Philosophical, theoretical, and historical exploration of the natural sciences has a deep tradition at Prague University. This tradition is closely associated with the multifaceted influence of Ernst Mach (1838–1916), a theoretical physicist, physiologist, philosopher, and author of the first comprehensive and classic history of mechanics (Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung, 1883). The current Department of Philosophy and History of Natural Sciences was effectively established with the founding of the Faculty of Science at Charles University in 1920. The department's inception is inseparably linked with the figure of zoologist, historian of biology, and philosopher Professor Emanuel Rádl (1873–1942), one of the most prominent intellectual figures in the interwar Czechoslovak Republic. The discipline developed in parallel with its international establishment and institutionalization but was forcibly suppressed at the faculty for political reasons starting in 1950. Its revival under free conditions after 1989 drew on its development in academic, non-university institutions, and on unofficial platforms. The department's revival in 1990 is associated with the name of molecular geneticist and philosopher Professor Zdeněk Neubauer (1942–2016), who was connected with unofficial Prague philosophy and cultural dissent during the normalization period.
Thanks to the contributions of these two founding figures, the department is still referred to as the "Rádl's" or "Neubauer's" department (see also Collections). The detailed history of the department, along with its associated disciplines and other significant figures, is presented below in the following sections:
- Founding and Influence of Emanuel Rádl
- Other Key Figures from 1920–1939
- Matoušek’s Postwar Revival and Its End
- Continuities During the Time of Oppression until 1989
- Revival after the Velvet Revolution
Founding and Influence of Emanuel Rádl
Emanuel Rádl was habilitated at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Charles-Ferdinand University in 1904 in the physiology of the sensory organs of lower organisms, but the field was expanded two years later to the history of biological theories. In the meantime, he became renowned as the creator of a new field in the international context (Geschichte der biologischen Theorien, 1905, 1909, 1913). He was also a member of the first editorial board of Isis, the international journal for the history of science founded in 1913 by George Sarton (1884–1956). He could only be appointed as a full professor of natural philosophy at Charles University after the war in 1919, due to his political affiliation as a supporter of T. G. Masaryk. The uncertain placement of his position was resolved with the establishment of the Faculty of Science in 1920, where a Seminar for Methodology and History of Natural and Exact Sciences was established under Rádl's leadership. Meanwhile, at the German University in Prague, the field of natural philosophy was simultaneously represented by philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932), a follower of Franz Brentano and Masaryk, and later by prominent figures of the Vienna Circle, theoretical physicist Philipp Frank (1884–1966) and philosopher Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970).
At a time when scientific research and teaching were concentrated in large university institutes, Rádl's Seminar represented, by today's standards, a smaller department, further divided into two sections: for natural and exact sciences. Rádl was the head of the section for methodology and the history of natural sciences. His university teaching and scholarly work during this period are notably represented by his monograph Moderní věda. Její podstata, methody, výsledky (Modern Science. Its Essence, Methods, Results, 1926). Rádl's university lectures and discussion forums, particularly in the early 1920s, were widely attended by students from other faculties and often became public events or pillars of many other discussions. As a recognized scientific figure and publicly engaged philosopher, associated with societies like the Philosophical Union or the Academic YMCA, he also gained fame as the main organizer and president of the VIII International Congress of Philosophy, which took place in Prague in September 1934. He collaborated with his German colleagues in Prague on the organisation of this event; where the Vienna Circle group made a significant appearance, and – following the example of its and the famous Prague Linguistic Circle – it was established the Prague Philosophical Circle, the beginning of the local phenomenological tradition. Rádl's long-term illness gradually excluded him from active teaching, and he was officially retired in March 1939.
