well as all cultures north, south, east, and west. The institute’s projects canvass an array of scientific areas, ranging from the origins of continuity systems in Mesopotamia to present-day neuroscience, Renaissance natural history, and the origins of quantum mechanics.

MPIWG researchers explore the changing meaning of fundamental scientific concepts (for example number, force, heredity, space) as well as how cultural developments shape fundamental scientific practices (for example argument, proof, experiment, classification). They examine how bodies of knowledge originally devised to address specific local problems became universalized.

The work of MPIWG scholars forms the basis of a theoretically oriented history of science which considers scientific thinking from a variety of methodological and interdisciplinary perspectives. The institute draws on the reflective potential of the history of science to address current challenges in scientific scholarship.