Transformations of Science and Technology since 1800. Conceptual framework, preliminary results, and a glossary from the DFG Research Training Group 2696.

The DFG Research Training Group 2696 “Transformations of Science and Technology since 1800: Topics, Processes, Institutions” (RTG 2696) at the University of Wuppertal investigates how scientific knowledge and technological capabilities change over time without reducing modes of change to either path dependency or revolutions. Instead, it focuses on transformations as being multidimensional and often gradual-cumulative, while recognizing critical junctures. The program’s shared framework employs varieties of institutionalist approaches (such as Historical Institutionalism, Sociological Institu-tionalism) across three interacting dimensions: topics (theories, concepts, tacit knowledge), processes (experimental, communicative, application-oriented practices), and institutions (universities, laboratories, education systems, infrastructures). Substantively, the RTG addresses field formation and disciplinary change; shifts in epistemic practices; material and technical infrastructures; and narratives of the new and the old, using state-of-the-art methods grounded in history, sociology, and philosophy. These include comparative-historical case studies; qualitative and quantitative methods of empirical social research; conceptual analysis; as well as argumentative reconstruction. Interim results comprise completed dissertations on high-energy physics, medical skills labs, observational standards, and the classification of personality disorders, as well as ongoing projects on the development of academic disciplines (such as mathematics, psychology, economics, and biology), university funding and stratification, space tech-nology, technological persistence, and gendered historiography. Together, these studies aim to test and refine the RTG’s shared vocabulary, enabling synthesis and comparison in the study of transformations (glossary).