Call for Papers on Edgar Zilsel

Edgar Zilsel (* 1891 Vienna, + 1944 Oakland, California) was a philosopher, mathematician, physicist, historian and sociologist, and maybe one of the most interesting intellectuals in the “Vienna Circle” around Moritz Schlick. However, though many surprising features of the Vienna Circle’s philosophy have been re-discovered and re-appreciated during the last quarter of the 20th century, Zilsel has remained relatively unknown to philosophers until now.

By contrast, historians of early modern science and of modern art appreciate his writings as pioneering work in their disciplines. What now is known as the “Zilsel thesis” was one of his most fruitful hypotheses in the sociology of modern science. This label refers to the theory according to which - as a consequence of the emergence of capitalism - three previously distinct social groups, the academically trained scholars, the humanists with their interest in history and language, and the empirically trained craftsmen could come into contact and develop modern science through the convergence of their different skills.

He also developed in his early work (1918 and 1926) a highly original approach to study the genesis of the notion of the Genius. A translation from German to French of his historical studies of the Genius appeared in 1999 (transl. by M. Thévenaz, with a preface by N. Heinich). During the last 20 years or so we have been observing a growing interest in Zilsel’s life and work on the one hand (see also the edition by Raven and Krohn from 2000) and the application of his historico-sociological 

approach to new areas of research on the other (see, e.g. Robering 2012, Leitão & Sánchez 2017).

We call for papers for a book-project “Edgar Zilsel. Philosopher, Historian, Sociologist” (working title). Friedrich Stadler kindly agreed to publish the volume as a Yearbook of the Institute Vienna Circle with Springer. It will be edited by Donata Romizi, Monika Wulz and Elisabeth Nemeth. The language is English. All papers will be peer-reviewed. We want the volume to comprehend a wide range of subjects, including both papers concerning Zilsel’s life and work, and papers that explicitly try to apply Zilsel’s approach to new fields of research. If you are interested in contributing, we ask you to send the title of  the proposed paper with an abstract of max. 400 words by the end of the 

year to elisabeth.nemeth@univie.ac.at. Decisions about inviting authors will be taken based on the abstracts. We will invite authors whose abstracts show clearly that the subject of their paper fits into the concept of the book. We will inform you about our decisions by January 15, 2019. Please note that the invitation does not serve as a substitute of the peer-reviewing process. Before publication, all  submitted papers will be peer-reviewed.

The deadline for submitting the paper (of max. 6000 words) will be September 30, 2019.