Other Key Figures from 1920–1939
The second prominent figure in the new department was professor Karel Vorovka (1879–1929), head of the section for logic and the philosophy of exact sciences. Vorovka studied mathematics and physics, habilitated in 1921 based on his work Úvahy o názoru v matematice (Reflections on Concepts in Mathematics, 1917), and focused on philosophical questions of mathematics and natural sciences, issues of conventionalism, probability, causality, and the theory of relativity. He became the unofficial head of the so-called younger philosophical generation, aligned with the philosophy of creative intuition and theistic panpsychism (Skepse a gnose; Skepticism and Gnosis, 1921). Vorovka was appointed a full professor of natural philosophy in 1924 based on his work Kantova filosofie ve svých vztazích k vědám exaktním (Kant’s Philosophy in Its Relations to the Exact Sciences, 1924), but his promising career was cut short by his untimely death. Another unique researcher at this department from its inception was the historian of exact sciences, particularly mathematics, professor Quido Vetter (1881–1960). Initially, as a docent based on his work O metodice dějin matematiky na univerzitě (On the Methodology of the History of Mathematics at the University, 1918) and from 1924 as an associate professor of the history of mathematics at the Faculty of Science, Vetter was the first university teacher of this field in the country (later also at the Czech Technical University). He focused mainly on ancient mathematics (Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Arabic), the history of Czech mathematics, and also the history of astronomy (Jak se počítalo a měřilo na úsvitě kultury; How Calculations and Measurements Were Done at the Dawn of Culture, 1926). His journey into the international community of historians of science is documented by his admission in 1929 as a member of the "Académie internationale d’Histoire des Sciences." In the 1930s, he served as its president for three years, culminating in the organization of the IV International Congress of the History of Science in 1937 in Prague. Vetter's activities gave rise to all the important post-war institutions in the field of the history of natural sciences in the country.
In 1927, ass. prof. Otakar Matoušek (1899–1994) joined the department, having habilitated in geology in 1925 but later devoted himself to the history of natural sciences, particularly geology and medicine (Dějiny československé geologie; History of Czechoslovak Geology, 1935). In 1934, he was appointed an associate professor of methodology and the history of natural sciences at the faculty, but he was also known as a versatile popularizer: editor of the journal Vesmír (1930–1950) in close collaboration with Bohumil Němec (1873–1966), and especially the first director of the lecture and educational program of Czechoslovak Radio (1931–1939), an activity that is difficult to fully appreciate today, as it was innovative even in a European context. In 1932, ass. prof. Albína Dratvová (1892–1969) habilitated in the philosophy of natural sciences at the Faculty of Science and became another outstanding figure at the department. She studied philosophy and mathematics, then focused on the methodology of natural sciences, theoretical problems of physics (Problém kausality ve fysice; The Problem of Causality in Physics, 1931), logic, and also pedagogy in philosophy and psychology. She built on Rádl's comprehensive understanding of the relationships between philosophy and science, but she more strongly embraced the impulses of contemporary logical positivism and produced the most developed synthesis on the topic of Filosofie a přírodovědecké poznání (Philosophy and Scientific Knowledge, 1939, 1946) in her generation in the country.
Although the department was relatively small, the remarkable composition of the main figures mentioned (there were more individual external lecturers) integrated highly diverse approaches at the intersection of philosophy, history, and theory of natural sciences. All the representatives of these fields mentioned held some exceptional place in Czechoslovak philosophy and science and made an indelible mark on the broader cultural consciousness. Despite the primary focus being on teaching students of other disciplines at the Faculty of Science and beyond, the importance of the department is also evidenced by the number of direct graduates, especially students of E. Rádl. Under his guidance defended their doctoral theses some later prominent figures in scientific or cultural life, such as biologist, anthropologist, and aesthetician Bohuslav Brouk (1912–1978), known as a promoter of surrealism and psychoanalysis; physician, biologist, and geneticist Bohumil Sekla (1901–1987), who ensured the continuity of genetic research in the 1950s; philosopher and psychologist Vladimír Tardy (1906–1987); or Igor Hrušovský (1907–1978), a pioneer and founder of the philosophy of science in Slovakia.
Matoušek’s Postwar Revival and Its End
After the illness of Rádl, Matoušek gradually took over his teaching, management of works and workplace. However, the closure of the Czech universities soon followed in the autumn of 1939, making further academic activities of the seminary impossible. Instead of completing his professorship, Matoušek had the thankless duty of handing over all his inventory to the German Nazi commissioner for the closed Faculty of Science, the plant physiologist Viktor Denk, in the spring of 1940. At the Faculty of Sciences of the Deutsche Karls-Universität (German Charles University), which in 1939-45 became the only official successor to the oldest university in Prague, no analogous workplace was established despite the efforts of zoology professor Josef Gickelhorn (1891-1957) in 1944.
Matoušek was active in the domestic non-communist resistance during the German occupation and during the Prague Uprising in May 1945 he was put in charge of the Rebel Radio by the Czech National Council. After the reestablishment of Charles University in 1945, he was finally appointed full professor and became head of the department again, reestablished under the broader name of the Institute for General Natural Science and the Seminar for the History of Sciences. The Institute moved to a building in Viničná 7. Matoušek surrounded himself with a group of young assistants and claimed the legacy and intentions of Radl's original institute. He located the editorial office of the journal Vesmír there, which he finally took over from B. Němec, and with his collaborators he worked to modernise and internationalise it. Already then, the Institute had a branch of philosophy and history of natural sciences, and Matoušek had the ambition to make the Institute an integrating institution within the whole country. He focused his teaching on the study of the history of the individual natural sciences with an attempt at systematic generalization (Člověk kritisuje přírodu; Man Criticizes Nature, 1941, 1946).
