The Contemporary Turn

Making use of the analysis of the historical backdrop established in the three preceding chapters, Chap. 6 examines the contemporary organization of knowledge. Here all the historical layers previously described are still present and continue to exert a significant influence. At the same time, a new remarkable turn makes itself felt. Drawing on discussions in contemporary science studies, in particular outlined by Latour, this part describes how the unbridgeable gulf between the human and the non-human, man and nature, established as crucial for the organization of knowledge with the foundation of the modern university, has become increasingly questioned. In parallel, the divisions between scientific faculties and disciplines are being increasingly interrogated. This questioning does not entail that the human sciences disappear or that the study of human existence has become an irrelevant pastime. Quite the contrary. It leads to a redistribution of the human sciences and the emergence of types of scientific knowledge that map different forms of situated human existence. The emergence of science studies already in itself forms a most important, recent addition to the history and the development of the human sciences in the modern university. Moreover, the emergence of science studies demonstrates in exemplary ways how this history and development unfolds in the shape of an ongoing reproblematization and a continuous productive crisis.