Jews and Science

Description

Jews and Science examines the complicated relationship between Jewish identities and the evolving meanings of science throughout the history of Western academic culture. Jews have been not only the agents for study of things Jewish, but also the subject of examination by “scientists” across a range of disciplines, from biology and bioethics to anthropology and genetics. Even the most recent iteration of Jewish studies as an academic discipline—Israel studies—stresses the global cultural, economic, and social impact of Israeli science and medicine.

The 2022 volume of the Casden Institute’s Jewish Role in American Life series tackles a range of issues that have evolved with the rise of Jewish studies, throughout its evolution from interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary, and now finally as a discipline itself with its own degrees and departments in universities across the world. This book gathers contributions by scholars from various disciplines to discuss the complexity in defining “science” across multiple fields within Jewish studies. The scholars examine the role of the self-defined “Jewish” scholar, discerning if their identification with the object of study (whether that study be economics, criminology, medicine, or another field entirely) changes their perception or status as scientists. They interrogate whether the myriad ways to study Jews and their relationship to science—including the role of Jews in science and scientific training, the science of the Jews (however defined), and Jews as objects of scientific study—alter our understanding of science itself. The contributors of Jews and Science take on the challenge to confront these central problems.

FOREWORD

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

DEFINING SCIENCE; DEFINING JEWS

Science, Imperialism, and Heteromasculinity in the Wissenschaft des Judentums, by Susannah Heschel

Philosophers of Catastrophe: Early Twentieth-Century Jewish Proponents and Opponents of Objectivity in Science, by Steven Gimbel and Stephen Stern

Medical History: A Blank Spot in Jewish Studies?, by Robert Jütte

Jewish Scientists and Scholars at the University of Vienna from the Late Habsburg Period until the Early Post-War Years, by Mitchell G. Ash

HUMAN BIOLOGY: GENETICS IN THE NOW

“Questions Remain”: Racialism, Geneticism, and the Continuing Lure of Jewish Essentialism, by Mitchell B. Hart

Science, Sovereignty, and Diaspora: Alternative Genealogies and DNA Research on Jewish Populations, by Yulia Egorova

ISRAEL STUDIES AND SCIENCE

The Fusion of Zionism and Science: The First Two Decades—and the Present Day?, by Amos Morris-Reich and Danny Trom

Israel as a Laboratory in the Time of COVID-19, by Sander L. Gilman

JEWS AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Environmental History and Jewish Studies: Methodological Intersections and Opportunities, by Dean Phillip Bell

Changing Climates: Zionist Medical Climatology in Palestine, 1897–1948, by Netta Cohen

ISRAEL STUDIES AND SCIENCE

Jews and Science: A Note, by David A. Hollinger

Science and Judaism, by Roald Hoffmann

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

ABOUT THE USC CASDEN INSTITUTE

Sujets

• Histoire
• Jews
• Israel
• Jewish identity
• Military
• Eduard Gans
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612498027
• Langue: English

