Thinking classified - Structuring the world of ideas around 1800

Comprehensive labels such as "empiricism" or "realism" structure the world of ideas in ways that directly affect crucial issues within, and beyond, academic discourse. In particular, fundamental philosophical debates, questions as to the status of the sciences and of the relationship between the sciences and other fields continue to depend on such notions. These notions require a thorough-going historicization in order to properly understand their function. First, is has to be noted that these labels are of surprisingly recent origin; they gained currency only at the end of the 18th century, or - as in the case of "realism" - profoundly changed their scope in this period. They were formed in the context of philosophys claiming the leading role in structuring the field of scientific (in the broad sense of "science") disciplines. In its beginning, this process was marked by a surprising openness; the range of application of these concepts was not clearly determined: virtually every philosopher around 1800 could be called, and critically denounced as, an "empiricist". Neither the notion of "experience" nor that of "reality" had, in this period, a meaning that was precise enough to unequivocally classify different approaches in philosophy and the sciences. The novelty and openness of these labels, therefore, gives the historian of philosophy - in interaction with the history of science - a unique chance to grasp how those concepts started to function as demarcating concepts and how they introduced boundaries that continue to influence our thinking. Pertinent questions in this context are: Which arguments entered into the genesis of these labels, how are various practices integrated and subsumed under one label? Which decisions, for instance regarding the notion of experience and the paradigm of reality, were made in order to give them a polemical and demarcatory function? How do these philosophical labels interact with the specialization and internal diversification of the field of the special sciences? Which disciplines form the model for reality-directed or experience-based investigations? These questions will be addressed by studying the representative labels "empiricism" and "realism" in the context of the formative debates in philosophy, and between philosophy and the sciences, around 1800.