4.1.1 The Time of the Sciences

In the course of the previous considerations, we have been dealing with the sociologic understanding of time before discussing social memory. Time is no natural subject or one which might be considered independently of the consciousness, but it is socially created by reaching back to past experiences in view of a future that is supposed to be drafted. Thus seen, it seems obvious to put objectivist understandings of time into brackets and ask, against the background of the analysis of the memory of science, about the socially constituted time of science. This way, the view is neither at dealing with time philosophically, in the sense of a philosophy of time, nor at the various concepts of time developed by different disciplines to cope with their respective subjects. Instead, it is about a “system time”, which helps answer the question of what scientific activity considers an operatively relevant past and which deadlines are relevant to the future. Science makes use of time as an observer’s category; however, it also creates its own time. In this context, Luhmann distinguishes e. g. between the time of the observer and the time of the observed, which amounts to a problem of how to deal with simultaneity interpretatively.⁷

As an observer’s category, time becomes operatively relevant in simple temporal differences by marking a before-after difference. Any causal explanation is based on such a difference; it is, for example, created under controlled conditions in the course of an experiment when a state given at a time t0 is, after having been manipulated, compared to a state at the time t1.

Concerning the analysis of the memory of science, the time of observation leads to questions, to the construction of time intervals.⁸ Then time becomes a comparison tool, allowing for assuming some features of an object as unchanged, others however as being changeable. The time of the observer, on the other hand, concerns the social time regimes of scientific activity as such. Also, science defines itself by path-dependencies resulting from pasts and plans for the future, which are considered relevant. Thus, for example, the scientific community determines which horizons of time are acceptable for research. This holds, e. g., for the stages of a scientific career, carrying out a research project, or the question about the “half-time” of scientific knowledge.

4.1.2 The Memory of Science

Concerning the issue of memory in science, some approaches have been presented above. Sometimes we have been speaking of memory, which in most cases referred to specific selectivity mechanisms which, being rather implicit aspects of memory, must be attributed to the incorporated-practical realm. In the context of a declarative-reflective reference to the past in the context of scientific communication or scientific knowledge, some explicit hints have also been found.

The emphasis on declarative-reflective knowledge seems obvious, insofar as at first sight scientific knowledge seems to consist of explicit “knowledge” which can be accumulated, as represented most of all by scientific products, such as publications. Thus, precisely the declarative-reflective memory of science strives, if not for completeness, then for endless growth, in the context of which selectivity decisions become a problem. Thus, given the exponential growth of knowledge, it is no longer about the separation of outmoded or false knowledge but increasingly about an oblivionist practice of classifying relevance attributions. Apart from such orientations, for quite some time, the research interest has also been attracted by the practices of creating knowledge, that is, by conditions which are not – or no longer – explicated and happen rather “automatically” or indeed according to the understanding of an incorporated-practical memory.

In the following, the declarative kinds will be discussed (1), to then, with the help of practice-theoretical approaches, look for incorporated aspects of the genesis of knowledge (2). Finally, we will deal with an aspect of social memory relevant to the genesis of scientific knowledge but has yet been neglected: the objective-technical aspect (3).

In science, the archive seems to be mostly identical with the stock of knowledge, as the accumulation of scientific knowledge happens first of all by way of essays and books, which are (or may be) collected, catalogued, stored and kept ready for possible access at libraries. As the production of scientific knowledge consists much of creating compatibility and describing path-dependencies, it is not just about filing each present product. It is also about allowing for the reconstruction of developments. Constitutive for this is the museum collection of objects – and this also comprises technological apparatuses and inventions which are no longer in use. Thus, the practice of accumulating, archiving and storing comes from the agreement that knowledge collected by humankind may not be lost if one is not supposed to start from scratch again over and over. Thus, a practice has been established for science that, in quite a certain way, coordinates a topic-specific way of remembering while at the same time – at first – preventing any practical selectivity which might come along with coping with the flood of information. This may be imagined as a circular model, producing at first information or artefacts (production), to then keep them (storage), to have them ready for the further production of information (retrieval), in the context of which only part of the available information is used for the further production of knowledge (selection).⁹

Such an understanding results in attributing science to a “perfect memory” (Bowker, 2008, p. 4), which cannot and must not forget anything because the entire information relevant for the production of certain knowledge contents must be in principle available. The roots of such an understanding of science are in the distant past. A “classical” hint is given by René Descartes (1980), who, in the context of his regulations of the methods of the correct use of reason, demands any new knowledge to be based on the entirety of already existing knowledge. In the context of the idea of completeness the concept of memory still is most of all that of a store or container where knowledge is accumulated and provided for future use. Given the exponential growth of the stocks of scientific knowledge,¹⁰ however, this completeness ideal, which initially bothered the encyclopaedists,¹¹ had soon to be qualified, although today it is the guiding orientation for many fields of science.¹² From the awareness of the rapid expansion of knowledge and its limited availability, due to spatial distance – sometimes access to already existing knowledge required considerable efforts – the selectivity problem results.

Closely connected to the ideal of completeness is the idea that existing knowledge is replaced by new knowledge going back to Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel. In this context, Mannheim distinguishes several traditions of the genesis of knowledge.¹³ For example, he says, natural-scientific thought is based on the accumulation of knowledge, whereas humanities thought rather assumes the old to be replaced by the new.¹⁴ Also, this memory motif is based on the idea of a knowledge store. Now the archive is no longer understood to be material-physical but to be the knowledge of humankind that progresses on and on by building on older knowledge.¹⁵

As scientific knowledge is legitimated by progress, the genuineness or progress imperative is immediately connected to social memory. Thus, any kind of knowledge which is claimed to be new depends on reaching back to previously created knowledge by way of remembering. In this context, it is at the same time natural to also base it on the completeness ideal, as progress can be proven only by comparison to already existing knowledge. The selectivity of memory is not discussed, as reaching back must refer to a complete store or a perfect memory. Thus, the insight that the memory of science works selectively fundamentally questions the already shaken imperative of completeness and that of progress.¹⁶

For the theory of social systems, selectivity is no problem but a constitutive feature, for it explicitly reorients the memory of science from the store model to the selection function. The self-creation or autopoiesis of the scientific system happens by memory, in the context of the binary code of true/untrue, creating the “identity” of the system while delimiting it from the system’s environment, after all.¹⁷

At the transition to the practice-communicated selection mechanisms, which are also encountered in the realm of science, there happens methodological reflection. This kind of self-observation of science serves for controlling, in particular, the truth and correctness imperative. At the same time, this kind of reflection also creates precedents when it comes to proceeding with the practice of the genesis of knowledge, by certain ways of proceeding being invented, others being further developed, and yet others being declared obsolete and thus being practised no longer. Thus, the conflict between understanding and explaining social research on the one hand and quantifying and qualitative social research on the other should not only be interpreted as a dispute about the “true” approach to knowledge but, just the same, as a debate about the appropriate selection mechanism of scientific memory (Luhmann, 1996, p. 325). Fundamental methodological differences concern issues of future research and the construction of the present by way of a selective reference to the past, which e. g. declares certain elements the foundation of newly presented insights while others are at best mentioned in footnotes, as science-historical excursions and for the sake of “completeness”.

Another selection mechanism is distortions in the context of reaching back to existing research results, may it be in the form of preferring studies that are considered successful or of personally preferred schools, or in the form of purposefully ignoring certain people or positions.¹⁸

Selectivities of the memory of the sciences connected to explicitly reaching back to knowledge produced in the past – thus to memory – are attributed to the realm of declarative-reflective memory. Any selection violating the completeness rule requires explicit reason-giving and thus a formulated “rule”. This way, the declarative-reflective dimension has another side, as the subjects of remembering become a topic, as elements of scientific activity, and remembering as such.

Another access to the memory of science is provided by approaches dealing less with the explicit procedure of the scientific genesis of knowledge but rather with its implicit practices. The incorporated-practical aspect is to be found with all common routines of research. For example, it is one of the fundamental practices of scientific activity to grasp the world, which is supposed to be researched in a conceptual-organising way. Classification happens both when it comes to the naming of objects and in the context of aggregating terms and references; this is an early feature of modern scientificity. The crucial aspect in this context – and from a sociological point of view belonging to the Comte-Durkheim tradition – is the ongoing differentiation of the social organisation of knowledge. Accordingly, classificatory differentiations create more concepts ever. At the same time, classification always happens in the sense of producing types that make only certain features stand out from a given variety, prove them to be typical or characteristic, and place them into a context of interpreting the world.

Another aspect of scientific activity is the creation of hypotheses concerning contexts and effects in the form of theoretical-abstracting systems of statements leading towards achieving as simple and generally valid insights as possible. However, any abstraction achievement comes along with a reduction of complexity and must thus be understood as a selection mechanism. This is demonstrated by studies on scientific memory such as by Jens Soentgen, who, by the example of Parson’s theory of society, illustrates the memory nature of the practice of theory construction (Soentgen, 1997), or by Harald Hofer’s study, who reminds to the fact that the reification concept of the Frankfurt School points out to the destruction of the very nature of an object as a result of being scientifically named and theorised (Hofer, 2011). Hofer’s assumption is particularly confirmed in academic life, which is oriented at continuously producing reifications, thus systematically ignoring the complexity of the world.¹⁹

Furthermore, the constructionist studies of laboratory life demonstrate that frequently at a number of stages of the research process, the work at laboratories – at complicated facilities under technologically demanding experimental conditions – follows implicit routines.²⁰ Accordingly, with the scientific fabrication of knowledge, two selection mechanisms are at work which are by far not synchronised, one of them supporting the creation of specific remembrance (declarative-reflective) with the help of institutionalised assessment routines, the other one (incorporated-practical) organising the perpetuation of unquestioned, implicit (procedural) knowledge. Also, social inequality works as an incorporated selection mechanism in academic life – this does not only hold for gender inequality but also the various kinds of age- or origin-related inequality.²¹

For example, when it comes to passing on scientific knowledge, selection happens according to reputation and seniority, when the judgements by older colleagues with higher reputation are taken seriously. In scientific communities, there are generational effects combining expertise with authority. In this context, Stephen Toulmin comes to the conclusion that to the same degree to which a group of people can be identified with any discipline “whose judgement carries dominant weighty with professional colleagues in the science concerned, the approval of these men does more than anything else to ensure the success or failure, not only of new societies, journals and meetings, but also of new ideas” (Toulmin, 1977, p. 283).

Scientific disciplines are provided with a degree of passed on knowledge that consists of a limited number of acknowledged ways of explaining, of a stock of as yet not established theoretical variants, and a catalogue of criteria for assessing them. As a crucial chronological interval of change, Toulmin identifies the generation or existence of an authoritative group until it is replaced. The concept of the degree of passing on suggests a twofold selectivity of scientific memory. Accordingly, within one generation, an identifiable path-dependency of passing on knowledge becomes obvious; alternative explanations are systematically rejected. However, in the course of generations, a break with this continuity can be stated, which does not always come along with a revolution in the sense of Kuhn but in any case with temporary open-mindedness and uncertainty. Then alternative explanations become negotiable – even if they have almost been forgotten.

As described by Elena Esposito, telematic memory establishes a new variant of selectivity, which is of significance most of all for scientific activity.²² It seems as if increasingly scientific decision-making by way of machine-based selectivity is pushing through, as it establishes either in the context of information retrieval or “automatic” assessment techniques in data mining. There, the procurement of information is no longer oriented at what the researching subject considers relevant but also at the programme’s selectivity or a technological system. Technological selectivity means that decisions concerning the selection or relevance of information are left to automatic routines or assessment procedures of getting access to symbolic hints in view of past events. Then the individual deciding about meaning has the task of making “sense” both of the thus investigated drafts of the future and the thus created pasts. Thus, there is the possibility that a telematically worked out draft of the future – such as in the sense of the context of two variables requiring further analysis – will later be retrospectively bereaved of its telematics past and be replaced by a past which attributes the discovery to “conventional” procedures. In other words: the reconstruction of memory remains the task of the participating consciousnesses, whereas one or the other basic decision is not at all made by scientists “in solitude and liberty” but by a technological system. In such cases, memory-related selectivity is replaced by technological selectivity to which, in retrospect, the quality of memory is attributed, which way it is made a past controlled by actors.

4.1.3 The Memory of Organising Science

The change of the scientific system, away from research tied to monasteries and feudal lords as far as free universities, was further stimulated in the second half of the 20th century. Since the educational reforms of the 1960s, however, since the introduction of increased autonomy of universities at the latest, which are now declared “entrepreneurial”, and since the implementation of concepts of new public management,²³ scientific activity, as well as memory-specific selectivity, can no longer exclusively be described by the norms and institutions of “pure” science. Thus, the specific selectivities of science are increasingly completed by the organisation’s instrumentally rational selectivities or being organised. Initially, the influence of the state made sure that scientists were privileged when it came to the ideal of the freedom of inquiry. With the more recent arrangements, in return for the empowerment of scientists, coming along with deregulation processes in the context of organisational autonomy, there is also a growing influence of organisational principles on scientific production and thus a different kind of heteronomy.²⁴

Regarding the specifics of scientific organisation, many approaches at organisational memory are (for the time being) not easily transferable. Currently, the changing organisation of the sciences in Germany is still too far away from the goal of the entrepreneurial university. Nevertheless, it may be stated that, due to the changes of administrative structures, we must assume an increased effect of non-scientific aspects of selection. The following scenarios can demonstrate this:

Firstly, defining scientists as services providers in the economic sense is a new development. It comes from a politically enforced institutional isomorphism consisting of a more or less trivialising transfer of clichés of entrepreneurial steering mechanisms onto former public institutions.²⁵ Whereas the genuinely “science-related” binary coding of true/untrue was hardly relevant for the organisation of academic life, it seems as if the secondary coding of “renowned/not renowned” is pushing through in all fields of scientific activity – that is with research and its organisations (Luhmann, 1992; Schimank, 2010b).

