“Science is not simply a delivery service”
Michael Hagner was Professor of Science Studies at ETH Zurich for over 20?years. He held a mirror up to academia and advocated for its freedom. But what does he have to say about science on his retirement??
Academia is facing strong headwinds, with authoritarian populists around the world seeking to bring it under their control – including in the USA, where the Trump administration is using targeted funding cuts to put pressure on universities. On government websites, information about certain areas of research is suddenly disappearing. When Michael Hagner, Professor of Science Studies at ETH Zurich, talks about these developments, he is frank: “I’m reminded of the darkest times of the 20th century.”
Hagner believes that this erosion of academic freedom has been looming for a long time. For over two decades, he has observed how science has bent to growing political and economic pressure. As something of a seismograph for these changes, he has been a consistent and vigorous advocate of freedom of research, as he believes that only free and independent science can act as a corrective force in society: “Done correctly, it helps society understand itself and its environment better. That is of critical importance for a democracy,” says Hagner.
However, he has always warned against holding excessively high expectations of research. Particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, the image of science as a delivery service for quick and easy solutions became cemented in people’s minds. “Science can never live up to these expectations, because it’s an open-ended process that allows room for error and sometimes misses the mark,” says the Emeritus Professor.
Michael Hagner: farewell lecture
Topic: Homo acerebralis. The transformation from brain to golem
When: 25 September 2025, 5.15 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
Where: HG F 30, ETH Main Building, R?mistrasse 101, CH-8092 Zurich,
From brain to society
Hagner studied medicine and philosophy at Freie Universit?t Berlin. After obtaining his doctorate in medicine, he first worked as a neurophysiologist before devoting himself entirely to science studies. Following positions at Medical University Lübeck, the University of G?ttingen and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, he was offered a professorship at ETH Zurich in 2003.
In his early work, Hagner occupied himself with the brain, writing the trilogy of books Homo cerebralis (1997), Geniale Gehirne (“Brilliant Brains”, 2004) and Der Geist bei der Arbeit (“The Mind at Work”, 2006). In these books, he demonstrated that the brain is not only an organ but also a culturally charged object. He elaborated on how the image of the brain has changed over the centuries, and how closely this image was linked to societal notions of intelligence, gender or criminality.
According to Hagner, brain research has given scientific authority to – and therefore even reinforced – many prejudices through concepts such as the “male autistic brain” and the “female empathetic brain”, although these attributions are deeply rooted in cultural preconceptions.
This also outlines a key aspect of his research, in which he analysed how scientific theories, methods and practices came about, how they are conveyed in the media and how they are regularly exploited for political, economic or cultural reasons.
Humans at the interface between nature and culture
Starting from the brain, the science historian broadened his view to encompass the history of the human sciences. As part of this work, he analysed how anthropology has tried since the 18th century to situate humans at the interface between nature and culture, which has led to contradictions and unease from the outset.
Hagner elaborated on the ambiguous nature of the Enlightenment, based on historical sources: “As well as having an emancipatory effect, the Enlightenment simultaneously cemented colonial and racist patterns of thought,” he explains. Even great thinkers such as Kant lost their way in theories that denied people from other parts of the world a capacity for culture.
This work regularly brought Hagner back to the fundamental question: what does science say about humans – and who speaks on whose behalf? With his historical perspective, Hagner helped to visualize the ethical and political conflicts in the human sciences. In doing so, he demonstrated time and again that the categories used in research are never neutral, but rather reflect social positions.
The book as a plea for depth and diligence
In his research, Hagner also dealt with the topic of academic publishing. In an era where open access has become the norm and a small number of global publishers have made billions in profits from publicly funded research, he has warned against the commercialisation of knowledge.
“Where it used to be the readers who paid, today it’s the authors. Many researchers simply cannot afford it. Admission to open access journals is therefore becoming a privilege reserved for researchers with sufficient resources,” he says. As if that weren’t enough, he explains that the diversity of book publishers and forms of publications may also decline. “Everything is being standardized; everything needs to fit into a format. That’s disastrous for the humanities,” says Hagner.
In contrast to digital publishing, Hagner has always defended the printed book as an expression of intellectual depth, diligence and reflection. His defence of the book was a plea for slow deliberation and complexity in a scientific audience that finds itself confronted with an almost unmanageable quantity of newly published studies.
The founding of the intercom Verlag publishing house by young researchers at Hagner’s department sent a message: “We publish books that offer high-quality design but that are nevertheless freely available online – independently and non-commercially,” says Hagner.
Farewell to a critical thinker
With Hagner’s departure, ETH Zurich is losing one of the most-distinguished science historians, who always held a mirror up to academia. With his recently published book on the history of Foucault’s pendulum (“Seeing Foucault’s pendulum”), he shows that even the public demonstration of a cosmic process such as the Earth’s rotation is linked with political and cultural questions.
Hagner says that research is less and less about insights driven by curiosity and more about knowledge as an essential power in global competition. This, he believes, is a very risky strategy. If universities increasingly define themselves by generating socially or commercially valuable knowledge, then science will increasingly be evaluated according to those criteria. In the Emeritus Professor’s view, this will have consequences: “The contribution of science to democratic emancipation or to the development of arguments against all kinds of fundamentalism is in danger of disappearing,” he says.
As a professor at ETH, Hagner has experienced precisely the freedom and independence that is now under pressure around the world. “I’m grateful to ETH for giving me the freedom to do my research for over 20 years. It was a fantastic experience.”