Allan Janik - Böcker

Wien i slutet av 1800-talet och början av 1900-talet var ett myller. Ett myller av tankar och idéer som bröts mot varandra. Allt fler gjorde uppror mot det gamla kejsardömets alltmer förljugna moral. Det var en kreativ och dynamisk tid där många av de tankegångar föddes som sedan, på gott och ont, kom att forma Europa under det kommande århundradet.En av de stora tänkarna som växte upp under denna tid var Ludwig Wittgenstein. I detta mycket prisade verk passerar många kända personer revy och författarna berättar på ett medryckande sätt om Wien vid denna tid. De visar att man inte kan förstå Wittgensteins verk och tankar utan att ställa dem i relation till vad som skedde i Wien.Boken vänder sig lika mycket till dem som vill förstå Wittgenstein som till dem som vill förstå och veta mer om Europas kultur- och idéhistoria"Wittgensteins Wien" är en oundgänglig bok för kunskapen om dagens och gårdagens Europa och för dem som vill tränga in i Wittgensteins tankevärld.

Fin de siecle Vienna was once memorably described by Karl Kraus as a "proving ground for the destruction of the world." In the decades leading to the World War that brought down the Austro-Hungarian empire, the city was at once an operetta dream world masking social and political problems and tension, as well as a center for the far-reaching explorations and innovations in music, art, science, and philosophy that would help to define modernity. One of the most powerful critiques of the retreat into fantasy was that of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose early career in Vienna has helped frame debates about ethical and aesthetic values in culture. In Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited Allan Janik expands upon his work Wittgenstein's Vienna (co-authored with Stephen Toulmin) to amplify a number of significant points concerning the genesis of Wittgenstein's thought, the nature of Viennese culture, and criticism of contemporary culture.Although Wittgenstein is the central figure in this volume, Janik places considerable emphasis on other influential figures, both Viennese and non-Viennese, in order to break down some of the persistent stereotypes about the philosopher and his surrounding culture, especially the myths of "carefree" Vienna and Wittgenstein the positivist. The persistence of these myths, in Janik's view, stems in part from the inability of many historians to differentiate past from present in the evaluation of intellectual currents. Janik reviews a number of figures overlooked in assessing Wittgenstein: Otto Weininger, Kraus, Schoenberg, Nietzsche, Wagner, Ibsen, Offenbach, and Georg Trakl. All of these, Janik demonstrates, are absolutely necessary to understand what was at stake in the debates on aestheticism and the critique of a modern culture.Wittgenstein's efforts to recognize the limits of thought and language and thus to be fair to science, religion, and art account for his place of honor among critical modernists. These essays elucidate Wittgenstein's perspective on our culture.

Fin de siecle Vienna was once memorably described by Karl Kraus as a "proving ground for the destruction of the world." In the decades leading to the World War that brought down the Austro-Hungarian empire, the city was at once an operetta dream world masking social and political problems and tension, as well as a center for the far-reaching explorations and innovations in music, art, science, and philosophy that would help to define modernity. One of the most powerful critiques of the retreat into fantasy was that of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose early career in Vienna has helped frame debates about ethical and aesthetic values in culture. In Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited Allan Janik expands upon his work Wittgenstein's Vienna (co-authored with Stephen Toulmin) to amplify a number of significant points concerning the genesis of Wittgenstein's thought, the nature of Viennese culture, and criticism of contemporary culture.Although Wittgenstein is the central figure in this volume, Janik places considerable emphasis on other influential figures, both Viennese and non-Viennese, in order to break down some of the persistent stereotypes about the philosopher and his surrounding culture, especially the myths of "carefree" Vienna and Wittgenstein the positivist. The persistence of these myths, in Janik's view, stems in part from the inability of many historians to differentiate past from present in the evaluation of intellectual currents. Janik reviews a number of figures overlooked in assessing Wittgenstein: Otto Weininger, Kraus, Schoenberg, Nietzsche, Wagner, Ibsen, Offenbach, and Georg Trakl. All of these, Janik demonstrates, are absolutely necessary to understand what was at stake in the debates on aestheticism and the critique of a modern culture.Wittgenstein's efforts to recognize the limits of thought and language and thus to be fair to science, religion, and art account for his place of honor among critical modernists. These essays elucidate Wittgenstein's perspective on our culture.

