hu wissen 3 (pdf) - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Das Berliner
Antike Kolleg
The Berliner
Antike-Kolleg
www.berliner-antike-kolleg.org/
Das Berliner Antike-Kolleg wurde im Mai
2011 in einem Festakt im Pergamonmuseum
gegründet. Es vereinigt eine Graduiertenschule
für altertumswissenschaliche Studien, ein
der Alten Welt gewidmetes Forschungszentrum
und ein Forschungsportal, das sich mit
Methoden zur nachhaltigen Datensicherung
und -pflege befasst. Getragen wird das Berliner
Antike-Kolleg von den sechs Institutionen,
die seit dem Jahr 2007 im Exzellenzcluster Topoi
zusammenarbeiten. Humboldt-Universität,
Freie Universität, Berlin-Brandenburgische
Akademie der Wissenschaen, Deutsches Archäologisches
Institut, Max-Planck-Institut für
Wissenschasgeschichte und Stiung Preußischer
Kulturbesitz schließen sich zu einer langfristigen
Kooperation in Forschung und Lehre
zusammen und stellen unter Beweis, welches
Potenzial für die Erforschung der Alten Welt in
der interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit steckt.
Von der Kooperation profi tieren Nachwuchswissenschalerinnen
und Nachwuchswissenschaler
in besonderer Weise. Ab dem akademischen
Jahr 2012/13 werden die ersten Promotionsprogramme
ihre Arbeit aufnehmen.
The Berliner Antike-Kolleg was inaugurated
at an official ceremony that took place in the
Pergamon Museum in May 2011. It comprises
the Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies,
the Research Center for Ancient Studies and the
Ancient Scientific Research Portal, which focuses
on developing methods for protecting and
maintaining scientific data over the long term.
The Berliner Antike-Kolleg was founded by six
institutions which have collaborated in the Topoi
Cluster of Excellence since 2007. Humboldt-
Universität zu Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin,
the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
and Humanities, the Deutsches Archäologisches
Institut, the Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science and the Prussian Cultural
Heritage Foundation. The Kolleg provides a
permanent structure for collaborative research
and teaching and proves the great potential of
an interdisciplinary approach to gaining a
deeper understanding of Antiquity. Young researchers,
in particular, benefit from this partnership.
The Berliner Antike-Kolleg will launch
its first PhD programmes in the 2012/13 academic
year.
Affected Parts« and »That the Faculties of the Soul Follow the Temperaments
of the Body«, which have been largely neglected by
philological research so far and are now being analysed comprehensively
for the first time by the Topoi research group.
Even in Antiquity, questions relating to the soul were already
investigated using empirical methods. On the basis of visible phenomena
such as functional impairments, excretions, skin discolouration,
as well as descriptions of physical pain and other symptoms,
conclusions were drawn on their origin in places inside the
body not visible to the eye. The function of organs was deduced
from pathological cases where localised injuries or diseases were
associated with obvious malfunctions. The fact that the ancients
determined the heart to be the main seat of the soul is explained
by the fact that while the loss of an arm or an eye has no obvious
effect on a person’s soul or its faculties, destroying a person’s
heart necessarily entails destroying their soul.
Although the ancients’ approach to the subject seems almost
modern, the »geographical« maps of body and soul they produced
appear rather odd and incomprehensible to us today at first
glance. This is precisely where the benefits of a large Cluster of
Excellence come into play: All of the disciplines and research
groups involved work across disciplines rather than in their own
little bubble. Thus a number of different teams within Topoi are
working on deciphering ancient maps, proceeding from different
assumptions and looking at the problem from quite different perspectives.
One team, for example, is looking at imagined spaces
not in scientific treatises but in the mythological and belletristic
literature of Antiquity.
The researchers have also found surprising parallels between
early attempts to localise physical and psychological functions
and how the ancients visually represented the topography of
heaven and earth. Neither simple geographical maps produced at
the time nor the surviving representations of the constellations
and planetary orbits employed coordinate systems of the kind
generally used today, and complex heuristics are frequently required
just to recognise what they depict. A group led by Gerd
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