Secondly, historiography in connection with research institutions is nothing new – such as coming to grips with the NS past – what has been less frequent, however, is an organisational memory referring to the nominal goal of an organisation. This is increased with the development of corporate design and corporate identity, in the context of which it is about improving publicity and inventing an organisational memory. Identification by way of narrating an organisational identity may then contribute to highly renowned scientists-celebrities keeping alumni in line as cash cows. Also, for their former institution, self-historicisation to maintain its reputation becomes significant for maintaining contacts to alumni, not least in connection to the hope of possible future donations and – in the case of tuition fees – for solvent students.

Restructuring towards public management or approaches at an entrepreneurial university demand a high degree of readiness to learn from all sides. Both administrative staff and scientists must be put on adapting to new structural guidelines as comprehensively as possible. According to the research of organisational memory, one must take care that the old will be forgotten as soon as possible, and the traditional routines will swiftly be de-learned. Also, organisational memory may indeed be rendered a problem for science organisations, a persistence mechanism that might notoriously block swift adjustment processes.

4.3.1 Obliviating Researchers

At the level of the subjects and social interactions of scientific activity, aspects of oblivion are viewed as of significance for the constitution of subjects or identities on the one hand and for personal communication among actors. For quite some time, we have been provided with an empirical approach to investigating such aspects, i. e. the research field of ethnomethodology and science and technology studies. Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar or Karin Knorr-Cetina demonstrated that scientific activity is as permeated with an abundance of practices and routines as everyday action at many places.⁵¹ The ethnomethodology approach, which is highly sensitive towards “traces”, seems to be an adequate way of proceeding to identify conditions for oblivion and the reconstruction of science-specific aspects of forgetfulness.

Regarding the micro-sociological level, the following kinds of oblivion will be exemplarily discussed. Thus, not presenting the results of empirical analyses is in the fore but an exploring way of sounding out. It aims at a wide field of different situations, starting from everyday stereotypes typically connected to a “scientist” type of oblivion. Like with the development of the conceptual analysis tool, also the search for oblivion aspects happens at first in the field of structurally grounded forgetfulness (1) and then in the fields of volitional wanting-to-forget (2), and then in the field of instrumental making-forget (3).

At the level of individuals, seemingly natural processes of oblivion can be distinguished according to two aspects: if it is the subject’s forgetfulness given the social reference frames, social roles, or relevant institutions to be found in academia, or if considering the interactions between individuals within research. Furthermore, a combination of these perspectives may be imagined if the relations of the role bearer to his/her everyday social environment are considered – even beyond the field of activity of “science”.

If we start with the individual consciousness, kinds of oblivion become visible which the subject, as far or as soon as he/she becomes aware of a loss of knowledge, attributes to his/her forgetfulness or the forgetfulness of others. The former two examples are connected to the researcher’s identity. As the identity scheme is constantly updated, and as only in exceptional cases time indices – such as memory-relevant, biographic steps of development in the sense of aha or eureka experiences – are inscribed into this updating, change will be forgotten in the course of the stream of consciousness. This may be stated both when it comes to developing of the personality of a scientist (a) and concerning the development of individual expert knowledge by way of incorporating the thought-style of the scientific community (b). Another kind of forgetfulness can be observed with interactions between researchers, if in certain situations these define their exchange of knowledge as being secondary and thus less relevant (c). Contents which are both topically and inter-subjectively significant may fall into oblivion again immediately after having appeared because they belong to the everyday, practical repertoire of behaviour for which usually no explicit routine of reflection is provided.⁵²

The individual identity construction connected to the professional personality results from certain aspects of the professional biography. These are often success stories combined with an artificial, coherent, and narratively created identity in the sense of self-narration or self-history.⁵³ By comparing the self-concept, which is continued in the form of a scheme, to those aspects of a situation that are considered relevant, only part of what has been experienced is used for updating, and much is forgotten en passant. Identity development is idealisation and self-reification simultaneously, making us forget other aspects that are usually considered irrelevant in the environment of relations.⁵⁴ One example of such development oblivion at the level of subjective horizons of expectation is the dissatisfaction of many experienced researchers with the skills of written articulation of young colleagues when it comes to jointly write scientific publications, or the sometimes lacking sensitiveness of examiners for the fears of candidates, which may be due to the experience of being a candidate having been entirely eclipsed by the experience of being an examiner.

We have already pointed out forgetting about sources, as discovered by Robert K. Merton, which he calls cryptomnesia or obliteration by incorporation.⁵⁵ In the course of their production of knowledge, researchers incorporate wide parts of their sets of theoretical and research-practical tools and the boundaries of the epistemically possible, which are defined by the discipline-specific thought styles of their time. Thus, with a growing experience, they get ever more used to the predominant paradigm or the familiar theoretical perspective whose nature of being common science can no longer be seen due to a slowly consolidating, topic-specific oblivion of origins and histories. It is not only about an oblivion-theoretical explanation for tolerated plagiarism, coming along with humbly admitting that one is sitting on the shoulders of giants, but about being too much oriented at the past, a problem Nietzsche pointed out. However, what Nietzsche moralises as the vanity of the historian becomes a knowledge-sociological issue, e. g. in Mannheim’s concept of ideology: due to the professional-biographically consolidating orientation at the existing, one does no longer see the new. What is forgotten most of all is, among others, aspects of irritability.

As an issue belonging to the interaction among scientists, forgetfulness becomes a problem at the boundary between everyday action routines or rituals and scientific communication. For example, only in the rarest cases, the informal exchange during dinner or on the threshold is accompanied by organised documentation – such as in the form of ad-hoc memoranda, which themselves require organised archiving. Although the thus developed ideas may contribute to the genesis of knowledge, the context of their creation – in the cryptomnesia sense – is easily forgotten. Indeed, the informal exchange is an acceptable source of inspiration in any field of activity – however, if it is about precisely documenting the genesis of this knowledge, this field becomes a subject in need of reflection. This is, even more, the case if, concerning the memory of informal encounters, we must assume some inequality-systematic selectivity: insights gained from a threshold conversation with a Nobel laureate may be supposed to be better remembered and to find their way into research documentations than chats with doctoral candidates during the coffee break.⁵⁶

A second aspect concerns the many ideas generated in the course of informal exchange but not pursued further. As yet, oblivion-sociological analysis asking about the loss caused by this uncontrolled selectivity can be inspired only from the fiction of a library of unwritten books and essays as well as from an archive of identified yet undiscussed research questions.⁵⁷

Another approach to the analysis of oblivion at the social micro-level results from perceiving “automatic” or “natural” forgetfulness with others. For the sciences, this becomes relevant on the one hand if subjects attribute forgetfulness to other subjects or groups, or if on the other hand subjects conventionalise, reify or exploit their own forgetfulness to gain legitimation advantages during interactions with others.

In some segments of academic life, which is characterised by a high degree of the division of work, by being professionalised and organised according to “ordinary science”, it may be that the problem of generativity in the sense of the individual desire to create or bequeath something which may last does not play any particular role. Those being active in the sciences may be provided with meaning-making of this kind either from organised work or from fields of life. However, science may as well come along with a high appreciation of an instinct of workmanship – in particular where the idea of autonomy, in the sense of “solitude and freedom”, is still relevant.⁵⁸ The motivation for scientific activity may aim at individual achievements and, in this context, at making contributions to the collective property of social knowledge. Then, the scientist creates something he/she bequeaths to posterity – a desire which aims at the opportunity to be remembered, by one’s work, by the collective and to this way become immortal.⁵⁹ If this is a relevant motivation, scientific activity seems to be connected to the subject’s awareness of his/her own finiteness while at the same time providing an opportunity to work against the danger of being forgotten. Who has “dedicated” his/her life to science, may believe to be worthless if not succeeding with inscribing him/herself into the “history book” of this system.⁶⁰ Thus, the fear of not creating anything that might last would be a driving force for relentless production. In this context, the focus of oblivion analysis is on the structural oblivion of a professional and reference group as anticipated by the individual member and related to his/her own actions, as well as on the diagnosis of behavioural patterns resulting from the involved actors’ attempts to cope with this.

Another starting point for forgetfulness at the micro-level does at first sight not look particularly obvious from a knowledge-sociological point of view. It concerns whether the specifics of the scientific field of activity create a typical kind of forgetfulness among the involved individuals that could be distinguished from other social contexts. The common stereotype of the absent-minded professor is one example.⁶¹ In this context, only partly the proverbial absent-mindedness finds expression by moments of forgetfulness, as first of all, it consists of a strong focus of subjective attention on the reality segment of science while being comparably much estranged from paramount reality.⁶² Due to his/her behaviour, the absent-minded scientist disappoints expectations of the everyday world; however, he/she may hope for indulgence, as the lack of attention may be excused by his/her focus on the highly prestigious activity of producing insights. As, by way of the title, his/her professional status is associatively connected to his/her personality, it may be assumed that this complete personality – and not only the professional aspect – has completely been absorbed by this déformation professionelle. However, the interpretation pattern of absent-mindedness – beyond the indulgence shown towards absent-minded scientists – also tells about the expectations connected to this field of activity in the context of the social differentiation of labour. Thus, an individual’s absent-mindedness and, coming along with it, his/her forgetfulness are not only interpreted as a weak spot but are really expected and are attributed to the scientist even in minor cases.

It is remarkable with this kind of oblivion that specific social roles or positions with a lesser degree of adjustment to these roles and positions, determined by social reference frames, are expected. The scientist is allowed to habitually not take part in socially expected changes of context. Some forms of social misbehaviour are excused, as he/she is allowed to stay within an esoteric sub-universe with relevance structures that are mostly non-transparent for the outside world due to his/her profession. In this context, his/her strange behaviour measured by everyday relevancies results in the frame of the interaction being modulated in the sense of Goffman (1986). On the other hand, the private and professional environments of absent-minded scientists are expected to adjust the structure of their interaction to the fact that this subject will stay within the frame of science. This may find expression by assistants or partners developing structures for coping with typical, forgetfulness-induced failures – such as always having a packed overnight bag ready, just for the case that once again, the time for going on a trip has been forgotten. An analysis of forgetfulness oriented at profession-related stereotypes is not meant to insinuate that the professional group of scientists is prone to dementia. Rather, it is a cause for an analysis of interactions at the interface between purely scientific communication and other horizons of communication. Then, forgetfulness is not necessarily interpreted as a spleen of a certain group but may be analysed as the starting point for attention and mutual recognition deficits.

The issue of wanting-to-forget, which at the level of the individual or the interaction among individuals is illusionary, after all, may be considered intended oblivion, both when it comes to developing the scientist’s professional identity and to make sure that there happens successful interaction in the context of scientific activity. Also this is not exclusively about the individual’s steering or control achievements. It would also have to be assessed in how far purposeful communication, which must be associated with wanting-to-forget, can be symbolically articulated and thus becomes action-relevant.

Wanting-to-forget, aiming at individually available, perhaps persistently stored knowledge which is perceived as a burden, comes from the desire to no longer add one’s own experiences to subjective memory. This way the issue of trauma as an injury of the soul, which is most of all dealt with by psychology and the neuro-sciences, is – in a weaker form – transferred to aspects of everyday experience. In sociology, such an approach is found in Goffman who deals with damaged identity and the ways of dealing with it in the context of interactions.⁶³ In the following, some typical aspects are going to be pointed out to which in the case of scientists may be connected to the desire, in the sense of a strategy of coping and updating, to no longer remember or forget certain experiences. At first, the focus will be on the identity work of the scientifically researching subject.

A particular kind of identity-affecting wanting-to-forget can be derived from a purposefully selective reference to social frames, such as when scientists attempt to keep reality levels separate. Such a separation may work as self-protection and comes along with giving up on transferring the knowledge contents of one field to another. Also, this is a specific kind of self-forgetfulness, in the context of which consequences of social differentiation – such as separating work from life – are reflected by the individual’s identity. In the form of intended or at least accepted forgetfulness of shape, wholeness or configuration (Gestalt), the individual may do without the idea of integrating his/her self. Then there develops a patchwork or hybrid concept of identity used instrumentally or is accepted as a result of being overtaxed. Such a concept may then be used as a socially accepted kind of “split personality” to justify actions that look inconsistent.

