In this article, I will be focusing specifically on cryopreservation and two of the American biotechnomedical tenets introduced by Robbie Davis-Floyd and Gloria St. John in their technocratic model of medicine: the “body as machine” and “death as defeat.” These axioms are embraced by both the biotechnomedical establishment as well as the cryopre…[Read more]

Argues that the humanities do not need a replication drive like that being pushed for in the sciences.

On scholarly traditions, quantitative assessments and academic malpractices in Italy, and how these factors affect Italian scholarship in the history of science.

Book review of the book by Marco Leonardi (“Renaissance Quarterly,” Volume 71, n. 4, 2018, pp. 1489-1491).

The foundational gesture of New Materialism and Speculative Realism dismisses vast swaths of past philosophy and theory in order to signify their own avant-garde status. The violence of this gesture, which tries to corral difference within past texts in order to feign its own purity, can be considered as a theoretical quarantine. Examples of…[Read more]

Detailed manuscript description of the 15th century German manuscript Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. germ. 1.

Arzneibuch – Volmar: ‚Steinbuch‘ – Kochrezepte – Gottfried v. Franken: ‚Pelzbuch‘ – Farb- und Tintenrezepte – ‚Lucidarius‘-‚Elucidarius‘-Kompilation – Johann v. Indersdorf (?): Sentenzen und Gebete – ‚Die sieben wei…[Read more]

Examines the role of the yeti in shaping Cold War popular science networks and relations between official and popular scientific practices in the Soviet Union.

This presentation presents a case study in philosophy and science policy surrounding Plan S and argues that we need new ways of evaluating such approaches to research.

The 2018 International Research Conference at UC Davis focuses on:

Changing political environment and its impact on international research
Increasing importance of networks and consortia in advancing international research
Role of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary research in solving global challenges
Educating the next…[Read more]

Evaluation can be seen as an opportunity for transvaluation, or what Nietzsche called the revaluation of values. However, evaluation is often treated instead as the enforcement of standards – standardization rather than transformation. When evaluation as transvaluation and evaluation as standardization are both used to evaluate the same s…[Read more]

Historians tend to view public health as a quintessentially modern phenomenon, enabled by the emergence of representative democracies, centralized bureaucracies and advanced biomedicine. While social, urban and religious historians have begun chipping away at the entrenched dichotomy between pre/modernity that this view implies, evidence for…[Read more]

Description of the German geomantic and astologic multiple text manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Broxbourne 84.3 from 1469.

Marco Heiles, geomancia hais ich. Die geomantisch-astrologische Sammelhandschrift Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Broxbourne 84.3, in: Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte 1 (2018),…[Read more]

Edition and commentary of an German chiromantic text from about 1464 in the manuscript Linz, Landesbibliothek, Hs. 139, fol. 1r-5r.

Marco Heiles, Eine bisher unbeachtete deutsche Chiromantie in der Landesbibliothek Linz, in: Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 145 (2016), S. 70-81.