Prof Ulrich Charpa, Research Professor at LBI London, Professor of Philosophy and Member of the Research School at Ruhr University, Bochum.
Previously he taught Philosophy, History of Science and Jewish Thought side by side at various universities. Today he is also affiliated to the Jacques Loeb Center for History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences at Ben Gurion University, Israel, and to Musikhochschule Weimar. He has published several books and over 100 articles in academic journals and collections, mostly on history and philosophy of science as well as of the humanities. He advocates a philosophical conception of research that emphasizes the role of expert knowledge and other competencies of the scientists/scholars involved. Apart from the LBI project on Jews in German-speaking Academia, he is working on 19th century methodology and on some systematic aspects of the relationship between science and Jewish religion. Recent projects include German-Jewish history of music and the role of Jews in philology. An edition of Jacob Bernays' early lectures on the history of philology (1869/70) has been finished.
Book Publications (Co-Ed. with U. Deichmann) Jews and Sciences in German Contexts. Case Studies from the 19th and 20th Centuries (Schriftenreihe des Leo-Baeck-Institutes, vol 72), Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Siebeck) 2007. (Co-Ed. with U. Deichmann) Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, vol. 3, Teil 2 (Schwerpunkt Wissenschaftsgeschichte), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004, pp. 149-312. Wissen und Handeln – Grundzüge einer Forschungstheorie, Stuttgart/Weimar: J. B. Metzler 2001. Grundprobleme der Wissenschaftsphilosophie, Paderborn/ München/ Wien/ Zürich: Schöningh (UTB 1952) 1996. Philosophische Wissenschaftshistorie – Grundsatzfragen / Verlaufsmodelle (Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschaft und Philosophie, vol. 42), Braunschweig/ Wiesbaden: Vieweg 1995. (with A. Grunwald) Albert Einstein (Campus Einführungen), Frankfurt/New York: Campus 1993. Aristoteles (Campus Einführungen), Frankfurt/New York: Campus 1991. (Ed.) Matthias Jakob Schleiden, Wissenschaftsphilosophische Schriften mit kommentierenden Texten von Jakob Friedrich Fries, Christian G. Nees von Esenbeck u. Gerd Buchdahl (History of the Philosophy of Science), Köln: Dinter 1989, separate edition with an essay‚ Zum 100jährigen Bestehen der Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung’, Optisches Museums der Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung 1989. (Co-Ed. with Paul Janssen) Zeit in Natur und Geschichte, Philosophia Naturalis 25/1988, 1-2 1988. (Ed.) Literatur und Erkenntnis – Texte zum Streit zwischen Dichtung und Wissenschaft, Universalbibliothek 15005, Stuttgart: Reclam 1988. Methodologie der Wissenschaft – Theorie literaturwissenschaftlicher Praxis? (Philosophische Texte und Studien vol. 6), Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms 1983.