The history of the sciences provides examples of scientific insight and social ideas of truth colliding with each other to such an extent that the scientific individual seems to have no choice but to keep the two fields separate. For example, sometimes, the philosopher’s attempt to live according to the system he/she has invented seems to be possible only at the price of madness or disintegration, as it is demonstrated e. g. by Auguste Comte’s biography.⁶⁴ By ignoring the purposeful integration of different kinds of knowledge, constituting themselves by identity – which may be compared to an intra-role conflict⁶⁵ – and by preferring one out of several contradicting fields of knowledge, it is possible to create unambiguity. This comes at the price of artificially created ‘schizophrenia’ which, in the form of differentiating subjective worlds of meanings, may come along with integration problems when the accepted and thus unsolved contradictions are forgotten as such. Thus, this is the same synchronisation problem researchers are confronted with when believing to proceed without being influenced by everyday rationalities. However, this problem, which is dealt with by more recent scientific research, is two-faced: on the one hand, it is an ideologically maintained everyday forgetfulness of those subjects as being active in academic life. On the other hand, some consciously accepted professionality forgetfulness happens in coping with everyday problems. The latter may result in inter-personal conflict when scientific expertise is applied to solving situations of everyday conflict.⁶⁶

Another aspect of volitional oblivion becomes evident by the obligation to, in the course of one’s work, at first work out the state of research. Given a large amount of information to be processed, it may be that the individual scientist develops selection strategies that are helpful for focused research while at the same time ignoring allegedly irrelevant additional information or alternative orientations, as long as no obstacles appear which might make a new approach necessary. Oblivion strategies aiming at ignoring existing, collectively binding knowledge must be filed under oblivion (I) as preconditions for “natural” oblivion and are found at different passages of the self-reflections of scientists. Among the techniques of selecting information, there are selective reading methods – “you cannot read everything” – such as the limitation to titles, abstracts or introductions and lists of the keywords, and so-called skimming or scanning techniques.⁶⁷ In any case, documents of scientific arguing are not completely acknowledged, and the “messages” of authors are reduced to a few statements which are considered essential, yet already at that stage, their relevance is decided, and a selection is made. One work is remembered, the other one forgotten.⁶⁸ Only after such a superficial selection it is decided if a publication is taken into further consideration, perhaps even received in more detail, or if it is left out of consideration and thus left to oblivion.

What is true for the researcher’s identity may also be related to the change of subjective guiding orientations. Oblivion is subjectively reasonable and desired where a longer research activity proves to be so outmoded and pointless that any further dealing with the concerned subject must be ended. This may be connected to giving up on proven thought routines and thus complete sub-fields of a grown profession-specific context of experiences. Reorientation amounts to relearning, coming along with wanting to forget the old thought style. According to Thomas S. Kuhn, any scientist moving outside a valid paradigm is confronted with the need to decide to pursue his/her different orientations further or stick with the current mainstream.⁶⁹

Another irritation for activity-induced identity comes from mistakes made in the past, which, given the organised scepticism among the sciences, should be considered a lesson to learn and a reminder (Merton, 1973, p. 280). From the perspective of the development and presentation of professional identity, however, mistakes are considered a flaw and, if they frequently come to one’s mind as a persistently burdening memory, are accompanied by the desire to forget them. Concerning the scientific production of knowledge, such problems must be diagnosed not only for research mistakes documented by publications but also for the emotional-affective experience of the writing of publications. Sometimes writer’s blocks come from the feeling of being incapable, of repeating old mistakes or again and again encountering them in the course of editing.⁷⁰

Apart from any scientific action logics, wanting to forget can also be comprehended in the context of a typical yet mostly “invisible” change of framing. For example, the shift of priorities in the context of scientific work, away from “pure” research activity and towards becoming committed with science policy, science management or the acquisition of third party funding – in particular when reflecting on different action logics – results in the desire to forget experiential contexts or at least to not addressing them any longer. Sometimes such a reorientation is under suspicion of “changing sides” by third parties remaining in the field of research, coming along with the judgement that the concerned person has forgotten about his/her “old” criteria.

A similar diagnosis must be made concerning the transition from university education to non-university professional life. In particular, in the case of those studies which are less predetermined by vocational fields, graduates become fully swallowed by “the” practice, they adjust to their new working conditions and leave their sometimes very complex theoretical knowledge as well as the habitus acquired during scientific education “in the cloakroom”. From the scientific point of view, however, there is the impression that many contents and aspects of the science-immanent practice of reflecting on things, based on exactness and attention, are all too readily or purposefully forgotten.⁷¹

Even mutual adjustment in scientific interaction may be connected to aspects of wanting to forget if either joint failures of the past or discrepancies and conflicts are no longer a topic of discussion. Then, at the level of interaction, we may speak of ways of constructive silencing, for example, if theory-related or proceeding-related differences are ignored for the sake of further cooperation.⁷² By doing so, the interaction partners do not only forget by pursuing a tacit consensus, being silent about conflicting matters. To leave the potential for conflict aside, they connect the hope to bridge the gap from the past through successful interaction. This way, failed or offending experiences in the course of interactions are overwritten by experiences of success. In how far experiences of conflict which, in the form of disappointment, have created a persistent memory can be controlled this way can hardly be estimated by the interaction partners.⁷³ Similar to the concept of suppression of psychoanalysis, there is still the danger that conflicts might, again and again, erupt unexpectedly and in ways that cannot be foreseen. This may be the case if different connotations such as personal disappointment – that is, affective aspects – influence the scientific interaction. We may also imagine conflicts developing in research projects if there had to be “too many” compromises and if fundamental differences affect a project’s “smooth running”.

Apart from these variants of wanting to forget, starting from the individual consciousness, there are also preconditions of oblivion resulting from outside influences on the subject or the interaction. The identity constitution is about processing environmental impressions the individual interprets as indications or symbols of burdening experiences. At the level of interaction, such a figure develops if interaction partners ignore problematic information coming from the situative context.

In contrast to the confrontation of the self with problematic memories, wanting-to-forget involves a specific interpretation of memory stimuli. According to Schütz’s terms Anzeichen (indications) or Merkzeichen (marks), these are autonomous and unsystematic indications which, for the actor, become elements of his/her definition of a situation by irritating his/her original draft for action.⁷⁴ In view of the above-unfolded concept of a sociological spectre, here it is about every day or topic-specific “spectres” appearing as unexpected memory stimuli and again and again making us aware of that what we want to forget – associations of the unresolved we frequently try to counter by way of avoidance. Connected to the concept of trigger-stimulation, this is a “compelling” influence of the social environment which may cause a specific kind of remembering. This influence comes from the adjustment of situative perception and experience or subjective having-become.

The here addressed issue can be illustrated by way of science-critical myths and narratives: Goethe’s sorcerer’s apprentice cannot get rid of the ghosts he has evoked, or Mary Shelley’s Dr Frankenstein, who is haunted and held accountable by the monster he has brought to life. Vast parts of the philosophical criticism of progress may be read as cognitive faculty clashing with the indications of its limits – a symbol-communicated re-entry of modern modernisation maxims in the course of an allegedly linear process of social rationalisation.⁷⁵ Criticism of progress refers to the desire to forget our knowledge of limits, as the latter is considered an obstacle to innovation. Already at the level of individuals and their interactions, it can be shown that not-wanting-to-see well-known limitations are the same as the desire to, if ever possible, forget this kind of knowledge, for the sake of progress – perhaps as a kind of everlasting hope for progress.

Another variant of wanting-to-forget refers to ignoring context-specific indications of apparent problems, dangers or potential dangers. This is a kind of “we-ought-to-have-known”, as it is told by many tragedies of the history of science and is connected to a particular readiness to sacrifice or to a quest for knowledge without any caution or regardless of life and limb.⁷⁶ However, even credulity may be characterised as a kind of wanting-to-forget that ignores hints, inconsistencies, or warnings when scientists, as frequently reported in connection to plagiarism, were all too easily deceived. Then the credit of trust does not consist of looking away once but systematically and path-dependently and the volitional forgetting of causes for suspicion.

From these starting points for wanting-to-forget at the social micro-level, concerning oblivion (I) in the context of science, we may conclude that the desire not to consider certain existing knowledge cannot exclusively be due to overlooking indications or traces. There must always be an experience- or context-specific “frame” within which, again, expectable, existing knowledge would have to be activated by remembering and transferring to action. For practical considerations, individuals or interaction partners decide for volitional forgetting, serving at first for realising once made plans or not putting their implementation into question or endangering it. It is easier to guarantee social action by giving up on the activation of knowledge not in line with the draft and systematic doubt. The precondition is the readiness to ignore problems and concerns to a certain degree and “just have a try”. Behind this, there is the hope that, if things get tough, all reservations will be “belied”, and one may forget all sceptical knowledge with an easy conscience. In other words: this is a credit of trust which must be understood to be a risky strategy of making-forget by the involved actors. In case of failure, the reflection deficit is usually individualised: then it was careless, deliberate, light-hearted or simply deluded-mad (individual) actors. However, it is remarkable that due to the damage being individualised, there are hardly any consequences for the practice of science as a whole and that the relevance of structural causes is forgotten.

More than wanting-to-forget, making-forget – as a precondition or enablement for forgetfulness – is characterised by desire or intention being followed by action and that the creation of preconditions for oblivion may also explicitly refer to forgetting with others. The following selection of examples of making-forget presents ways of (self-) delusion that can be stated in scientific activity. Their overwhelming majority comes from the realm of scientific misbehaviour, the research of which at the level of individuals and their immediate relations has lost its bad reputation of befouling one’s own nest and denunciation only in the wake of fabrication and plagiarism scandals.⁷⁷ The oblivion-theoretical perspective provides orientation for such attempts at investigating deviating behaviour in the sciences. It may help with systematically grasping the structural framework conditions, initial motivations, chances of success and consequences of covering, hushing up, pretending, overlooking and ignoring.

If it aims at manipulating the remembering subject as such, making forget comprises first of all actions of self-delusion. In the context of research, these may also be used purposefully by consciously ignoring certain restrictions of the epistemic tool set. This may happen by “theoretical” cleaning on the one hand, however, by exclusively determining a particular epistemic method on the other. Without careful assessment or debate, alternative approaches are purposefully ignored and thus left to oblivion.⁷⁸ The personally preferred “standard method” entices to ignoring potentials for irritation. This may as well be considered a structurally induced kind of forgetfulness if specific ways of proceeding or theoretical figures have been standardised across disciplines or paradigms. However, using a method always requires the researching individual who applies the appropriate regulations in a more or less orthodox way and may, by rule-based steering of his/her perception, may work in favour of his/her forgetfulness.⁷⁹

Also, scientific activity results in piling both material and immaterial objects that no longer seem relevant after certain tasks have been accomplished. If there is no sufficient room or “capacity” for storing, or if one phase has been finished, there starts tidying up, discarding or “mucking out”. As a comprehensive routine of assessing for relevance, cleaning is a self-technique of making-forget, by way of which objects which are no longer used, which may function as memory stimuli, are systematically taken out of view. Tidying up one’s workplace is, at least symbolically, the same as liberating and clearing the consciousness.⁸⁰ Also, in the context of science, “ritual” cleaning comprises more: symbolically and materially, it perpetuates a strong kind of oblivion which is supposed to prevent from carrying dead knowledge. The weeding routines at archives, the perpetual updating of collections of textbooks connected with discarding research literature that is no longer used and thus identified as being outmoded, fulfils the double function of releasing capacities for the new and getting rid of memory stimuli that are considered worthless.⁸¹

By the up to here addressed kinds of intentional oblivion, we have discussed aspects from the border area between volitional and instrumental oblivion, which can be distinguished first because of implementing oblivionist drafts for action. Making-forget happens, among others, by way of activities aiming at producing forgetfulness with others. Then, making-forget – similar to what illusionists or magicians do – happens in the sense of “toying” with the frameworks of the order of interaction or with influencing it.⁸²

Thus, making forget is part of the methodological practice of scientific epistemology. In some contexts of data genesis, for example, it is considered legitimate to make the observed individuals or interactions forget, as soon as possible, that they have been subject to observation. From those ways of making-forget, which are considered legitimate, we must distinguish the many “innovative” strategies by which researchers try to make their presentation look good. Then, making forget refers to a field of individual impression management that has previously been considered a “grey area” of legitimate action practice, self-presentation, and strategic communication. Among these, there are specific ways of (self-)delusion, overlooking and ignoring other people and their contributions and purposefully manipulating rememberability.

Usually, the mechanisms of institutional regulation rule out such deceits – only the in context of ethnology, folklore studies, psychology or sociology, as an exception, they are part of the methodical tool set, if researchers cannot reveal their questions or their observation activities without irritating their research objects, thus influencing its behaviour.⁸³ As long as there is no knowledge of the actual reasons to participate of e. g. a “participating” and the covered observer cannot be forgotten. The problem of forgetting exists only if, on the one hand, the knowledge of the researcher’s “identity” is always existent in the field and actions are required which prevent ongoing reflection and communication about his/her unique status as well as a thus resulting role attribution. One example is the data collection method of the ero-epic interview, according to Roland Girtler⁸⁴, who attempts to make an interview partner forget that he/she is in an interview situationwith the help of a specific interview technique. Things are similar when it comes to the use of recording devices for the collection of data. The use of such devices must be legitimated by informing about recording. However, as soon as this has been done, it is desirable that recording is (made) forgotten as soon as possible to avoid the shyness of many people towards such devices and thus resulting distortions.

However, in academic life, we encounter variants of making-forget also beyond the genuinely scientific action logic. For example, researchers tend towards drawing the (scientific) public’s attention away from career-damaging behaviour, past mistakes or even attempts to deceive and instead to cases of success or personal achievements. The strategies of oblivion-producing self-presentation are manifold. For example, one or the other less prominent publication may be deleted from the list of publications, or one just speaks of “selected” publications, making oneself appear in a favourable light. Similar things can be observed in the context of presenting fields of activity or project studies. The individual’s name is presented as a “product” or “label” with the help of specific communication media and is thus an element of an institutional archive of openly accessible scientific information. However, this is an organisational aspect of providing information that may be organised by an archivist “him/herself”. The list of publications and the curriculum vitae are also tools of hiding and making forget, as in everyday use, they suggest an expectation of completeness.

