Knowledge in Intermediate Spaces: Forms of Complexity Generation and Reduction in the Study on Solid State Bodies, 1930-1970 (C05)

• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 230856760

This project will focus on the fragile status of interdisciplinary knowledge using the formation of solid-state physics and the materials sciences as an example. It will analyse how the practitioners applied material and experimental practices to stabilise a body of knowledge residing among various disciplines and professions. In addition, it aims to show how the actors managed to translate 'weak' non-disciplinary knowledge into the idioms of established disciplines such as physics and chemistry. One focus will be on the appropriation of 'material' resources by the actors, another on the role played by 'immaterial' resources such as new understandings of 'order' 'structure', or 'system'.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1095: Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes
• Applicant Institution: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Moritz Epple