No abstract

ArgumentObjectivity has been constitutive of the modern scientific persona. Its significance has depended on its excision of standpoint, which has legitimated the scientist epistemically and sociopolitically at once. But if the nineteenth century reinforced those paired effects, the twentieth century brought questioning of both. The figure of Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) puts the latter process on display. From the Kaiserreich to the Federal Republic of Germany, between quantum mechanics and interest group politics, his evolution shows an increasing openness to perspectival pluralism, together with an attempt to save some form of objectivity as discursive coherence. Heisenberg’s self-understanding and the reactions of his publics display the transmutation of the persona as objectivity was rethought. By the end of the day, speaking “as a scientist” would mean something different from what it had at the start.

No abstract

is a historian of science and technology. She studies the history and philosophy of engineering education as a way to better understand the changing societal role of the engineer. Her work on engineering ethics has appeared in Science and Engineering Ethics. She developed and teaches the course, Ethics, Engineering, and Society at the University of California Berkeley's College of Engineering and is an instructor in UC Berkeley's Minner Program in Engineering Ethics Faculty Fellows Program. Her other research interests include the ethics of translational medicine and the history of the twentieth century life sciences, especially embryology, regeneration, and natural history.