What must also be counted among making-forget is strategic disregard, the purposeful ignoring of different and possibly competing positions, paradigms or perspectives. Under conditions of a surplus of information, the quoting researcher must make a choice. If a colleague working on similar issues has as yet not published his/her results prominently, it may be supposed to be not seriously sanctioned if his/her contributions are ignored, to not attract the attention of one’s readers to these works. Another strategy of making-forget is placing a quotation into one’s context or arguing. Thereby, it is possible to hide even relevant insights gained by other researchers in footnotes or side notes without providing them with appropriate space for discussing the research topic. The rules of attributing scientific attention and reputation grant a certain leeway when deciding about relevance. Apart from the obligatory construction of memory, there also happens consciously controlled forgetting.

Furthermore, the strategy of ignoring allows for no longer paying attention to disturbing objections or persons and positions declared irrelevant by one’s reference group. However, these variants of produced oblivion, consisting of ignoring concrete subjects, come along with the second kind of oblivion closer to forgetfulness. Thus, the researcher approves with ignoring and, consequently, forgetting about the orientation towards completeness and innovation, which is rooted in the professional ethos of the sciences. As a collectively shared pattern of behaviour, this results in progressively moving away from the completeness imperative.

Another way of making forget is the call for forgetting topics or individuals. Although nobody is obliged to abide, and although precisely such a call for oblivion may raise the interest, still this is an attempt to manipulate memory. How successful such an effort will be, depends on the interaction situation; however, it may be powerful if the authorities of a “school” tell their students which colleagues from the discipline shall be considered and ignored. What in one case may still be considered an action-related consequence of a differentiation process becomes a real problem if scientific “disciples” fall into disfavour with their “teachers” and become subject of a damnatio memoriae in the form of attention and recognition being systematically withdrawn.

Finally, another kind of manipulation by way of making forget is found with how researchers present themselves and science-related memory work. Furthermore, strategies that must be attributed to individuals are also to be found with academic teaching. For example, the student tactic of placing literature at hidden places in the library must be interpreted as a way of making-forget. On the one hand, motivated by making sure that one will have access to a book or by withdrawing literature that is relevant for examinations, this forces others to cope with the missing of a trace of certain knowledge. In some cases, this results in losing time preparing for an examination if the missing book must be acquired from elsewhere. In other cases, such behaviour results in changing the preparation strategy in the sense of “braving the gap”, which, after all, makes the topic that has been declared to be examination-relevant less remembered. Regarding research scandals, this field of student misbehaviour also knows an “adult” variant. Making-forget is closely connected to deviating behaviour by researchers if they try to deceive, hush up, hide, or forge. Such misbehaviour comes with violations of the transparency imperative, which has been a tradition of scientific activity since Enlightenment if authors use esoteric jargon or do not provide evidence for the origin of the ideas stated in their publications. Full plagiarism serves most of all for making work easier in the context of striving for scientific recognition in the form of titles and reputation; however, if it is successful, regarding the affected originator, it is the same as purposefully working in favour of forgetting original research achievements.

In the context of research and science, these considerations on making-forget at the level of individual and interaction result in several actions which may be understood to be preconditions for later forgetting by the actor him/herself as well as by others. The examples demonstrate that intended oblivion may be “imagined” both as being differentiated according to different kinds of knowledge and depending on context. Accordingly, it seems to be very difficult to intendedly forget relevant knowledge – the intended action of no longer wanting to know something is indeed too closely connected to this knowledge. However, in the context of long-term action and given third parties, it turns out that it is possible to create a loss of relevance. This can be in the form of self-delusion or deluding others. As it makes instrumental use of ignorance, deletion, elimination or destruction, such a “shaping of relevance” is always a unique case – usually, there is no need to repeat it.⁸⁵ Therefore, it is possible to maintain the illusion of forgetting or making forget as a reason to act, and also, it may increase the chances that possible remembrance stimuli will disappear. Then, the consequence is a shaky kind of oblivion that has an effect, at least for the time being.

4.3.2 Obliviating Research Institutions

Now that we have distinguished forgetfulness, wanting-to-forget and making-forget at the social micro-level, we will look at the meso-level of groups, networks, and organisations. Also, for the realm of the sciences, this medium level provides an observation perspective which is particularly helpful for depicting the encounter of different realities. This is not about adjusting the motifs and ways of reason-giving of individuals to social structural aspects but about forgetting in the context of group cultures – another possibility to differentiate results from distinguishing intra- from inter-organisational oblivion. Furthermore, there is the possibility to distinguish organisations given fundamental goals. With organised science, we find both organisations belonging to the economic or administrative organisation in the broadest sense – then the purpose of organisation aims, at least nominally, at certain kinds of services – and organisations of participation and the representation of interests.⁸⁶

Before we analyse the kinds of oblivion within the organisation of scientific activity, it must be clarified which organisations may be counted among the scientific production of knowledge. For example, there are business enterprises with their own research departments, non-university research institutions, and universities and colleges in the category of performance-based organisations in the broader sense. On the other hand, to the category of the organised representation of interests, there belong groups and networks such as subject-, discipline- and thus also profession-specific alliances – such as associations of scientific professions as well as their sub-divisions, academies⁸⁷ or large-scale research compounds and collaborative research centres – and also scientific-political bodies. Then, regarding the scientific system, it must be asked how far and where knowledge production follows organisational principles. If we apply the concept of organisation already, if it is about social relations cooperating to achieve a common goal, almost any corporation is organised in a way. Then distinctions are only possible concerning the degree of their regularity and their formal or routine stability – such as in the form of the division of work. However, such an expanded concept of the organisation must also grasp aspects of organising everyday behaviour. It cannot be limited to identifying rationalist-bureaucratic structures, as then the manifoldness of organisational routines, myths and rituals would not be covered.

Mixed relationships characterise the reality of organisations in the scientific realm; attributing certain motifs to a specific type of organisation is not intended. For example, both performance-based organisations and the representation of interests may be associated with decision-making ability. For example, in such a case at universities, the autonomy of the cooperative management level takes a back seat to state and politics influencing the university. This way, the organisation of topical interests is eclipsed by the organisation of administrative or education-political interests, which may also be performance-oriented. The situation is similar with non-university research institutions, where the individual’s decision-making autonomy may be predetermined by the topical foci of the research institution or by the interests of clients. Furthermore, we may differentiate according to the degree of organisation of each respective institution. Accordingly, Frank Meier, in his overview of organisations of science production, describes universities as “weak organisations” which, however, might change in the course of the state’s decision-making authority being extended on universities, or also as a consequence of the introduction of ways of so-called public management (Meier, 2007, p. 789). An analysis of organisational oblivion in science will have to deal with both organisations as rationalised, social contexts of decision-making: planning, steering and control, and with social groups such as communities and networks plus their collective consciousnesses and collective identities. In the following section, these questions will again be pursued by way of distinguishing the three kinds of forgetfulness (1), wanting-to-forget (2), and making-forget (3).

Forgetfulness (oblivion (II)) with organisations, which must be attributed to the social sub-system of science, can be diagnosed for all three kinds of scientific organisations. In the context of general access to organisational knowledge, in particular, those practical and non-explicit ways of producing knowledge move into focus which is also connected to “automatic” oblivion. First of all, it is about those stocks of knowledge that are practically used and not stored for documentation – that is, habitual routines that are no longer subject to decision-making by the group. Among these, there is the knowledge about cooperative-corporative ways of organising the production of scientific knowledge. This holds for intentions to document and report, which are still carefully carried out at the beginning of cooperation, to then being either abandoned or becoming empty routine. Also, it applies to coordination meetings at regular intervals, which, as a result of sometimes high time pressure, do no longer seem to make sense to the actors of everyday research work if the cooperation seems to run smoothly. Being liberated from everyday-practical pressure to act in the context of scientific activity allows for more thorough ways of proceeding when it comes to the production of secured knowledge, which must be realised by way of higher demands on communicative feedback in view of a kind of organised scepticism (Merton, 1973). In particular, these ways of scientific quality assurance are threatened with soon disappearing from view, given the increasing output- or application orientation of the sciences.⁸⁸ The efficiency requirements and the necessity of accelerated knowledge production question the right to thorough forgetfulness the sciences have been granted.

Apart from forgetfulness in carrying out the scientific production of knowledge, there is a kind of forgetfulness, which has to do with the identificatory frame of the organisation – with collective identity or corporate identity. A structural kind of forgetfulness is an element of organisational narratives, in the course of which only certain events are passed on or mythicized, while other events are no longer kept available for later memory. In the case of scientific organisations, the memory of particularly famous members might be people who have been awarded science awards and whose publicly recognized achievements are connected to an exemplary status – hides the fact that the organisation avoids almost any memory of the minor or major achievements of other members.

The third kind of forgetfulness covers aspects of the loss of knowledge resulting from a lack of reflecting on the history of one’s organisation. Suppressing the perpetuation of a collective awareness of history within an organisation is connected to the coming and going of leaderships and the thus connected change of interests and goals. For example, the relevance system of a professional association changes with the individuals occupying the crucial switch points, and these individuals are just the same the representatives of certain strategic concepts or value horizons within the organisation. The thus encountered connection of individual and representative role allows for decisions about relevance which do not only systematically ignore certain alternatives but may, in the future, also neglect existing knowledge contexts. However, a high degree of organisation-related forgetfulness is also persistent memory due to power-induced reforms and “revolutions”. A certain degree of “natural” oblivion, allowing for change and adjustment, is inscribed into any organisation. However, it may also be steered – or avoided – by way of the organisation’s statutes. To a limited extent, the self-documentation of an organisation serves to work on its identity and present the organisation to the public. Dealing with the NS past both by business enterprises and by authorities and associations is an indication of the attempt to purposefully avoid forgetfulness and establish a connection between organisational and national identity – that is, between collective identities at different levels.⁸⁹ The forgetfulness to be observed in the context of changing leadership positions and the positions of delegates may be transferred to organisation members at all levels of the hierarchy, as in the course of staff fluctuation in particular stocks of practical-routine knowledge are constantly left to oblivion.⁹⁰ Given the employment situation of the non-professorial academic staff at German scientific institutions, which is often described as precarious, research institutions appear as highly forgetful organisations because of fixed-term employment. In how far the forced mobility of the scientific staff is a crucial element of research – in the form of increased adaptability and innovation readiness of the individual who is supposed to be scientifically socialised together with forced organisational forgetfulness – is hardly discussed in this context. From an organisation-sociological point of view, the effect of decreed forgetfulness by way of fluctuation in the field of research could be researched by way of a comparison with appropriate experiences at enterprises.

In the case of wanting to forget, the desire or intention to forget something among an organised group – after all, the volitional variant of oblivion (I) – is characterised by a sometimes tacit consensus: then, there is agreement that a certain, nameable and thus declarative-reflective, knowledge content is an obstacle for achieving the goals of the group. This does not refer to any oblivion-preparing activity but to the development of relevancies, such as in the sense of the selectivity-communicating statement: “Forget about it.”

Only in passing, wanting-to-forget in the organisation of scientific education shall be addressed here. In the university realm, the topical organisation of teaching is a matter of the scientists employed there. If not only one professor represents a subject, usually the teaching organisation happens through an exchange with a representative of other subjects. In this context, the contents of lectures and seminars are not exclusively oriented at individual research foci but also at a “local” canon negotiated by the teaching staff. In other words: basic education is constituted by all those involved agreeing on contents they consider necessary. Consensus about the obligatory knowledge for future researchers is en passant followed by a consensus about less relevant knowledge. Thus, the counterpart of canonisation as a small-scale selection in the positive sense is selection in the negative sense, by way of exclusion at the level of teaching. Differentiation of these levels or organising the knowledge to be passed on is telling because those receiving this knowledge consider this “top-down” selected knowledge the subject-related knowledge par excellence.⁹¹

The question of where and in which ways organised research wants to forget must, on the one hand, be investigated by the example of the actors of knowledge production. With many research projects, several scientists deal with the individual aspects of an issue. Thus, the organisation of their activities aims at producing a result. On the other hand, in the case of the organised representation of interests, there happens profession-specific cooperation in the context in which the programmatic selection of knowledge is communicated.

The intention to jointly “give up” on a particular experiential context so that from then on, it will no longer be supposed to be addressed may be based on different motivations. Processes of agreed oblivion are common in the sciences – even more as even oblivion requires organisation if scientific progress is not supposed to be affected. Thus, a consensual selection of what is supposed to be forgotten happens when specific abstractions, interpretation patterns and schemes, systems of classification and categories are declared to be outmoded or refuted. In the following, the organised possibility of preconditions for oblivion in the context of scientific activity shall be considered more closely as a kind of organisational context of cleaning.⁹²

In the context of steering epistemological relevance by way of the organised representation of the interests of science, cleaning conflicts appear in the form of negotiating state of the art. As early as in the context of subject-related congresses – such as during the discussions after the lectures – both established and innovated concepts and theories are continuously assessed. Thus, the goal of these debates is at first to control the appropriateness of terminological-theoretical work, in the course of which the expansion possibilities and limitations of subject-related semantics and theories are fathomed out and determined. Then, by way of canonisation and historicisation, such “germ cells” of conceptual innovation may produce the result that concepts are “determined”, which are defined as being fruitful or hopeless. As a result, it is repeatedly determined what must be kept as a memory and forgotten. As this is no positive determination right from the beginning but rather a kind of negative selection, due to this variant of organising some organised scepticism (Merton, 1973), a certain wanting-to-forget may be stated. After all, this results from leaving obsolete concepts and theories or certain contextualization to oblivion by declaring the topic to be “over”.

