Mitchell G. Ash (ed.): Science in the Metropolis: Vienna in Transnational Context, 1848–1918. New York: Routledge 2020. ISBN 9780367612580

 

URL: https://www.routledge.com/Science-in-the-Metropolis-Vienna-in-Transnational-Context-18481918/Ash/p/book/9780367612580

BOOK DESCRIPTION

This book presents new research on spaces for science and processes of interurban and transnational knowledge transfer and exchange in the imperial metropolis of Vienna in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapters discuss Habsburg science policy, metropolitan natural history museums, large technical projects including the Ringstrasse and water pipelines from the Alps, urban geology, geography, public reports on polar exploration, exchanges of ethnographic objects, popular scientific societies and scientifically oriented adult education. The infrastructures and knowledge spaces described here were preconditions for the explosion of creativity known as 'Vienna 1900.'

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Metropolitan Scientific Infrastructures and Spaces of Knowledge in Vienna, 1848–1918: An Introduction

Mitchell G. Ash

Part 1: Historiographical Overviews

2. Metropolitan Natural Histories: Inventing Science, Building Cities, and Displaying the World

Dorothee Brantz

3. Periphery and Metropolis: Some Historiographical Reflections on the Urban History of Science

Oliver Hochadel

Part 2: Focus on Vienna 1: Technical and Science-Based Infrastructures, 1850–1875

4. The Beginnings of the "City Machine": Infrastructure Expansion and International Technology Transfer in Vienna, 1850–1875

Sándor Békési

5. Metropolitan Geology and Metropolitan Collections: Turning Vienna into Stones in the Nineteenth Century

Marianne Klemun

Part 3: Comparative Studies and Metropolitan Networks, 1870s–1910s

6. Polar Waters in Metropolitan Space: Circulating Knowledge About the Ice-Free Arctic Ocean in Hamburg and Vienna

Ulrike Spring

7. Academic Geography and Its Networks in Vienna and Berlin: A First Comparative Study

Petra Svatek

8. Capital Collections, Complex Systems: Vienna, Berlin, and Ethnographic Specimen Exchanges in Transnational Fin de Siècle Scientific Networks

Brooke Penaloza-Patzak

Part 4: Focus on Vienna 2: Sciences and Publics

9. Talking About Popular Science in the Metropolis: Learned Societies, Multiple Publics and Spatial Practices in Vienna (1840–1900)

Johannes Mattes

10. Science-Oriented Popular Education: Heterotopic Learning Venues for Scientific Knowledge in Vienna, 1887–1918

Christian H. Stifter

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