Reenchanted science

Holism in German culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler

Anne Harrington

Veronika Hofer

pp. 325-329

in: Jan Woleński, Eckehart Köhler (eds), Alfred Tarski and the Vienna circle, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

Harrington's book can be considered as the most comprehensive present-day account of this extremely spacious field. The broad title is programmatic for this aim. Portraying with great intuition and sensitivity in four (roughly chronological) detailed case studies one biologist (Uexküll), two neurologists (v.Monakow and Goldstein), and one psychologist (Wertheimer), she intends to elaborate the complexity and multi-voiced texture of holistic theories during the Weimar republic. Her deep comprehension of the distress, the irritations, the fears and disappointments, with which German intellectuals reacted to the radical chances following the industrialization and the rapidly progressing societal differentiation at the turn of the century, enables her to combine the various threads both on the political-ideological and the scientific-epistemological levels.