1st Edition

Urban Histories of Science Making Knowledge in the City, 1820-1940

Edited By Oliver Hochadel, Agustí Nieto-Galan Copyright 2019
    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book tells ten urban histories of science from nine cities—Athens, Barcelona, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Dublin (2 articles), Glasgow, Helsinki, Lisbon, and Naples—situated on the geographical margins of Europe and beyond. Ranging from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, the contents of this volume debate why and how we should study the scientific culture of cities, often considered "peripheral" in terms of their production of knowledge. How were scientific practices, debates and innovations intertwined with the highly dynamic urban space around 1900? The authors analyze zoological gardens, research stations, observatories, and international exhibitions, along with hospitals, newspapers, backstreets, and private homes while also stressing the importance of concrete urban spaces for the production and appropriation of knowledge. They uncover the diversity of actors and urban publics ranging from engineers, scientists, architects, and physicians to journalists, tuberculosis patients, and fishermen. Looking at these nine cities around 1900 is like glancing at a prism that produces different and even conflicting notions of modernity. In their totality, the ten case studies help to overcome an outdated centre-periphery model. This volume is, thus, able to address far more intriguing historiographical questions. How do science, technology, and medicine shape the debates about modernity and national identity in the urban space? To what degree do cities and the heterogeneous elements they contain have agency? These urban histories show that science and the city are consistently and continuously co-constructing each other.

     

    List of Figures vii



    Notes on Contributors x



    Preface xiv



    Urban Histories of Science: How to Tell the Tale



    Oliver Hochadel and Agustí Nieto-Galan



    1 Envisioning a New European Metropolis: Designing the Athens Observatory (1842)



    Maria Rentetzi and Spiros Flevaris



    2 Institutionalizing the “Metropolis of Mechanics”: Philosophical Engineering in the City of Glasgow c. 1820–c. 1875



    Ben Marsden



    3 The Natural Sciences and Their Public at the Meetings of the Hungarian Association for the Advancement of Science in Budapest and Beyond, 1841–1896



    Katalin Stráner



    4 Copepods and Fisher Boys: Advanced Marine Biological Research and Street Poverty in Naples c. 1890



    Katharina Steiner



    5 Locating Dublin in the Late Nineteenth-Century Ether



    Tanya O’Sullivan



    6 Second City of Science? Dublin as a Center of Calculation in the British Imperial Context, 1886–1912



    Juliana Adelman



    7 From Capital City to Scientific Capital: Science, Technology, and Medicine in Lisbon as Seen through the Press, 1900–1910



    Ana Simões



    8 Collective Expertise behind the Urban Planning of Munkkiniemi and Haaga, Helsinki (c. 1915)



    Emilia Karppinen



    9 On Hygiene in a Modern Peripheral City: Buenos Aires, 1870–1940



    Diego Armus



    10 From Electricity to the Photo Archive: National Identity and the Planning of the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition



    Lucila Mallart



    Index

    Biography

    Oliver Hochadel is based at the IMF-CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) in Barcelona.



    Agustí Nieto-Galan is Professor of History of Science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.