Using a transdisciplinary approach, this book examines how scientific understanding of the Earth has been created, transformed, and shared across time - combining perspectives from the history of science, sociology of knowledge, and cultural studies to explore the evolution of Earth sciences.
Using a transdisciplinary approach, this book examines how scientific understanding of the Earth has been created, transformed, and shared across time - combining perspectives from the history of science, sociology of knowledge, and cultural studies to explore the evolution of Earth sciences.
Focusing on the practices, actors, and socio-cultural contexts that have shaped knowledge production, this volume offers fresh methodological insights and highlights the contributions of scientists, local experts, and non-specialist collaborators. Case studies range from Johann Reinhold Forster’s eighteenth-century mineralogical research to Cold War impact geology and interdisciplinary developments in ice core paleoclimatology.
Targeted at scholars, students, and general readers, this book provides an innovative lens for understanding the historical dimensions of Earth sciences, bridging disciplinary boundaries and uncovering new perspectives on production and exchange of knowledge.
1 EarthKnowledge: History of Earth Sciences as Histories of Knowledge?
An Introduction
Norman Henniges, Johannes Mattes, Marianne Klemun
2 Our Earth Has Undeniably Suffered Some Great Revolutions: Johann Reinhold
Forster and Scientific World-Making in Eighteenth-Century Natural History
Anne Mariss
3 Performing Science Between Laboratories and Glaciers
Dania Achermann
4 A Paradigm Shift? German Impact Crater Geology in Light of its
Social/Political Context
Martina Kölbl-Ebert
5 Very Early, the Enjoyment of Nature Research and Mountaineering Awoke in
Me: Autobiographical Narratives of Lives in Earth Sciences (Early Twentieth
Century, Vienna)
Sandra Klos
6 Willful Eyes and Hands: Transferring Theories into Mapmaking Knowledge in
Justus Perthes Geographical Establishment, ca. 19001930
Philipp Meyer
7 Vitrified Forts. Prehistoric Settlements as a Topic of Chemistry, Geology,
and Early Archaeology in Scotland and Saxony (Eighteenth to Early Twentieth
Century)
Susanne Grunwald
8 Bibliographic Data as Knowledge Proxies: Mapping Books and Tracing the
Scientific Discipline of Historische Geographie (Historical Geography)
Anna Regener
9 Commentary
Pratik Chakrabarti
Norman Henniges (Humboldt University of Berlin) is a geographer and historian of knowledge and science (nineteenth to twentieth centuries). His research fields include historical geographies of global knowledge and the social and cultural history of geography, geology, and cartography. His key publication is Die Spur des Eises (2017).
Johannes Mattes (Austrian Academy of Sciences) is a historian of knowledge and science focusing on Central and Eastern Europe from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries (geosciences, life sciences, physics, and medicine), with an emphasis on global entanglements. His key publications include Collaborative Research in Imperial Vienna (2024) and Reisen ins Unterirdische (2015).
Marianne Klemun (University of Vienna) is a historian of science (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries). Her research fields include cultures and political contexts of the history of natural history (geology, botany, gardens, travel, collecting; communication and documentation of sciences). Her key publication is with Spring (Eds.), Scientific Expeditions as Experiments (2016).
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