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2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography Science as “a problem not yet fully resolved”: universities and the public use of reason between Kant and Humboldt Maria Chiara Pievatolo AISA and Università di Pisa ma[email protected] 21 November 2025 Colloque infoclio.ch 2025: Open Science in History - Bern This work is licensed under a Creative Commons by-sa license 1 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography Summary 1Two models of open science 2Author’s right as personal right 3Open science and institutions: the outside 4The conflict within the university (Der Streit der Fakultäten) 5Wilhelm von Humboldt: university as a problem not yet fully resolved 6Ivory flatland 7Micro-bibliography 2 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography Two models of open science Roberto Caso: what is the relationship between the ideal of open science and the ”infrastructural status quo” of copyright law and research institutions? 1administrative (or managerial) model: it accepts the status quo and attempts to mitigate or to compromise with it. 2subversive model: it aims to rebuild the scientific commons by circumventing commercial publishing and bibliometric evaluation.(*) (*) Free licenses that reverses copyright may be seen as belonging to this model, if they are meant as a substitute for radical copyright reform. 3 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography Richard Poynder’s (oblique) challenge Why the OA movement failed [Anderson, 2023] But in light of researchers’ continued reluctance to make their works open access, universities and funders began to introduce increasingly bureaucratic rules, sanctions, and reporting tools to ensure compliance, and to manage the more complex billing arrangements that OA has introduced. So, what had been conceived as a bottom-up movement founded on principles of voluntarism morphed into a top-down system of command and control, and open access evolved into an oppressive bureaucratic process that has failed to address either the affordability or equity problems 4 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography History as backwards exploration of alternative possibilities 1copyright author’s right without intellectual property (Kant) 2universities as inherently subversive institutions (Kant, W.v. Humboldt) 5 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography Kant, Von der Unrechtmäßigkeit des Büchernachdrucks (1785) books, as authors’ speeches to the public, are actions rather than things authorized publishers are authors’ spokespersons or agent they fulfill their mandate if and only if they convey authors’ ”speeches” to the public and their rights are justified and upheld if and only if they help authors to reach the public if they don’t, the public may compel them because personal rights are about controlling on human actions and directly involve human freedom while IP, as similar to the ius reale, would treat books as alienable things rather than as human actions 6 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography What if we had copyright without intellectual property? In an environment where Kant had prevailed and copyright was conceived as an author’s personal right rather than as ”intellectual property”, authors and the public could have overcome the proprietary grip of commercial publishers as soon as ICT rendered printing obsolete and the monopolies that were somehow justified in its technological context became irrelevant. Much of the institutional model of open science would have been unnecessary. 7 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography Kant’s Enlightenment essay (1783-4) The freedom to make public use of reason and speak as scholars to a public of readers is connected to a vocation [Beruf] to think for oneself that calls everyone, not only university professors (AK VIII, 36) - as human emancipation Outside his work, any kind of employee or official should be free to make a public use of reason, even if their use of reason is limited, at work, to what the institutional mechanism requires. the realm of the public use of reason belongs to a virtual space outside the institutions 8 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography Free - but virtual - communities Gemeines Wesen and Weltbürgergesellschaft But in so far as this or that individual who acts as a part of the machine also considers himself as a member of a complete commonwealth or even of the cosmopolitan society [Weltbürgergesellschaft], and thence as a man of learning who may through his writings, address a public in the truest sense of the word, he may indeed argue, without harming the affairs in which he is employed for some time in a passive capacity (AK VIII, 37) 9 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography Concluding questions Is designing institutions to host open science a consistent idea or a contradiction that risks reducing research to an empty collection of bureaucratic mandates, under an administrative power that is a threat for its very way of functioning? What is the condition through which institutions that were designed to be inherently subversive can remain so? Both Kant and Humboldt relied on broader spaces for the public use of reason, outside universities. Can such a space exist only virtually or theoretically, in philosophers’ minds? How could universities and academies preserve the open-endedness of science if this space were an ivory flatland (i.e. a reverse ivory tower)? 16 / 17
2 OS Models Copyright Outer OS Inner OS Inner OS 2 Ivory flatland Micro-bibliography Caso, Roberto (2020) La rivoluzione incompiuta.La scienza aperta tra diritto d’autore e proprietà intellettuale https://www.ledizioni.it/prodotto/la-rivoluzione-incompiuta/ Anderson, Rick (2023) Where Did the Open Access Movement Go Wrong?: An Interview with Richard Poynder https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2023/12/07/where-did-the-open-access-movement-go-wro ng-an-interview-with-richard-poynder/ von Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1809-10) Über die innere und äussere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin ÜberdieinnereundäussereOrganisationderhöherenwissenschaftlichenAnstalteninBerlin Pievatolo, Maria Chiara (2008) Publicness and Private Intellectual Property in Kant’s Political Thought https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Publicness-and-Private-Intellectual-Property-in-Pie vatolo/7a595e3ec5ec6262902d69b47a8b7a058759a889 Pievatolo, Maria Chiara (2017-2025) Wilhelm von Humboldt: un frammento di università https://btfp.sp.unipi.it/dida/humboldt/ 17 / 17