The situation is similar to the organisation of research work, which aims at the production of knowledge. Replacing older patterns of explanation and concepts with new ones cannot exclusively be explained by the principle of the screen memory, as such a replacement does not at all happen without conflict. The topical controversy happens at all levels of the organisation. Consequently, it is necessary to achieve consensus at the level of individual teams about no longer using a theorem or model that has been recognized as being outmoded. As soon as this has been done, the research unit must relearn. In case of such a revision of the group-specific canon, older research results are devaluated or reinterpreted against the new order’s background. This is in line – although on a smaller scale – with the processes of paradigm change in the sciences as described by Thomas S. Kuhn (1962). Similar observations can be made when it comes to making use of research tools. Research groups may agree on volitional oblivion if tools or licences they have been using so far are no longer valid, are replaced by other products, or are completely abandoned. From a research-organisational point of view, in this case, there is no reason to reach back to these aids, and usually, no remembering older ways of proceeding and the thus connected means by way of self-documentation or nostalgia is needed. As soon as the remembering access has no practical use anymore, one may agree to delete appropriate hints as far as this is worth the effort. Decision-making within a group makes it easier for a new practice to push through without opposition.⁹³

Another kind of organisational wanting-to-forget is basically about controlling what is to be expected due to a selective development of those stocks of knowledge that are considered relevant. For example, the control of epistemological relevance can also be observed in the context of interdisciplinary fora. This is no longer about a process of cleaning in the context of inner-discipline semantics and theories, but about a competition for terminologies, theories and possibly interpretational sovereignty when it comes to issues dealt with from the respective subjects’ points of view. In the case of an encounter of organised knowledge producers of different kinds, there is no reason to assume that any of the groups will give up on defining the problem – in the interdisciplinary context, any cleaning seems to be mostly ruled out. However, what may be imagined are sometimes the import and export of concepts and theories at a metaphorical level. Then it may be that adopted terms become popular, resulting in at least temporary readiness to give up on established concepts and theories of one’s own, which are thus conditionally be left to oblivion.⁹⁴

The inter-organisational competition among organised knowledge producers is – similar to the interdisciplinary competition for interpretational sovereignty – about pushing through with one’s positions and perspectives or about making them so widely known that there is a growing probability of follow-up communication. What from the outside appears as a cleaning context is now completed by attention-economic aspects. Then organised scepticism serves only as a frame for struggles about positions, in the context of which no understanding-oriented discourse is intended (Habermas, 1984). In this context, wanting-to-forget may happen at two levels. On the one hand, the group wants to forget the positions of its opponent or rather the legitimacy of his/her points of view, and on the other hand, it wants to forget that its behaviour makes use of organised scepticism only to make its stand in the competition for concepts and theory offers.

Finally, indications of organisational wanting-to-forget are also found about copyright or unsettled property rights questions if individuals claim their rights towards corporative actors.⁹⁵ Volitional oblivion on the side of an organisation consists of ignoring a problem as long as possible, for example, to point to an unsettled legal situation or assuage the concerned parties. Behind this, there is the hope or expectation that the issue will “naturally” fall into oblivion – an attitude, however, which disregards the “spectres”. One example of such a development is the story of the HeLa cell cultures, which were indispensable for cell research for decades. These are cell cultures that have been bred from one cell strain over many generations. Initially, these cells came from US American cancer patient Henriette Lacks and were, without her or her family’s consent, processed on and on (Skloot, 2010). Requests by the family concerning the case mainly were ignored and then assuaged by the concerned hospital and later also by “science”. Here medical research was under the threat of a new, expensive remembrance culture as a precedent, which is why – from the point of view of research – it looks institutionally reasonable to forget about the origin of the used “raw material”.

Making-forget in the context of organised science can be connected to substantial research scandals on the one hand and science-fiction fantasies and conspiracy theories on the other. Apart from uncovering hush-ups as far as to criminal behaviour for the sake of securing or maintaining particular benefits or power interests, however, there are also a number of legitimate practices in the context of purposefully initiated oblivion – systematic unlearning alone serves as a steering strategy of the management if obsolete stocks of experience or knowledge are no longer supposed to be used.⁹⁶

It has already been pointed out that the preparation of intentional oblivion is a process happening in the context of social relations. Whereas usually, the individual consciousness is not capable of self-referential making-forget, it is possible to support or to cause oblivion with others. We shall speak of inner making-forget in the context of organisations if certain actors or holders of positions attempt to influence the “natural” perpetuation of organisational knowledge or the selectivity of organisational memory. Such activities are at first nothing else than steering, as it is also described in the literature on organisational knowledge management, memory, learning and sometimes even oblivion. However, making-forget may also happen in subversive ways, by unauthorised members interfering with the perpetuation of experience. Furthermore, we may imagine steering interventions contradicting the organisation’s goals, which again may make it necessary to keep the motivations secret and distract from the organisation’s goals, which have been identified as being problematic.

According to the previously made distinction between performance-oriented and participation-oriented goals of organisations of the academic system, any inner making-forget may rather be expected for the former type. This is because the ideal type of the participative organisation rules out any manipulative strategies of awareness control, among which there also counts “made” oblivion. Even if such groups develop leadership structures, they are not free of micro-political activities, in reality. These activities, covertly pulling strings, take care that there are majorities for votes. Additionally, they pursue particular interests with the help of information policies or attempt to oblige the members to identify formats of a collective identity that are in line with particular interests.⁹⁷ There, making-forget happens in two ways. Firstly, those meso-social reference frames as being available for collective remembering are manipulated⁹⁸ by reshaping objects, topographies, narratives or myths so that the perpetuation of the knowledge of the meaning of the organisation’s cohesion is steered to the desired tracks. Secondly, this kind of manipulation, as far as it is open to reflection, must be as comprehensively forgotten as possible. This happens by removing those traces which might indicate any influence on the collectively relevant roots of memory.

Starting points for a diagnosis of organisational making-forget in the sciences are, for example, micro-political processes among the boards of academic self-administration. For example, already the putting together and organisation of the agenda items of leadership meetings may include instrumental oblivion if particularly disputed items are placed at the end of an overfull agenda. Traces are removed e. g. if the archived examination papers of prominent – in the positive or the negative sense – former students are removed from the archive, spare the organisation the uncontrollable consequences e. g. of questions by journalists.

Furthermore, making-forget may happen at the level of professions, if sections or teams of academic associations – below the level of a discipline – provide for canonisations by determining, with the help of reading lists, hence, the literature that is considered relevant for their field of interest. Institutionally, such lists are not binding – however, they provide practical orientation and distract the interested researcher from independent investigation and assessment. By defining relevancies, professionalising groups determine the selectivity of knowledge production and thus control the scientific-topical debate as long as they are not challenged. Oblivion is organised by representatives of professions and happens at the threshold to the mode of wanting-to-forget at the level of academic interest groups, as usually groups of representatives are elected and provided with the authority to represent. At the same time, these groups are out for creating rememberability, which is why in their case, oblivion happens with the help of cover memories.

There are several studies on the comparison of organisational oblivion with organisational learning from the perspective of performance-oriented organisations. The learning theories developed by organisational research are explicitly about organisational oblivion or unlearning. As a 1change management strategy, making-forget must be placed among those measures taken by the leadership of an organisation when adjustment processes are supposed to be made more efficient. In this context, organisational memory⁹⁹ is often connected to undesired routines, conservatism and inflexibility and is characterised as the “enemy” of flexibility and change.¹⁰⁰ Although there are hardly any empirical studies on organisational oblivion with public authorities, many findings may be transferred to the here discussed performance-oriented institutions of academic life.

Furthermore, making-forget happens at the level of academic education. Usually – and particularly in the case of introductory classes –, putting together the syllabus for a seminar is a shaped kind of selection. Each steering of the students’ attention comes along with ignoring other relevant information. This is the institutional structuring of knowledge production in the context of academic teaching. This way, teaching defines core topics that aim to create appropriate basic knowledge for further research and pass on, en passant, the specific interests of the teachers to the learners. Thus, the establishment of schools must be described as a mechanism of organised selection in the course of which any orientation at alternative paradigms is systematically ruled out.¹⁰¹

The problem of making-forget also includes attempts to influence an organisation’s environment, as far as this activity aims at purposefully covering organisation- or interaction- or competition-relevant information. In view of scientific organisations, such processes may be supposed to be identified in the context of irritation or non-irritation.

In organised lobbying, the strategy of topical making-forget is a borderline case in the context of which it must be distinguished if participative organised groups interact with groups of the same kind or with performance-oriented organisations. Possible starting points for this variant of oblivion are to be found in the debate on saying goodbye to full-scale university. It is stated that particularly the complexity and variety of this kind of university makes sure that not every fashion is followed. If minor subjects are no longer offered and the universities are reduced to standard measure, these organisations are said to lose their independent-mindedness (Kreckel, 2002). There, making-forget happens at two levels. At first, organisational decisions concerning the profile of a university are conflict-laden. Tactical aspects of making-forget are to be identified if one interest group succeeds with changing the relevance structures needed to reproduce another group. Criticism of a structural change of university and science, aiming at a bureaucratisation or economisation of knowledge production as well as at making the communication of knowledge subject to didactics, thus lamenting the destruction of the idea of the university, address such motifs of making-forget, insofar as they assume contradicting interests of different groups. In this context, it is assumed that those interests as being inauthentic for the social function of the action context succeed with pushing through. University leaderships and administrations enforce a readjustment of the organisational relevance structure, which consists of successively turning away from defining what “establishing the truth” means and turning towards more competition for reputation.¹⁰² In the process, “good” scientific work is replaced by “successful” work. University educationalists change the relevance structure of the organisation of the scientific communication of knowledge, as they can make their insights on the effectiveness of the knowledge transfer heard. By making the academic communication of knowledge subject to didactics, they change the ways of the institutionalised disclosure of knowledge.¹⁰³ Consequently, students or the academic audience are no longer obliged to actively collect information, meaning that they must, in the course of acquiring knowledge, shoulder the laborious effort of disclosing knowledge and understandingly comprehending the ideas of others. Instead, the scientists have an obligation to fulfil, which is meant to force them to “take their audiences from where they are”. The odd genius, over whose comments there used to be much insightful puzzling, is supposed to be forgotten as soon as possible against the background of new concepts of teaching and learning. Comprehensive irritation as providing access to insight is replaced by controlled and well-dosed irritation; the academic audience is equated with an interested public.

Even decisions about profile building, which consists of rededicating research funding and staff resources to those considered capable of development, result in changes in the organisational structure and organisational culture. Disappeared places of knowledge production, former local research foci, and former members are no longer recalled by the new members of the organisation and the decision-making structures relevant for them – except in the case of nostalgic recalling by individuals.

Another way of making-forget consists of purposeful manoeuvres of competition-oriented measures: instrumental oblivion with research by and in the context of scientific organisations is, on the one hand, found with the secret research programmes of the industry and the military, which hardly ever become publicly known. The goal of secrecy and removing traces is to distract public attention from activities the organisation is responsible for and which would require an explanation given their (media-)public environment.

One specification of organisational making-forget in the sciences is decision-making favouring establishing and institutionalising a certain kind of memory. However, what in the case of wanting-to-forget appears as ignoring past failures and mistakes oriented at working on the organisation’s identity may be understood as a discourse-related adjustment strategy as well as fighting off in the context of making-forget discourse-communicated attacks on the organisation. In Germany, this is the expectation that organisations will face and reveal their involvement with the NS regime. This way – like with any kind of historicisation – scientifically “objectified” knowledge is produced, which is supposed to replace diffuse experiences or memories whose effects on the organisation are difficult to control. By presenting scientific knowledge of a subject, the possibilities to appropriately assert particular-biographic and unobjectified knowledge are reduced. Thus, the organisation’s decision to face and reveal wards off any possible spectre which might affect the work of the organisation and might absorb resources – and this holds not only for the finally produced historical narratives but already for any concern related to the past which, by establishing an “authorised” institution, is channelled into a direction which is favourable for the further existence of the organisation. Thus, historical memory work is a selection mechanism contributing to pushing back inadequate contents of experience and memory and thus making them fall into oblivion.

Furthermore, oblivion strategies may – against the background of the public reputation of the research organisation – also aim at past research if the latter is no longer in line with the state of e. g. the debate on the ethics of science. Confronting the organisation with the spectres of its past will result in any historicising and commenting “coming to terms” only after a more extended period of suffering resulting from public pressure – politics and mass media. Until this, the coping strategy of an organisation that has an interest in maintaining its operability may consist of ignoring and, if possible, removing the traces it is confronted with or which appear again and again.