Recent papers «Jews and Science», forthcoming in: The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 8 (The Modern Period), ed. M. Hart and T. Michels, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013. «Synthetic Biology and the Golem of Prague. Philosophical Reflections on a Suggestive Metaphor », Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 55/2012, 554-570. «‚Musiker und Gelehrte’ – Musikwissenschaft, Kompetenzen und die Aktualität einer vergessenen Vorstellung», forthcoming in: 15. Internationaler Kongress der Gesellschaft f. Musikforschung Göttingen 4.-8. September 2012, Proceedings 2013. «Elias Bickermann as a Historian of the Jews», forthcoming in Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 13/2014. «Anti-Semitism as Mental Mechanism. A Model Suggested by Some Similarities between 19th Century Anti-Semitisms in Music and Science», in: G. Horan, F. Rash and D. Wildmann (eds). English and German Nationalist and Anti-Semitic Discourse, Oxford: Lang 2013, pp. 21-48. «The Race was to the Swift (on G. Fraser, The Quantum Exodus: Jewish Fugitives, the Atomic Bomb, and the Holocaust)», Times Literary Supplement, August 31, 2012. «,Origin’, ,Creation’, and ,Origin of Life’. Some Conceptual Considerations», History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 2012/34, pp. 439-460. «Terminal and Open States of Research. Du Bois-Reymond’s Ignorabimus-Thesis in a New Key», forthcoming in: Limits of Knowledge. Between Philosophy and the Sciences, ed. M. Anacker and N. Moro, Milan: Polimetrica 2013. «The Cambridge Realgymnasium and the Freie Schule London – Historical and Philosophical Remarks on Gerd Buchdahl and Karl R. Popper» in: Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook LVI, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011, 269-287. «Darwin, Schleiden, and the 'London Doctors'. Evolutionism and Microscopical Research in the 19thCentury», in Darwinism, Philosophy, and Experimental Biology, ed. U. Deichmann and A. S. Travis, Dordrecht: Springer 2010, pp. 7-30 (see also: J. General Philosophy of Science 41/2010, pp. 61-84) «On How Watson and Crick Discovered what Watson and Crick had Suggested. The Concept of Discovery Rediscovered», History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 30/2008, pp. 7-30. «’Ich setze nur logisches Denken und die deutsche Sprache als bekannt voraus.’ Zur Geschichte deutschsprachiger jüdischer Mathematiker», NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin N. S. 18/2010, 231-243 «Des Esels langer Schatten – Überlegungen zur Deutung von Kontroversen», in: Das Wagnis des Neuen. Kontexte und Restriktionen der Wissenschaft. Fs. K. Fischer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. H. R. Yousefi and others, Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz 2009, pp. 177-194. (with U. Deichmann) «Jewish Scientists as Geniuses and Epigones – Scientific Practices and Attitudes towards them: Albert Einstein, Ferdinand Cohn, Richard Goldschmidt», Studia Rosenthaliana 40/2007, pp. 75-108. «Introduction by the Editors: Problems, Phenomena, Explanatory Approaches», in: Jews and Sciences in German Contexts (see above), pp. 3-36. «’Aaron Bernstein’s ‘nächster großer Reformator’ - Einstein, Reform Judaism, and the Fries School», in: Jews and Sciences in German Contexts (see above), pp. 155-180. «Mister Bixby, Monsieur Bernard, and Some other 19th Century Scientist-Philosophers on Knowledge-Based Actions», Journal for General Philosophy of Science 37/2006, pp. 257-268. «Kompetenz und technischer Fortschritt – Eine alternative Betrachtungsweise mit einigen Hinweisen zur jüdischen Tradition», in: M. Kerner and Th. Müller (eds.) Gespaltene Welt? Technikzugänge in der Wissensgesellschaft, Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau 2005, pp. 31-47. «Eruw techumim – Fortschrittshandeln und Grenzziehung. Analogisierungen im Blick auf Talmud und Wissenschaft», in: R. Elm (ed.) Horizonte des Horizontbegriffs, Sankt Augustin: Academia 2004, pp. 15-31. (with U. Deichmann] «Vertrauensvorschuß und wissenschaftliches Fehlhandeln – Eine reliabilistische Modellierung der Fälle Abderhalden, Goldschmidt, Moewus und Waldschmidt-Leitz», Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 27/2004, pp. 187-204. (with U. Deichmann) «Jews in the Sciences – Sciences and the Jews: the 19th and 20th Centuries. Introductory Remarks», Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, vol. 3, Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2004, pp. 149-159. «Matthias Jakob Schleiden (1804-1881). The History of Jewish Interest in Science and the Methodology of Microscopic Botany», Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism vol. 3, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University 2003, pp. 213-245. «Judentum und wissenschaftliche Forschung. Einstellungscluster im späten 19. Jahrhundert und ihr Fortwirken», in: Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, vol. 3, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2004, pp. 175-198. «Matthias Jakob Schleiden», in: O. Breidbach and Th. Bach (eds.) Naturphilosophie im 19. Jahrhundert, Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog 2004, pp. 627-653.