Creatures of Science. Living Models and the Construction of Scientific Communities. Marco Stella The present thesis, which is to be understood as a contribution both to history and anthropology of science, deals with the relationship of the construction and emergence of scientific communities and the use of models in science, or construction of new forms of knowledge. We deal primary with the history of life sciences, especially behavioral sciences, which formed in the beginning of the 20th century as a relatively independent a scientific field and a rather heterogeneous platform for a common research of life utterances and cognition of man and other animals. The thesis focuses mainly on living models, often used biological and psychological research. Using Latour's concepts of modernity and hybridity, the thesis points at the hybridizing effect of behavioral sciences (the model always shapes and creates the modelled) and also at their ways of human and animal images. The second often serve as a basis for constructing the second. I also discuss some the ways how implicit model properties, which influence the (seemingly) isolated sphere of science, affect the chances of a community for becoming a discipline. On three examples from the history of life sciences, i.e. the unsuccessful institutionalization of...

Creatures of Science. Living Models and the Construction of Scientific Communities. Marco Stella The present thesis, which is to be understood as a contribution both to history and anthropology of science, deals with the relationship of the construction and emergence of scientific communities and the use of models in science, or construction of new forms of knowledge. We deal primary with the history of life sciences, especially behavioral sciences, which formed in the beginning of the 20th century as a relatively independent a scientific field and a rather heterogeneous platform for a common research of life utterances and cognition of man and other animals. The thesis focuses mainly on living models, often used biological and psychological research. Using Latour's concepts of modernity and hybridity, the thesis points at the hybridizing effect of behavioral sciences (the model always shapes and creates the modelled) and also at their ways of human and animal images. The second often serve as a basis for constructing the second. I also discuss some the ways how implicit model properties, which influence the (seemingly) isolated sphere of science, affect the chances of a community for becoming a discipline. On three examples from the history of life sciences, i.e. the unsuccessful institutionalization of...

En 1638, paraît en Angleterre un ouvrage de John Wilkins (1614 - 1672), traitant de la pluralité des Mondes et plus précisément de la découverte d’un nouveau Monde : la Lune. Grâce à une argumentation dialectique, l’auteur tente de montrer la similarité entre la Terre et notre satellite. Il s’appuie pour cela sur le modèle copernicien et sur les observations astronomiques de Galilée. De cette similarité, en résulte, selon lui, l’idée que la Lune est peut-être habitée comme la Terre, par des êtres qu’il nomme Sélénites. Il ajoute qu’il serait possible de s’y rendre, et de commercer avec les habitants. L’objectif de cette thèse est d’étudier la place des sciences du vivant dans les théories sur la pluralité des Mondes, principalement dans l’œuvre de John Wilkins, et les différentes implications littéraires, théologiques et philosophiques qui en découlent. / In 1638, a book is published in England by John Wilkins (1614-1672), dealing with the plurality of Worlds, and more specifically the discovery of a New World: the Moon. With a dialectical reasoning, the author tries to show the similarities between the Earth and the Moon. For this he uses the Copernican model and astronomical observations of Galileo. From these similarities, Wilkins suggests the idea that the moon could be harboring living beings like Earth and then conjecture on the nature of its inhabitants, the Selenites. He writes that it may be possible one day to reach the Moon and trade with its inhabitants. The purpose of our work is to study the living in the discourse on the plurality of worlds, and observe its place in the work of Wilkins.