This is a remarkable book about a man (perhaps the most important and original philosopher of our age), a society (the corrupt Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of dissolution), and a city (Vienna, with its fin-de siècle gaiety and corrosive melancholy). The central figure in this study of a crumbling society that gave birth to the modern world is Wittgenstein, the brilliant and gifted young thinker. With others, including Freud, Viktor Adler, and Arnold Schoenberg, he forged his ideas in a classical revolt against the stuffy, doomed, and moralistic lives of the old regime. As a portrait of Wittgenstein, the book is superbly realized; it is even better as a portrait of the age, with dazzling and unusual parallels to our own confused society. “Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin have acted on a striking premise: an understanding of prewar Vienna, Wittgenstein’s native city, will make it easier to comprehend both his work and our own problems….This is an independent work containing much that is challenging, new, and useful.”—New York Times Book Review.

Diese Studie analysiert das praktische Wissen, welches PhysikerInnen im Labor benötigen, sowie dessen Aneignung und Vermittlung. Die erkenntnistheoretische Grundlage dazu bilden Michael Polanyis Konzept des impliziten Wissens und Ludwig Wittgensteins pragmatische Sprachauffassung. Die Untersuchung steht im Umfeld der sogenannten "Laborstudien" und zeichnet sich vor allem durch ihren problemorientierten Ansatz aus. Sie zeigt die Praxis der Physik, wie sie PhysikerInnen in ihren eigenen Worten beschreiben: Probleme im Umgang mit Apparaturen, Fehlersuche, Problemerkennen, Messen und Interpretieren … Die Rolle von Frauen in der physikalischen Forschung bildet einen besonderen Schwerpunkt. Als Grundlage für eine moderne Wissenschaftsdidaktik, Know-how-Vermittlung sowie für die Evaluation und Kompetenzentwicklung von Forschungseinrichtungen wendet sich das Buch an eine breite Zielgruppe: In Forschung und Lehre tätige PhysikerInnen oder PhysiklehrerInnen an höheren Schulen, Philosophen, Wissenschaftsforscher und -soziologen, Bildungs- und Berufsforscher.

Astonishingly, Wittgenstein insisted that he was not an original thinker but one who passionately seized upon the thoughts of truly original thinkers with a view to developing a method of conceptual clarification. He compared his mind to fertile ground in which the seeds of the truly original: Ludwig Boltzmann, Heinrich Hertz, Arthur Schopenhauer, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos, Otto Weininger, Oswald Spengler and Piero Sraffa, could blossom. Assembling Reminders is the first full length study to explore how these figures influenced Wittgenstein - but also how he could claim to have understood them better than they did themselves. It illuminates Wittgenstein's uniqueness in the history of 20th century thought at the same time that it clarifies his relationship to both analytical and Continental philosophy as well as to Viennese critical modernism. Allan Janik, (1941) is currently Research Fellow at the University of Innsbruck's Brenner Archives Reseach Institute. He is also Adjunct Professor for the Philosophy of Culture at the University of Vienna and at the Skill and technology Ph D. program at Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology. »Janik's book is a wonderful achievement« Newton Garver in Journal of the History of Philosophy Volume 45, Number 4, October 2007

År 1951 ställde matematikern Alan Turing frågan "Kan en maskin tänka?" Hans fråga inspirerade 1972 till att formulera idén om informationssamhället. När idéns förverkligande i samtiden utvärderades i en studie 1985 användes termen funktionell autism för att beskriva formaliseringen av arbets- och samhällsliv som kraftigt reducerade ­människans möjligheter att agera utifrån eget omdöme. Studien fokuserade på ­kunskapsteori och pekade på nödvändigheten av balans mellan teknologi, filosofi, historia och litteratur när vetenskap och teknik utvecklas. År 1985/86 inrättades Dialogseminariet och tidskriften Dialoger för att konfrontera de bärande idéerna kring informationssamhället. Med detta temanummer, som också blir det sista av tidskriften Dialoger, firar tidskriften 25-årsjubileum.