Science affects and is affected by politics in many intricate and important ways. The history of science has carefully examined the mutual interaction of human genetics (in the form of eugenics) and politics in the 20th century. Dr. Harrington is examining another important interaction of politics and science: holism and psychology in German from 1918-1945. In this project, Dr. Harrington is concerned with the significance of holism as a scientific and cultural phenomenon in the German-speaking life and mind sciences between the two world wards. Building on a concept of holistic psychobiology as "enchanted" science, the project makes use of collective scientific biography to explore holism as a reactionary/reformist strain in 20th century science. As such, Dr. Harrington argues that holism challenges us with four levels of discourse: (1) experimental/empirical; (2) epistemological/ philosophical; (3) existential/religious; and (4) ideological/ political. The roster of individuals chosen to serve as the focusing lens of this study are: Hans Driesch, Jakob von Uexkuell, Constantin von Monakow, Kurt Goldstein and Max Wertheimer. By setting the lives and though of these men in social and institutional context, the book hopes to venture answers to such questions as: how far holistic psychobiology represented a "German" national phenomenon, in spite of international analogues (how far one can speak of "national styles" in science at all); the status and influence of holism within the international scientific community, both before and after 1933; the relationship between the scientific holism of the 1920's and certain early 19th century Romantic traditions (pace the "back to Goethe|" rhetoric of the time); and the relationship between scientific holism and various political ideologies of the 1920's and 1930's, including (but not limited to) the political organicism associated with National Socialism.