Concerning oblivion with science, it may be stated that two dimensions become relevant for analysis. One of them covers the distinction between organisations that are oriented at performance and organisations of lobbying. On the one hand, the other one covers the organisational striving for adjustment to outside situations and, on the other hand, internal integration in the sense of creating organisational identity. If we disregard structural amnesia, which we have called forgetfulness or oblivion (II) and can be diagnosed with any social entity, shaping the selectivity of knowledge production appears – in the Weberian sense – as being both instrumentally and value-rational. Instrumental and value rationality include oblivionist aspects insofar as constantly decisions must be made about which knowledge is supposed to be kept available and which not. Insofar as these are decisions about steering concerning the institutional structures of an organisation of the scientific realm, we may also speak of an instrumental and a value-rationalism of science.¹⁰⁴

4.3.3 Institutionalised Oblivion

The final section of the analysis of oblivion by the case example of the academic system is going to deal with the explicitly institutional structures of “the” sciences at the social macro-level as well as with the thus connected unwritten rules in the sense of an implicit order, which are understood as practices. At first, it will be about the normative structural aspects of modern science. These are progress, connectivity, completeness, and rigour as the selectivity of arranging arguments – some of them have already been pointed out. The level of social-scientific aggregation and abstraction suggests placing more weight on aspects in the sense of oblivion (II) than on the intention-related preliminary stages of intended or made oblivion (oblivion (I)). Even if a norm that may be associated with memory implicitly creates forgetfulness, it will be necessary to provide evidence of an organising intention at this level. However, it may be supposed that indications for norm-related forgottenness in the context of institutional change can be identified. Thus, in view of oblivion (I) variants, the analysis will be first of all about hidden, or better: not further explicated, levels of meaning within scientific practice. Furthermore, according to the scheme so far, at the social macro-level, we will look at first for perspectives of forgetfulness (1). Then, at the level of social steering, it will be about issues of intended oblivion in the sense of wanting-to-forget (2) and making-forget (3). This will happen by reaching back to remembrance approaches and – thus resulting – oblivion policy.

Forgetfulness as – usually mostly unquestioned – structural oblivion in the context of scientific practise may – according to the previous considerations – appear in various shapes. At the heart of the analysis, those selection mechanisms are attributed to the social scientific memory. These may be distinguished according to two patterns, one of which develops oblivion from practice; the ways of science-specific acting create relevancies which are not supposed to be reflected on because relevance structures change as a result of progress, and attention is rather directed at innovations than at the side effects of their implementation. We may thus speak of self-created forgetfulness. The other pattern of non-reflected forgetfulness develops in view of other fields of the social production of knowledge. Due to the primus inter pares status within the knowledge order of modern societies,¹⁰⁵ any activity of “the” sciences which is perceived from the outside creates a forgetting about habitual stocks of knowledge in other fields – for example, as a result of technological innovations, of so-called “scientification” or the transfer of knowledge.

The – primarily unnoticed – loss of existing knowledge exclusively due to scientific activity may appear in three forms. Forgetfulness goes unnoticed, firstly, with objects of scientific activity (object relation), secondly in the context of scientific activity as such (subject relation), and thirdly in the situative context of scientific activity. The distinction between subject relation and contextual conditions is necessary, as an unnoticed change of the stock of knowledge or the social structure of knowledge and the conditions for the production of knowledge may happen both as a result of scientific activity as such and of the non-scientific environment. Any kind of this forgetfulness has to do with forgetting about the having-become of the concerned object or its history, insofar as reflecting on dealing with it as well as its change or transformation disappears from view. This inattentiveness is because the selectivity of the scientific memory covers only certain aspects of disclosing its objects as being relevant and making appropriate use of structuring processes. In the following, five variants of forgetfulness from the realm of scientific activity will be exemplarily considered.

That science tends to forget that its subjects are grounded in the lifeworld by abstractedly moving ever farther away from the actual objects, was stated by Edmund Husserl (1970) in his crisis paper. What he demonstrates by the example of mathematics can be analysed in several respects in terms of oblivion theory. Analogies are to be found in the natural sciences. Also, model-like theoretical constructions result in a reduction of complexity which, in the course of further dealing with existing insights, is nothing else than successively moving away from the original phenomena and questions. However, vice versa, it may as well be imagined that objects are established through scientific reconstruction. Then their meaning is maintained, whereas the object under research changes – a problem of the humanities and the social sciences. Accordingly, terms may be more stubborn than the objects they refer to.¹⁰⁶ Only in exceptional cases is there the need to write histories of terms to comprehend language adjustment to social developments (Koselleck, 1985; 2006). One example is the reconstruction of syphilis as a scientific fact by Ludwig Fleck (2012). There, it is demonstrated how many terminologies and the belief in facts depend on the respective age style. Fleck contributes to the theory of oblivion by making clear that the objective fact of a disease picture is accepted as being given without putting it into question because the historical circumstances of the diagnosis and, thus connected, the construction of the phenomenon have not been passed on within their contexts, and the manifold errors of scientific diagnostics and analytics have systematically been forgotten. Today, this kind of structural forgetfulness is due to the fixation on progress which is typical for science. The social attribution of relevance aims at the new and the better; obligatory remembering serves only to emphasise the obsolescence of the now outmoded knowledge – any confrontation with the “day before yesterday” seems unnecessary, at least for routine operation. The situation is similar when it comes to the practical handling of the technology of scientific apparatuses. It may be that innovations of scientific devices are documented – however, for making use of devices, there is usually no need for any exact knowledge of the details of their development. This way, devices become objectification of insights assumed to be objective when it comes to their materiality and function. Their development is grasped as being “constructed”, which has hardly any significance for their practical use and is only in cases of exception archived and documented at technology museums.

Similar motifs are to be found in the works of Michel Foucault and Reinhart Koselleck. Their interest in archaeological-genealogical analyses or analyses of the history of terms aims at those historical-political framework conditions as determining scientific thought and, most of all, the scientific creation of terms. Which outside influences have the potential to cause an unnoticed loss of scientific knowledge? Both approaches indeed take the context-dependent changing of the meaning of terms into consideration:¹⁰⁷ Accordingly, scientific or – in Koselleck – social-political terms must not be understood according to their respectively current meaning but against the background of the predominant discourse at the time of their introduction or use.¹⁰⁸ Usually, the operative way of using each discipline-specific toolset of terms does not care about the fact that the terms have “historically grown”, which is forgotten against the background of a minimum consensus that may continuously be updated. The epistemological damage caused by this lack of reflection on the history of terminology is comparably low, apart from the necessities of historical understanding crucial for scientific, social history, even more as the scientific communication goes on. However, by forgetfulness in terms of the history of terminology, one accepts a reflection deficit, and this is where the power-political aspect comes to bear – there is no differentiation of typical tendencies towards influencing. In other words: for science, it is hardly of relevance which political influences have contributed to coining its terms as long as the system’s communicative autopoiesis is not disturbed. The change of languages in the scientific realms happens in ways that are similar to those depicted by scheme-theoretical approaches for explaining the memory function of the individual consciousness: nexuses in the sense of attributions of meaning which currently are not needed and also do not maintain any historicisation of their genesis as permanent associations are forgotten.

What becomes evident with the change of the terminological toolset, which does not only ignore traces of reification in the sense of double forgetfulness or forgetting about forgetting, may as well be a result of science-political steering. Science depends on funding, which in Western societies is distributed at the level of society, i. e. at the level of the state, civil society or private business. The result of this is losses of autonomy which are reflected by the influence exerted by research policy. If we consider that the Humboldt type of science that enables solitude and liberty is a historical exception, we may state that since time immemorial, science has less been determined by academic self-administration than rather by normative regulations and goals set from the “outside”. When it comes to reflecting on exogenous institutional change, science seems to be mostly blind. Perhaps reflecting on the development of one’s working conditions is an obstacle for swift progress, similar to the terminological toolset. However, according to the Enlightenment claim of the modern sciences – in a way like a corrective – there exists the institution of the history of science.¹⁰⁹ Its function is not least to institutionalise this reflection on the conditions under which scientific activity happens and keep the “operative business” of all other disciplines clear of appropriate demands for reflection. Thus, in the context of endogenous forgetfulness, we may suppose that institutional reflection on the development of science, of all, as it is done by the sub-discipline of the history of science, prevents the systematic-asymmetrical association of science and social power structures from being confronted with any, possibly unproductive, revolt as a result of historicising reflection. Outside influence is covered up by a memory function that functions as a forgetfulness generator.¹¹⁰

After elaborating on external interventions into endogenous aspects of forgetfulness with academic activities, now the focus shall be on the case of forgetfulness in the context of selection mechanisms in the form of self-control. One variant, which has already been mentioned, is connected to striving for reputation. According to Robert K. Merton, reputation – in the form of attention attributed by the scientific community – is a much more powerful system of recognition than, for example, public interest in successful research (Merton, 1973). The power of reputation-induced motivation comes from the fact that the discipline-related attribution of attention comes from topically informed and, thus, particular relevant sources. Given the researcher’s self-presentation, it is also an indication of how successful his/her activities are and may, in quasi-medial ways, result in more attention being attributed. As already stated, Merton calls this Biblical principle of “to everyone who has will more be given” the Matthew effect. In this context, self-referential forgetfulness covers all those actors involved in research and their findings which do not benefit from these reputation mechanisms, according to the addition to St. Matthew’s Gospel: “From him who has not, even what he has will be taken away”. Another kind of endogenous forgetfulness at the institutional level comes from the internationality of science and, thus connected, the necessity of translations. Translating is always connected to the selectivity of its own kind, as it is always the result of interpretations by the translator. Sometimes this may lead to massive topical distortions, which, on the one hand, may help the topical debate, which is based on such a translation, to completely new associations, however to misinterpretations on the other hand. What is forgotten in the process is the consensual reading of a scientific statement within one language community. It must be stated in this context that translations must be considered to be ambivalent in this respect. On the one hand, they systematically create a loss of knowledge; on the other hand, they allow for new interpretations, some of which would have been difficult to imagine by reaching back to the original text within the language community of its origin.¹¹¹

Furthermore, forgetfulness at the institutional level covers ways of losing knowledge resulting from the scientific system interacting with other sub-fields of society. At first, this concerns the status of scientific knowledge as the predominant kind of knowledge in modern societies. Secondly, it concerns losing knowledge due to the transfer of knowledge, which again must be understood not as one-sided but as a mutual exchange process.

Forgetfulness may also consist of oblivion in non-scientific contexts, which is unintendedly caused by scientific activity. The problem of forgetfulness caused by the successful transfer of knowledge is to be identified with the interaction of social knowledge orders. Knowledge orders refer to different, sometimes mutually related systems of knowledge production and application, in the context of which certain ways of producing knowledge are more likely to become legitimate than others, each according to culture. An unsettling of knowledge orders can be described regarding the great epistemological changes: the Copernican turn as the turning away from a mythical-religious conception of the world and towards one based on the natural sciences. Along with shifting interpretational sovereignty from one kind of knowledge to another, there are other, comprehensive processes of oblivion because, this way, complete systems of interpreting the world become obsolete. Considering such processes is like speculating about the evolution of knowledge in the course of which, for example, we might ask what the world of today would look like had shamanism not been replaced or moved to latency zones but developed further. In enlightened, Western modernity – and this has been pointed out – science may be understood to be the primus inter pares of the kinds of knowledge. However, the fact that it is most likely to be legitimated has not resulted in its absolutisation and other kinds of knowledge being completely suppressed, as imagined by the utopian scenarios of a state of letters or Comte’s scientific religion. Concerning the analysis of forgetfulness, there concludes hinting at the search for the traces of other, older kinds of knowledge among the, only allegedly, entirely rational knowledge of the scientific kind – for which already Ludwig Fleck made provisions. Thus, the research of scientific practices would have to be extended by a culture-historical dimension, by not only observing and then asking how far scientific action could be legitimated as rational, well-founded or justifiable. Findings based on observation could also be culture-historically put into question by analysing them for traces of forgotten systems of meaning. Statements expressing that We Have Never Been Modern (Latour, 1993) or that in the past even traditions were inventions (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1992) are this way additionally legitimated.

Beyond the statement that the pushing through of certain kinds of knowledge in the course of social or institutional change is always connected to suppressing alternative ways of interpreting, we may then ask about the conditions or mechanisms due to which one kind of knowledge becomes superior to another. Two interpretations may be imagined in this respect. On the one hand, we might assume suppression by the “aspiring” kind of knowledge – then the decline of outmoded kinds of knowledge would have to be described with the help of Freud’s motif of the screen memory. On the other hand, however, this suppression might as well be understood to be the result of specific mechanisms of forgetfulness. Then, these would have to be connected to the social functions fulfilled, in different ways, by the new kind of knowledge – in the sense of functional equivalents.

However, in the light of more recent developments in dealing with the scientific production of knowledge, expertise and scientific knowledge, the thesis of the primacy of scientific knowledge may also be doubted – for example, diagnoses of the progressing economisation and politicisation of science point in another direction. Exogenous influences – even at the institutional level – are capable, based on power, of changing the structures of the scientific production of knowledge. Examples of this are, among others, the structural consequences of excellence initiatives and university pacts by way of which politics may control – by way of exerting influence from the outside – not only the communication of knowledge at university but knowledge production as a whole. Due to the change of guidelines and priorities for funding, older regulations fall into oblivion, as the scientific system is forced to adjust to the conditions set by its environment. Similar influences may also be stated given the interfaces between the sciences and business, particularly in the engineering sciences field. When it comes to scientists providing information as advice, it is possible to give evidence to changes of both the genesis and the provision of knowledge, which is, at the institutional level, reflected by the contradiction between basic research and application-oriented research (Stokes, 1997). Thus, this is an exogenously-induced kind of forgetfulness due to more or less enforced cooperation with other fields of society.