The turning point came in February 1948, with the communist coup and the gradual subordination of the entire sphere of science and education to the ideological and power supervision of a single state Communist party. Centrally controlled departments or institutes of Marxism-Leninism were introduced at all faculties, with the teaching of the dogmatic form of Marxist ideology compulsory for all students until 1989. With a few exceptions, the study of other philosophical trends and approaches was prevented throughout the period of communist domination and took place only outside the curricula, unofficially and illegally. Matoušek and Dratvová, as non-Marxists who did not conform to the regime, immediately began to be subjected to increasingly strong pressure, and in an atmosphere of Stalinist campaigns and enforced self-criticism, both were subjected to a public trial at the faculty in 1950, prevented from further teaching, and Dratvová was retired. Matoušek's journal Vesmír was officially withdrawn by the Ministry of Education and his department as an independent Institute within the faculty was closed down.
Continuities During the Time of Oppression until 1989
In the following period of the inorganic division of the Faculty of Science into Biology, Mathematics and Physics (with Chemistry) and Geology and Geography, it was nevertheless possible to maintain the department as a department of social sciences thanks to the distant protection of the mathematician and then university rector Miroslav Katětov (1918-1995). Otakar Zich (1908-1984), a logician and philosopher with interests also in the history of astronomy, was transferred from the Faculty of Philosophy to head it, while Matoušek remained in the temporarily suffering position of non-teaching deputy. In particular, however, the circle of young assistants, which included the later prominent representatives of the field Irena Seidlerová (*1926), Luboš Nový (1929-2017), Josef Smolka ( 1929-2020), Mikuláš Teich (1918-2018) and as the only non-party member in this group Zdeněk Horský ( 1929-1988), found a place here. In the stifling atmosphere of that time, on the ruins of Radl's and Matoušek's workplace, they secretly formulated and elaborated a common program: a systematic project of collective processing of the history of exact sciences. When further existence at the faculty was unsustainable, the group was able to move to the Historical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1956, create a separate Department for the History of Science and Technology, and complete the project with the paradigmatic Dějinami exaktních věd v českých zemích do konce 19. století (History of the Exact Sciences in the Czech Lands to the End of the 19th Century, 1961). The group then initiated the founding of the Czechoslovak Society for the History of Science and Technology (1965), of which M. Katětov became the first head, and the journal History of Science and Technology (1968).
In a further reorganisation, when the Faculty of Science was reunited, the Department of Philosophy was re-established in September 1959 (also for the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, which remained separate). This was made possible by a reform in the process of destalinization, when the university-wide departments of dialectical and historical materialism were divided into separate departments, closer to the disciplines of the individual faculties. Thanks to the previous still living tradition, the department consciously continued the work of Rádl, Matoušek and last Zich. It was noticeably freed from ideological oversight thanks to the revival and relaxation of the 1960s, developing methodology and philosophy of natural sciences with a basis in contemporary Logical Positivism, and the topics of biological theory gained a strong position, but the range of interests was broader thanks to the circle of older workers and new young assistants (the collective result was the original systematic textbook Filosofie, metodologie, věda; Philosophy, Methodology, Science, 1969). Philosophical and methodological problems of general science and mathematics and physics were pursued by Ivan Kuchár (1932-1998), Miloslav Skyba (*1932) or Břetislav Fajkus (1933-2021), theoretical-biological by Miloslava Volková or Vladimír Dragan. An exceptional personality was the logician Jindřiška Svobodová, better known as Jindra Tichá ( *1937), also in exile as a writer and political scientist (memoirs Praha v mé krvi; Prague in My Blood, 2023). Josef Vinař (1934-2015), Jiří Polívka (1939-2016), and Jiří Michálek (*1940), young students of Jan Patočka with an anthropological-phenomenological orientation, also began to work here. Curiously, the philosopher and cyberneticist, later a leading dissident, Václav Benda (1946-1999), was given a work contract here three days before the workplace was closed down. After the military occupation by the "friendly" Warsaw Pact troops during the coming so-called consolidation and normalization, this department became a target of criticism and was closed down, or rather exemplarily dispersed, in the autumn of 1969 as one of the bases of so-called revisionism in the philosophy of science. Those who did not adapt to the new conditions were prevented from further professional activity, and some emigrated. The ideological supervision and the fight against hostile forces were taken over by the re-established central institutes of Marxism-Leninism, and the longest ever dark period for philosophy and theory of science on official ground began.