Extrait

Jews and Science
The Jewish Role in American Life
An Annual Review of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life
Jews and Science
The Jewish Role in American Life
An Annual Review of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life
Volume 20
Steven J. Ross, Editor
Sander L. Gilman, Guest Editor
Lisa Ansell, Associate Editor
Published by the Purdue University Press for the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life
2022
University of Southern California
Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life.
All rights reserved.
Production Editor , Marilyn Lundberg Melzian
Photo, iStock via Getty Images .
Evgeny Gromov
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61249-800-3
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61249-801-0
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-61249-802-7
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-61249-803-4
Published by Purdue University Press
West Lafayette, Indiana
www.press.purdue.edu
[e-mail]
Printed in the United States of America.
This volume is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and colleague Dr. Sharon Gillerman whose legacy continues to inspire us today .
Contents
FOREWORD
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
DEFINING SCIENCE; DEFINING JEWS
Susannah Heschel
Science, Imperialism, and Heteromasculinity in the Wissenschaft des Judentums
Steven Gimbel and Stephen Stern
Philosophers of Catastrophe: Early Twentieth-Century Jewish Proponents and Opponents of Objectivity in Science
Robert J tte
Medical History: A Blank Spot in Jewish Studies?
Mitchell G. Ash
Jewish Scientists and Scholars at the University of Vienna from the Late Habsburg Period until the Early Post-War Years
HUMAN BIOLOGY: GENETICS IN THE NOW
Mitchell B. Hart
Questions Remain : Racialism, Geneticism, and the Continuing Lure of Jewish Essentialism
Yulia Egorova
Science, Sovereignty, and Diaspora: Alternative Genealogies and DNA Research on Jewish Populations
ISRAEL STUDIES AND SCIENCE
Amos Morris-Reich and Danny Trom
The Fusion of Zionism and Science: The First Two Decades-and the Present Day?
Sander L. Gilman
Israel as a Laboratory in the Time of COVID-19
JEWS AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Dean Phillip Bell
Environmental History and Jewish Studies: Methodological Intersections and Opportunities
Netta Cohen
Changing Climates: Zionist Medical Climatology in Palestine, 1897-1948
ISRAEL STUDIES AND SCIENCE
David A. Hollinger
Jews and Science: A Note
Roald Hoffmann
Science and Judaism
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
ABOUT THE USC CASDEN INSTITUTE
Foreword: Jews and Science
The statistics are impressive. Between 1901 and 2021, Jews (either full, half or three-quarters Jewish ancestry) accounted for 22 percent of all individual Nobel Prize winners and 36 percent of US recipients. If we break down those statistics by scientific fields, Jews in Physics accounted for 26 percent of the world total and 38 percent of the US total; in Physiology and Medicine 26 percent of the world total and 38 percent of the US total; and in Chemistry 19 percent of the worldwide recipients and 28 percent of the US total. During that same period, Jews accounted for 38 percent of all recipients of the US National Medal of Science. A website titled Jews Listed among the Creators of the Greatest Lifesaving Medical and Scientific Advances in History suggests that twenty-six Jewish scientists, physicians and engineers out of a total of 105 individuals accounted for 50 percent of an estimated 5.6 billion lives saved.
Since the worldwide outbreak of Covid in 2020, Israel has been widely praised as leading the world in response to developing and administering a vaccine that has dramatically reduced death rates.
These statistics raise a series of interesting questions about the relationship between Jews and the Sciences-the subject of this year s Casden Annual. Is there such as thing as Jewish science ? As volume editor Sander Gilman observes in his Introduction, Ever since the Hegelian Eduard Gans co-founded an organization dedicated to the Science of the Jews (Wissenschaft der Juden) in 1819, the linkage between things Jewish (no matter how defined) and the Sciences (no matter how defined) has been a constant theme in Western academic culture. The essays in this volume explore the evolving relationship between Jews and Science from a number of perspectives: from nineteenth-century discussions of Wissenschaft der Juden to the twenty-first century relationship among Jews, Science and Jewish Studies. Our authors offer interdisciplinary perspectives that focus on environmental science, philosophy of science, objectivity and science, the history of health sciences, epidemiology, genetics, and recent responses to the COVID virus. Their essays explore the historical and current relationship of Jews and the sciences as they occurred in Europe, the United States and Israel.
Taken collectivity, the volume offers us cutting-edge research and perspectives on the role Jews have played in the evolution of the sciences over the past two centuries-and are likely to play in the future.
Steven J. Ross
Myron and Marian Casden Director
Distinguished Professor of History
Jewish Studies and the Sciences
by Sander L. Gilman
E ver since the Hegelian Eduard Gans co-founded an organzation dedicated to the Science of the Jews ( Wissenschaft der Juden ) in 1819, the linkage between things Jewish (no matter how defined) and the Sciences (no matter how defined) has been a constant theme in Western academic culture. 1 Whether antiquarian in its examination of Jewish beliefs and practices (pace Gans), whether biological (in Race Science and then again in modern genetics), whether sociological or anthropological in its examination of Jewish particularism (from studying Nobel Prize winners to modern definitions of genocide or civil rights to the study of Judaizing communities), whether historical (as in the recent reappearance in Germany of the Historikerstreit about the instrumentalization of the Holocaust), whether disciplinary within Jewish Studies (as in Jewish attitudes towards bioethics), the Jews have been the subject of examination by scientists from a wide range of disciplines as well as the agents for study of things Jewish. Studying the Jew or Jews seems to be a long-standing concern of our modern, self-defined scientific disciplines, all of which evolved in the Western caldron of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment obsession with the Jews. 2 Indeed, even the most recent iteration of Jewish Studies as an academic discipline, Israel Studies, stresses the global cultural, economic, and social impact of Israeli science and medicine, as an extension, not of area studies, but of Jewish Studies. 3
But Gans presents us with yet another iteration of this question: who is Jewish not only in terms of the object studied but the identity of the scientist examining the Jews (and therefore having the object define the object). Gans, like other middleclass Jews of his time (and here we can mention one of the most visible of the co-founders of the Wissenschaft der Juden , Heinrich Heine) converted to Protestantism in order to achieve an academic position in 1822 after King Frederick William III of Prussia denied him an appointment as associate professor of law. 4 Does his subsequent interest in his academic specialization within law, the laws of inheritance, which seems so very distant to the Jews, represent a Jewish obsession with continuities or discontinuities or, as a German Protestant, do we then need to read his works within the radical Hegelian (read: non-Jewish) impact on the history of law in the German-speaking world?
In this volume of the Casden Annual , I asked a wide range of scholars to examine a series of meta questions that have evolved with the rise of Jewish Studies as, first an interdisciplinary, then a transdisciplinary, and then as a discipline (with its own degrees and departments or programs in universities across the world). What does science now mean when we address the multiple fields of Jewish Studies including Israel Studies? Do we study the role of Jews ( native vs. immigrant; main-stream vs. alternative) in science and scientific training, the science of the Jews (define as you may), the Jews as subjects/objects of scientific study? Do we focus on the Jews in such cases as a clearly delimited arena of study within Jewish Studies or do we do so comparatively within other academic disciplines? What about the role of the self-defined Jewish scholar? When we do field work in the social sciences (or indeed in such areas in the Humanities that employ oral history) what role do we as Jewish social scientists play in our interactions with our subjects? Are we Jewish scientists when we study things Jewish even if we are not articulate about our standpoint? Certainly, when I have critiqued racist scholars such as Kevin MacDonald, his response was not based on my scholarship but on my assumed status as a Jew. 5 Yet when we examine the role of Jews in other disciplinary models, such as economics, criminology, or medicine, does our identification with the object change our perception or even our status as scientists? Does studying Jewish genetic diseases place the Jewish investigator in a different relationship to genetic science than a non-Jewish one?
Or do the claims of scientific objectivity, a contested definition well before Karl Popper, override this in any given field or with any subject? 6 The historian Michael Meyer observed in 2004 with a sense of irony that Many years ago, when I was a graduate student, one of my professors, a Jew whose field was European history, told me that when he was deciding on a topic for his dissertation, he suggested to his adviser that he would like to write on the Jewish migration from Eastern Europe to the United States. His adviser rejected that idea. As a Jew you will not be able to treat that subject objectively , he was told. Wh