Another kind of knowledge loss that is not exogenously reflected on results from knowledge transfer, contents between different realms of social activity. Using scientific knowledge, which is closely connected to the problem of knowledge transfer – that is, the transfer of scientific knowledge or the scientific jargon to non-scientific language and relevance systems – always comes along with distortion, simplification, trivialisation or reinterpretation.¹¹² A loss of knowledge happens at first in the course of translation as such, in the sense of a loss of exactness, as the information must be adjusted to the needs of each respective “practice”. Whereas scientific knowledge is still being provided within the sciences, the non-scientific actors start to use this available new knowledge. For science, this becomes a problem – as oblivionism – if later it is confronted with requests or questions referring to stocks of knowledge that are attributed to it without any immediate recognition is possible. In other words: the structure of meaning of externalised knowledge has changed so much that it is no longer possible to easily conclude on the original content of the transfer, not to mention the scientific context of its development. In such cases, scientists may be confronted with traces of their work that are not theirs or which are, due to environmental influences, sometimes pretty “weathered”. The interaction of science and a non-scientific “practice” may produce different aspects of forgetfulness. It is thus not only about the meaning of scientific knowledge being distorted but also about the adjustment of scientific actors in the context of feedback if now the latter are trying to comprehend the self-will of this practice and readjust their own concepts according to application. As a result, those “dubious” terms – lamented by science – whose originally clear meaning has been forgotten due to diffusely using them. This variant of exogenous forgetfulness results from knowledge contents circulating or oscillating within and among different kinds of knowledge.

The heuristic delimitation of wanting-to-forget in the context of institutionalised contexts appears to be problematic, as institutions are no actors with intentions. Nevertheless, at the social macro-level, institutions represent culture-specific, binding rules in the sense of explicit or at least explicable expectations. Since non-compliance may be sanctioned, any delimitation from wanting-to-forget and making-forget becomes difficult. Also problematic seems to be the epistemological grounding of intentional oblivion, as allegedly at the highest level of regulation, oblivion is least wanted by science. However, already Nietzsche demonstrates in his critique of memory that to a certain degree and in certain fields, “the” sciences face a loss of knowledge, accept it and must even normatively welcome it. Some arguments pointing into this direction have already been stated. Altogether, they present the evolution of knowledge, with obsolete or redundant knowledge being pushed to the back for being unnecessary. Additionally, the argument of limited capacities points to selection demands given an exponential growth of available yet at the same time relevant knowledge. Then, apart from such a levelling of desired oblivion, there is a kind of oblivion aiming at the production or the producers of knowledge as such. Accordingly, in the context of science-immanent violations of rules, there exist field-specific opportunities of rehabilitation which, each according to how grave the violation of the values and norms of good scientific practise or ethical principles and self-limitations is, make such a violation, as well as the thus connected “condemnation” by the scientific community, fall into oblivion. In this respect, there are hardly any clearly defined regulations – however, the periods needed to “live down something” would have to be clearly determined.¹¹³

One basic motivation for endogenous wanting-to-forget is the will to settle or clarify or organise the unorganised. Different variants of institutionalised action contexts preparing oblivion processes are found at the level of practices and institutions. Three orientations must be distinguished in this respect. At first, such a wanting-to-forget may result from the constant rationalisation and modernisation imperative by which modern science is characterised (a). Secondly, the consequences of such processes of change must be considered, as the intention of wanting-to-forget may be derived from them (b). Thirdly, an institutions-communicated kind of wanting-to-forget may be imagined, referring to measures that seem to be necessary for maintaining the system (c).

Wanting-to-forget resulting from rationalisation imperatives is a widely spread kind of adjustment to manifest or only alleged institutional preconditions. Thus, it is an open question if the patterns which make certain aspects of oblivion look desirable really serve for achieving goals by way of concrete drafts for action (calculated oblivionism) or if it is just orienting at field-specific values (value oblivionism).

As a reflecting effect of information science and economics, at first for scientific practice and the institutional structure of the entire scientific realm, a change of values or a standardisation effect by way of scientometric procedures can be diagnosed. Accordingly, it must be assumed that the scientific analysis of the scientific production of knowledge comes along with the possibility of optimisation and rationalisation. Thus, scientific insight retroacts on the conditions of its creation.¹¹⁴ For example, the “evidence-oriented improvement” of publication strategies, which has been mentioned above in the context of the organisation of scientific activity, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The “evidence-based” readjustment of the practice is followed by establishing appropriate behavioural expectations that again come along with kinds of oblivion expectations.

This complicated context can be illustrated by the debate on the consequences of bibliometric methods. Bibliometrics is feared, resulting in increased readiness for a kind of selection that is oriented at attention-economic criteria and thus establishes an appropriate degree of wanting-to-forget. It has already been pointed out that Eugene Garfield attempts to dispel such concerns brought to his attention in various ways. However, his reactions mark some cornerstones of an oblivion discourse in the context of the scientific production of knowledge. For example, the proposal to classify scientific disregard according to three kinds of uncitedness must be read as a contribution to classifying scientific ignorance and legitimating it. Scientific works which are not quoted and thus “fall through the cracks”, he says, are either of low quality, wrongly placed or already too well-known.¹¹⁵ Consequently, the desire to make one’s success visible through the mirror of bibliometrics or to refer to successful works when selecting references is provided with legitimation with the help of which doubts concerning the completeness of the references quoted in the course of a study may be dissipated. In Garfield, the index oblivionalis is not meant to select cases for assessing bibliometric artefacts (Garfield, 1971) but as a pile of rubbish where everything gathers, which may well be forgotten.¹¹⁶

Elsewhere, Garfield reports on a study in the context of the Science Citation Index, in the course of which a list of works from the subject of biology was compiled which had not been quoted over five years. Garfield asked the authors about their explanation that their essays had been overlooked or forgotten, and he concluded that many of these works provided exclusively descriptive information. This kind of information, he said, was little relevant for further research. As a reason why such works are produced, Garfield assumes that it makes sense to collect data and publish them. However, he says, this comes at the cost of a lower probability of being quoted because data collections are first of all used for examination papers and theses. Then, however, the strategy of rather not publishing any descriptive material in essays derives from these considerations. This way, it is insinuated that there are relevant and less relevant fields of scientific communication. Nevertheless, this way, an entire genre of scientific treatises would be wrong with certain communication fora and may fall into oblivion (Garfield, 1970a).

The example presented by Garfield points out a transition from scientific reflection to reflectivity. What initially is analysed as a scientific issue is transferred to optimisation knowledge and becomes, after all, a foundation for evaluation. From an oblivion-theoretical point of view, the transition from optimisation knowledge to a criterion for evaluation may also be described as the normative-norming change of intended oblivion (calculated oblivionism) to wanting-to-forget as a matter of course or to ignoring (value oblivionism).¹¹⁷

In the context of the completeness ideal, Garfield (1975) emphasizes that citation happens between the two poles of being deficient and being inflationary and that the “correct” measure – what he means is the subject-culturally-specific average in the sense of an obliteration coefficient which is similar to the half-life of knowledge – cannot be explained normatively but must be explained against the background of the respectively current culture. In other words: not even the citation-communicated way of dealing with the completeness ideal can be functionally explained nor by reaching back to norms, but it is a historically changeable social fact. Garfield bases his observation on the limited availability of scientific texts and the strong focus of the scientific discourse on exchanging letters and personal debate. The selection of texts, he says, which are a must for the list of references of a new essay, cannot be compiled according to completeness but must happen out of deference to beneficial information or out of respect towards those “giants” on whose shoulders one considers oneself sitting. Citation, however, is no practice to be performed by the individual alone; it also follows a consensus about what must be quoted within the scientific community. Because of the forms and rules of canonisation, Garfield gives an implicit hint that within the cultures of the respective disciplines, citation-communicated remembrance and the possibility to forget happen in an orderly manner. The professional associations within the sciences deny both oblivionism by way of canonisation and the cleaning of the canon by creating criteria for obsolescence by way of self-observation. For Garfield, these criteria seem to be determined by impact; however, there is also the possibility that certain traditions of quoting are created which, as long as a topic is discussed, must be continued. Then, the obliteration coefficient would inform about from when on certain scientific information is canonised enough so that there is no need anymore to inform about its origin and that, as a consequence, the latter may be forgotten – at least in view of the operative research documentation.¹¹⁸

Technological and social change, which has resulted in the frequently described exponential growth of scientific information, most of all due to the development of faster and more comprehensive possibilities to communicate, makes the legitimation of controlled deletion processes inevitable. However, such a deletion process must be preceded by withdrawing relevance from the concerned object. Even such devaluations do not happen coincidentally but following social orders. Some of the rules such processes are based on have already been described. What must be added now are the struggles about definitory power coming along with any kind of social change and the naïve idea of clearing out in the sense of “natural” obsolescence.

In the course of a kind of social change that is attributed to technological progress, there is a growing necessity of selection. Accordingly, practices are developing within the cultures of scientific disciplines which do legitimate certain selection mechanisms but not others.¹¹⁹ Other than scientific evolutions, this is not about topics but about practices of dealing with scientific knowledge. Thus, the assertiveness of each new generation of scientists, in view of dealing with archiving techniques alone, would also be a predictor for specific ways of legitimate oblivion. Additionally, each generation in the cultures of the respective disciplines prefers theories, schools or worldviews. Apart from the change of paradigm, a change of generations may trigger processes of de-canonisation and declaring obsolescence. In line with this, the turning away of the mainstream of sociology from structural functionalism can be identified as a process of wanting-to-forget in the history of sociological theories. Simply declaring Parson’s theory outmoded and topically insufficient while ignoring the effects of the change of generations, however, is short-sighted, at least from the point of view of a history of science.¹²⁰

Whereas a change of paradigms or replacing a generation of scientists sometimes comes with conflicts, schools or positions may also simply “disappear”. Such a “dying out”, however, is an exception that is only allegedly coincidental. If we accept Garfield’s considerations, a scientist’s career success is measured by the usefulness of the information he/she has published. In terms of structure, particularly science following the Humboldt tradition can research even remote fields due to the ideal of academic liberty when choosing one’s research interests. Academic liberty depends on the completeness ideal and thus on the thus connected imperative to remember. Apart from the latter, it becomes difficult to not proceed according to an attention economy. Seen this way, the academic Sleeping Beauty is an artefact of modern, attention economy-oriented science, as anyway, the “princes” would have made their way to their Sleeping Beauties – it is their task to look for them incessantly. Wanting-to-forget for reasons of lacking compatibility or employability is not allowed for a kind of science that is oriented at the completeness ideal.

Another kind of practical or institutional wanting-to-forget can be investigated by changing the observer’s point of view. For example, oblivion may be analysed functionally. Whereas the dysfunctionality of oblivion may soon be identified as a flaw of the academic system, it seems to be revealing – by reaching back to Nietzsche – to interpret the perspective of wanting-to-forget as a readiness to forget and as being (eu-)functional for the further existence of the academic system.¹²¹ However, oblivion may be functional even if wrong ways, failures or even social sanctions are supposed to be forgotten to allow for new beginnings. In this context, we may distinguish four starting points. At first, desired oblivion may aim at certain individual actors. Secondly, such a kind of oblivion would have to be viewed in terms of knowledge or information, which, thirdly, may be limited to dealing with risky knowledge. Finally, the forgetting assessment of the basic values or identities of the cultures of disciplines must be viewed at, as it is frequently made a topic of discussion in the context of interdisciplinarity.

From the institution’s point of view, the actor perspective in the field of institutional wanting-to-forget aims at the researching individual. In this context, at first two starting points may be viewed: on the one hand, we might ask how dealing with damaged reputation or the standing of science is organised. On the other hand, in the sense of a weaker variant, we might ask about the institutional way of dealing with “underperformance”, that is, reputational damage due to commonly deficient publications or those which are alien to the genre.

Already in Greek antiquity, the social problems were documented if mistakes are not forgotten. Thus, it seems to be functional not only in the political realm to indeed sanction violations of rules but, from certain points on – depending on the extent of the violation – to no longer persecute them or to no longer remember them after the end of “punishment”. The principle of amnesty is based on such oblivion, which is functional for maintaining the community. For the time being, it is oblivion-theoretically unclear if social orders of amnesty have also been transferred to the sanctioning systems of the scientific system or, given the special status of science, if it has its own mechanisms of sanctioning and its own calendar of remembering mistakes. In favour of the first solution, there is generally a fact that in many societies, violations in the realm of the sciences also have legal consequences – such as violations of copyrights or secrecy norms.