Revival after the Velvet Revolution
Some partial continuity with the previous platforms was represented in the 1980s by the seminars "Philosophy of Mathematics" by Petr Vopěnka and "Mathematical Methods in Psychology and Related Fields" by Miroslav Katětov at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, widely attended by personalities who were not officially allowed to work in their fields. A similar field was also provided for people from the cultural dissent by some computer science departments or seminars organized by branches of the Czechoslovak Scientific and Technical Society at the natural science institutes of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. Zdeněk Neubauer played a prominent role in the cycles entitled Philosophical Problems of Cybernetics and Cybernetic Problems of Natural Science. He started as a microbiologist and molecular geneticist: during his work at the “Laboratorio Internazionale di Genetica e Biofisica in Naples” (1967-70) he achieved priority for several new findings in the field of regulatory genes and controlled hereditary changes at the level of gene activity. After his return to the faculty in normalized Czechoslovakia he was prevented from further scientific advancement, but as a laboratory technician he worked for some time on the morphogenesis of bacterial colonies. Privately, he dealt mainly with philosophical issues of biology in the above-mentioned semi-official or unofficial structures, which included, for example, residential seminars organized by Ivan M. Havel (in flat of his brother Václav Havel), and published extensively in samizdat (among others, the Czech translation of A. Portmann's Neue Wege der Biologie, 1979, with his own introduction). In internal uncensored publications such as Střetnutí paradigmat v současné biologii (The Clash of Paradigms in Contemporary Biology, 1985) and others, he presented contemporary neo-Darwinism, unprecedented in official biology, but also subjected it to critical reflection from the point of view of the autonomy of biological phenomena. The culmination of this work was his major contribution to the summer school Mathematical Models of Morphogenesis (1988), followed by the proceedings of Geometrie živého (Geometry of the Living) in the watershed year of 1989. He influenced, either initiationally or critically, a number of biologists and philosophers of his generation.
Right from the revolutionary days of November 1989, Neubauer was involved in the restoration of the free academic life of the faculty through intensive lecturing and organizational activities. During the following spring, he formulated a proposal to reestablish the department as a continuation of Radl's original department, officially established on October 1, 1990, and became its head. Closer ties existed with the Centre for Theoretical Studies at the Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, which was founded at the same time by Ivan M. Havel. A symbolic expression of continuity was also Matoušek, who at the end of his life formulated a report on persecution for the Faculty Rehabilitation Commission and also approved the editorial takeover of the journal Vesmír I. M. Havel and his collaborators. B. Fajkus and J. Michálek returned to the department as rehabilitated workers in the continuity of the pre-1969 department. From the Viennese exile came the zoologist and philosopher Stanislav Komárek, who then became Neubauer's successor in the head since 1996. The reestablished department initially built on a number of independent philosophical and scientific activities that had taken place in the 1980s. Other biologists or philosophers from the faculty, from several departments of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences or from the existing "underground" found employment there: microbiologist Eva Koutecká, zoologists Ivan Horáček and Daniel Frynta, botanist Jiří Sádlo, philosopher with a focus on ancient philosophy and science Zdeněk Kratochvíl, molecular and theoretical biologist Anton Markoš or evolutionary biologist Jaroslav Flegr. For some of them, it provided only a temporary background in the post-revolutionary period of the restoration of a free academic environment, while others connected their professional activities with it on a long-term basis and contributed to its further profiling. Other members of the younger generation, originally trained in science, philosophy and the humanities, joined in teaching and research.
The renewed Department of Philosophy and History of Natural Sciences belonged to the structure of related new departments at some faculties of Charles University, united in the so-called Institute of Foundations of Education of Charles University. The revolutionary period symbolically ended when this project ceased to exist, but the department maintained its identity within the Faculty and the University, and at the beginning of the millennium it was transformed from an all-faculty department into one of the departments of the biology section. It gradually profiled its professional focus in the two traditional lines of disciplines "philosophy and history of natural sciences" and "theoretical and evolutionary biology" in cooperation with professionally related university and academic departments in the Czech Republic and abroad. This already belongs to its contemporary history and current profile.
Autor: Tomáš Hermann