Diogenes' tub and the double bind of science and vocation in the late Middle Ages

Intellectuals tend to cherish heroes who embody their ideal way of life. The fact that the personas of the unworldly Greek philosophers Diogenes and Crates were so popular in the late Middle Ages proves that Max Weber's Idealtypus of the "authentic man of science" (as termed by Steven Shapin) has been problematic for centuries. This finding gives cause to modify Max Weber's and Shapin's viewpoints about the loss of the "authentic man of science" due to professionalization. The development of the university as an educational institution in the High Middle Ages chained the academic once and for all to a formal training that costs time and money: investments that were expected to have reward. Soon, university-trained experts were highly appreciated by local and national authorities. By combining Frank Rexroth's and Marcel Bubert's ideas on the coming into being of an "amor sciendi" in the twelfth century Arts faculties, with David Kaldewey's and Klaas van Berkel's appeals for academic autonomy, my article argues that academics have always struggled to protect the pursuit of truth, even while they recognized its vital importance from the beginning.

Policing epistemic deviance: Albert Von Schrenck-Notzing and Albert Moll(1)

Shortly after the death of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862-1929), the doyen of early twentieth century German para psychology, his former colleague in hypnotism and sexology Albert Moll (1862-1939) published a treatise on the psychology and pathology of parapsychologists, with Schrenck-Notzing serving as a prototype of a scientist suffering from an 'occult complex'. Moll's analysis concluded that parapsychologists vouching for the reality of supernormal phenomena, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis and materialisations, suffered from a morbid will to believe, which paralysed their critical faculties and made them cover obvious mediumistic fraud. Using Moll's treatment of Schrenck-Notzing as an historical case study of boundary disputes in science and medicine, this essay traces the career of Schrenck-Notzing as a researcher in hypnotism, sexology and parapsychology; discusses the relationship between Moll and Schrenck-Notzing; and problematises the pathologisation and defamation strategies of deviant epistemologies by authors such as Moll.