Routledge Studies in Cultural History Science the Metropolis

This book presents new research on "thick spaces" of scientific research and processes of interurban and transnational knowledge transfer and exchange in Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – infrastructural preconditions for the explosion of creativity known as "Vienna 1900." 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.'