Chapter Albrecht von Haller’s Self-Reviews and Style of Reasoning

Abstract

Despite the review ethos introduced by the physician Albrecht von Haller when he took over the Göttingische gelehrte Nachrichten as chief editor in 1747, he wrote many self-reviews. This article examines von Haller’s numerous self-reviews in order to explore the aims of reviewing, the openness of scholarship, the relationship between reviewing and truth, and the scientific language used, which can be summarised as what Marco Sgarbi, in a stimulating article, has called a “style of reasoning.” Reviews and self-reviews did not develop as an autonomous genre, but were integrated into a system of intermediality in which publications, reviews, (semi-)private letters and images responded to one another. They were primarily aimed at correcting and advancing science in the complexity of his intellectual, personal and cultural options.