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Last weekend, Dr. Cornelis Menke from the Institute of Science and Technology Studies (IWT) at Bielefeld University was appointed to the Junge Akademie [young academy] at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of the Sciences and the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in Halle. This means that over the next five years, he will be one of 50 young academics from German-speaking countries engaging in interdisciplinary academic discourse and working together on the interfaces between science and society. Membership is granted to young academics who write outstanding dissertations and then go on to perform further outstanding work. Cornelis Menke already received the Dissertation Prize of the Westfälisch-Lippische Universitätsgesellschaft [University society] in 2008.

This philosopher of science has been working as a Dilthey Fellow since 2008, and he runs the joint junior researcher group on the "History, Philosophy, and Sociology of the Sciences" at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) and the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS). The Dilthey Fellowship is awarded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation as part of their joint Pro Geisteswissenschaften [For the humanities] initiative. What makes it so special is its length: The fellowship is granted for an initial five years, but can be extended for a further three to five years. This enables a Fellow to embark on long-term projects with a reliable financial base. The Fellowship provides an annual grant of 80,000 Euro.

Menke's research interests include the philosophy of science and particularly its methodology, the history of the philosophy of science, the history of science, social epistemology, and the philosophy of the social sciences.
At present, this young academic is working on the topic of "Science and Values". Both the theory of science and empirical science research have reached the conclusion that science is not value-free. The controversial issue is how far this can be reconciled with the ideal of objective scientific knowledge. It is exactly this problem that Cornelis Menke is tackling: He is studying various aspects such as the history of individual values as well as their historical context. His goal is to analyse the various conceptions of the value freedom of science in a series of history-of-science case studies.

Cornelis Menke was born in Kiel in 1973. He studied Philosophy and Ancient Greek Philology as well as Physics at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He came to Bielefeld University for his postgraduate studies. In 2007 he gained his doctorate at the Philosophy Department of Bielefeld University.

Contact:
Dr. Cornelis Menke, Universität Bielefeld
Institut für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung (IWT)
Telefon: 0521  106- 4591
E-Mail: cornelis.menke@philosophie.uni-bielefeld.de

Dr. Cornelis Menke