However, oblivion is functional also when it comes to restoring reputation after misperformances – this is not about intended mistakes but sloppiness or bad quality. When scientists have completed the long qualifying period, when such a reputational damage has tough consequences, there are hardly any authorities that might effectively attest bad or misperformance to them. Only recently, in the context of ethics commissions and scientific evaluations, a kind of “memory” for such cases begins to constitute. If the rememberability of scientific misperformance is functional for the development of innovation and progress cannot be decided here. As a result of the introduction of places of memory for the sciences, such as evaluation systems,¹²² awards and competitions, the possibility of institutionally intended oblivion in the sense of practical-routine, rehabilitating oblivion, is somewhat suspended.¹²³

Against the background of its normative-norming effect, even the half-life of knowledge may be interpreted as a criterion for orientation in the sense of Nietzsche or De Solla Price. If it is known how soon knowledge is turned over in a certain discipline or sub-discipline and how soon it decays in the light of institutionalised remembering, which is depicted by citation, an understanding of normality can be derived that retroacts the “durability” of new knowledge. From such a way of dealing with the concept of half-life, there derives a change of the selection practice, which makes the quotability of a scientific contribution depend on its publication date. To this, we may object that, after all, the thematic relevance of the argument to be quoted must be crucial. However, against the background of the exponential growth of the flood of information in so many fields, particularly of the ordinary scientific system, it is no longer possible to make such a decision about relevance, which is why right from the beginning also the age of a source may be included into the memory calculus.

From this way of selecting, which results from the surplus of information of the scientific production of knowledge, we must distinguish a kind of oblivion which refers to information connected to self-imposed restrictions. On the one hand, information of potential dangers which result immediately from scientific work is programmatically remembered. On the other hand, risk assessments result from social negotiation processes and rather address ethical-normative aspects or hazard potentials about which no consensus can be established between controversial positions. Functional oblivion aims at knowing about hazards that are differently judged at different times, which way it may serve for scientific progress. On the other hand, such volitional oblivion, happening in the sense of “revising” risk assessments, also comes with the possibility of interest-related negation. Then the reification or mythologisation of risk assessments is constantly assessed. At the same time, however, due to the discontinuation of certain interests or to no longer paying sufficient attention to them, the Promethean potential of scientific progress may again and again newly be unleashed. Then, this would be the case, although there was a consensus about not further pursuing certain paths and orientations in the past. Any self-limitation of science contradicts the scientific pursuit of progress and is thus subject to a rather institutionally communicated wanting-to-forget. On the whole, it seems as if information produced in the context of organised scepticism, as evaluative or otherwise secondary knowledge when it comes to scientific statements, depends on the position it gives expression to and the latter’s market opportunities.

One last variant of institutional wanting-to-forget results from the context of the progressing differentiation of the sciences. Not only the differences between natural sciences, social sciences and humanities but also the ever more specifying epistemic and disciplinary cultures result in limitations of the transformability of scientific insight from one field to another. Sometimes the differentiation of the entire system is considered dysfunctional when it comes to solving pending problems, which results in the call for interdisciplinary research cooperation. Apart from the apparent advantages of multi-perspective cooperation, interdisciplinarity comes with mutual understanding problems due to different terminologies and research methods. If interdisciplinarity is successful, the involved actors may consider the ties to their disciplines of origin to be outmoded. Then the history of differentiation of inner-scientific kinds of knowledge is forgotten, which may result in both the development of a trans-disciplinary self-understanding and a trivialising mixing-up of incommensurable research traditions, theories and terminologies. Integration at the cultural level is only possible by partial and purposefully initiated forgetting of differences; similarly, in the realm of a much-differentiated structure of institutions, it comes with the danger of forgetting about having become and development achieved and sometimes carved out stages of differentiation and delimitations are forgotten.¹²⁴

Institutional ways of wanting-to-forget may also be viewed from an exogenous perspective if science comes in touch with other realms of society. Also, then it is at first about influences from non-scientific sectors which provide reasons – within science – for wanting-to-forget certain knowledge contents. Furthermore, the primus inter pares of social kinds of knowledge tends to expect the non-scientific realms to forget about their own kinds of knowledge and replace them with scientific ones. Thus, what is described is an interaction of different kinds of knowledge, with the sciences contributing, characterised by mutual expectations of oblivion.

The fact that other action fields of society are influenced by scientific knowledge has in many contexts been described and problematized as scientification. Nevertheless, examples can also be given for the other way round. The sociology of science in the context of science and technology studies documents that scientific thought is constantly influenced by everyday practices reflecting the social situation of the respective period. Also, science becoming economised refers to scientific structures of meaning being permeated with non-scientific values and regulation structures.

At first sight, purposeful oblivion at the level of the practices and institutions of science seems even more unusual than the institutionally implicated acceptance of oblivion. It has been described in the context of variants of wanting-to-forget. Nevertheless, however, with the regulatory structure of “the” sciences, aspects can be identified which not only support or allow for the loss of existing knowledge. There are also aspects in which the structure of making use of knowledge and thus of the selectivity of “systemic” remembrance is controlled. Viewed at are more or less explicable institutionalised strategies with the help of which knowledge is purposefully exposed, accentuated, and covered up or hidden to safeguard the existing order. At this level, neither the particular interests of the individual nor organisational strategies are at the fore.

The history of scientific knowledge orders shows temporary empowerment for self-control by those being active in science. If initially science was strictly determined by social power relations and the thus connected, sometimes arbitrary research interests, with Enlightenment, there has been much more leeway, going as far as the idea of the freedom of inquiry. Thus, a period of the greatest autonomy of research would be the suitable point of reference for the development of institutional making-forget. Historically, this period is embedded between two non-scientific regimes: if initially science was kept in leading-strings by nobility and clergy,¹²⁵ it becomes evident that political and economic power interests monopolised the sciences since the late-industrial society. However, made oblivion is not only a question of scientific autonomy but also a strategy of growing authority from an inside point of view. Endogenous making-forget includes three aspects of purposeful oblivion, the first of which concerns the institutional dealing with documenting the conditions for creating scientific works (a). The second one aims at the predatory competition of scientific interpretation offers and solutions to problems (b), and the third one concerns the practical dealing with violations of rules (c). In view of the interaction between scientific knowledge orders, there are added exogenous aspects of the predatory competition between knowledge orders (d) and forgetting about errors (e).

A first starting point for the systematic withdrawing of knowledge from third parties and for making them forget comes from a tradition of scientific work which goes back to a dictum by Francis Bacon: de nobis ipsis silemus.¹²⁶ Günter Burkart reconstructs the history of this rule regarding sociology and shows that since antiquity (Plato), the writing of scientific works has been flanked by semantic objectification offers. For example, he says, the “I”, representing the author’s subjectivity, is only tolerated with the foreword to a treatise, whereas the remaining text must be written in the style of a “transpersonal authority” (Kohli, qtd. in Burkart 2003, para. 1). Furthermore, he states, it is unusual to make problems occurring in the course of writing the text part of the argument – we have already delineated the practice of not telling about failed experiments. However, ignoring the imponderables of research goes even further if also wrong ways are kept secret. From the point of view of certain sociological schools – such as from a hermeneutic or phenomenological point of view – such objectification practices are hardly comprehensible, as they conceal the fact that a researcher is entangled with his/her research topic, thus making it fall into oblivion. The success story of scientific knowledge can be explained by the latter being artificially objectivist. Only seemingly the practice of concealment and making-forget relieves the authors from their obligation to self-reflection. It is crucial that the reception of scientific works has to do with fallible individuals and a powerful institution called “the sciences”. If general validity and objectivity are claimed, historical or biographic contextual information must mostly be left away. In terms of an analysis of oblivion, such a reification of scientific insight allows for diagnosing the institutionalisation of invulnerability or sacrosanctity, which can be maintained as long as it is possible to also adapt scientific knowledge in an objectivist way.¹²⁷ Such an immunisation strategy has the effect that scientific knowledge can only be put into question from the realm of science – a fact which, however, may put science under pressure in the course of other knowledge orders becoming empowered.

Another variant of institutional making-forget can also be identified within the sciences, in the context of the competition for interpretational sovereignty. The fact that citation networks or citation cartels boost certain ideas – so to speak as cover memories – cannot exclusively be explained as a survival strategy of individual actors of academic life. Behind such purposeful-oblivionist reasons, there are regulation structures that only create or support such developments. In this context, the concept of normal science appears as the ideal type of a hardly innovative while at the same time saturated period in the life cycle of a successful paradigm. Only in passing Thomas S. Kuhn points out that work in a mainstream context is always accompanied by displacement effects given potential alternative possibilities of interpretation.¹²⁸ Thus seen, history and the history of science are a history written by the victorious side that has pushed through against competing worldviews or solution offers. This competition happens through systematic remembering and not remembering, and if just one particular line of the development of scientific insight is strategically preferred, everything else is ignored. Thus seen, the principle of scientific schools is also an institutionalised aspect of making-forget when it comes to competing perspectives – it is about taking care that at conferences, the “right” positions will be heard and the “right” people will occupy that vacant chairs. What at first sight must be interpreted as a power play among actors within academic life (also see Toulmin, 1977) turns out to be a fight for interpretational sovereignty and the opportunity to define problems which are fought with the help of orders of making-forget and is constitutive for the progress of science.¹²⁹

A third starting point for the diagnosis of social making-forget concerns orders of how to deal with mistakes and misbehaviour, in the context of which it is not about functional amnestic oblivion or oblivion for the sake of rehabilitation but about procedures for cleaning knowledge which has been made available by way of system-specific remembering. In contrast to cleaning by sorting out the redundant and the obsolete, the focus is on the correction. Whereas the sciences do not provide for any damnatio memoriae and the documentation of proven errors is kept in the archive, forgeries are withdrawn from circulation. Accordingly, in scientific publishing, one increasingly withdraws works that have been recognized as forgeries or plagiarisms. This withdrawing practice serves for maintaining the reputation of a journal’s or publishing house’s editorial staff, which, for reasons of quality assurance and integrity, cannot accept certain breaches of the regulations. Apart from an unreliable source, however, also a memorial is deleted from rememberability. In view of the public perception of science, such a measure also has the effect that the traces of the scandal are washed away, and investigations are made more difficult.¹³⁰ Thus, the analysis of making-forget at the institutional level contributes, among others, to understanding the allegedly lacking awareness of the problem when it comes to scientific misbehaviour. Much suggests that the structural conditions enforce maintaining a “clean conscience” of objective science so that the status of primus inter pares is not endangered.

Finally, it is about regulation structures of purposeful oblivion, with the help of which science makes its stand or secures its status within the structure of social institutions. In the following, we are going to discuss two aspects which have already been addressed several times: the competition of knowledge orders, in the context of which now it is no longer about desirable oblivion but about institutionally rooted oblivion techniques and ways of making-forget in case of misconduct negotiated in the light of the public. Both variants of practical or institutional making-forget are functional in view of the autonomy of the scientific system; however, they come along with problems concerning the inner-scientific basic orientations of truth and progress.

The elaborations so far provide indications that the fight for interpretational sovereignty and resources within the scientific system, flanked by oblivion mechanisms, also happens at the societal level, in the sense of competition between modern science and other societal institutions. Indeed, since Enlightenment and the pushing through positive science, the primacy of the scientific kind of knowledge are mostly undisputed in modern society. However, not even this status is a matter of course, and it must be secured with the help of orders. Having pointed out to this is one of the merits of Michel Foucault, whose archaeological and genealogical analyses of societal discourses attracted attention to the gradual change of societal knowledge orders. Reiner Keller pursues this perspective according to oblivion-analytical points of view by demonstrating that the discourse is organised with the help of exclusion mechanisms or control procedures insisting on reducing the number of speaking subjects. Moreover, regarding scientific knowledge, he demonstrates that even the scientific basic code, the separation of “true” and “false”, is not at all exclusively based on reason:

The rubbish heap of history does not only consist of perishable and perishing social orders but also of those ideas and knowledge statements which have been eliminated because they no longer meet the demand of ‘speaking the truth’ or, in this context, are at best considered ‘insignificant’ in this context. (Keller, 2011, p. 127)

From Foucault’s point of view, science appears as a vehicle for the spread and enforcement of knowledge for the sake of action or control, which, after all, allows for separating any kind of unwanted knowledge by considering it “false”. However, it is also in the interest of scientific actors to leave out competing kinds of knowledge and erase their traces or make them fall into oblivion.¹³¹ Then, the process of making-forget does not consist of “concerted” or individual actions but of defining specific regulations for being scientific, which systematically exclude other interpretation offers. Then – sometimes very purposeful while at the same time in a way which is both institutional and in line with the regulations – it is forgotten that now a certain solution to a problem which formerly has been considered scientific is no longer understood to be scientific but esoteric.

The second exogenous order of making-forget results from the way in which science deals with attacks on its primacy of interpretation. Science cannot afford to be criticized by the public. Self-purification must swiftly produce institutional consequences before any steering starts from the outside. Accordingly, in view of science in Germany, Marco Finetti and Armin Himmelrath come to the estimation that forgeries have indeed been a topic of discussion,

[…] but almost all the time off the record and preferably concerning the cases of other people. Whenever they discovered lies and deception at their own institutes and laboratories, universities and research institutions as well as the organisations of the scientific system connected to them, took every effort to investigate and close such cases in secret. In secret – and on their own. The main goal was always to keep out the public, the media, and certainly state and justice. (Finetti & Himmelrath, 1998, p. 32)

Public silence and hiding information about scientific misbehaviour is no specific to the German scientific system. However, the international comparison conducted by Finetti and Himmelrath provides indications of the different institutional framework conditions under which aberrations or mismanagement are discussed. Perhaps in Germany, the institutional field science activity is under particular pressure to win over the public opinion and must thus invest in keeping back information about failure or making it forget as soon as possible. Then, however, all this is not the strategies of individual actors but developments practically or institutionally coming from “the system”.