Wissenschaftstheorie als Ursache von Hierarchiebildung in der deutschsprachigen Archäologie

Abstract

The founding fathers of German academic prehistory, Virchow, Hoernes and von Merhart, were all staunch logical positivists. Since them, German prehistory has followed in their epistemological footsteps: it is believed that observations can be transformed into true scientific discoveries by means of inductive reasoning. „How do you know that? On which source, which authority does this statement rest?“ are the central questions against which scholarly statements are judged. This makes a single criterion essential: that a scholarly statement turns out to be true, that he who has made it turns out to have been right.
Yet, if two scholars have differing opinions on the same subject, only one of them can be right. And since, following the above logic, the one who is right is the better scholar, he is the greater authority, the one whose statements can be trusted more. He whose scholarly statements always are right, he who has the most true knowledge, is the best scholar – and who but the best scholar should be given resources, should be trusted, should decide an argument?: knowledge is power.
Scholarly disputes in German archaeology thus (also) always are a power struggle: he who is right subjects the one who proposed something different (wrong) to his scholarly auctoritas, thus increasing his power. Conversely, a ‚powerful‘ scholar must avoid being caught making an incorrect statement, since being wrong equals losing power. The necessary consequence of such an epistemologically induced power struggle is the emergence of academic hierarchies, of an ‚academic feudal system‘.