Urban Histories of Science: How to Tell the Tale

Abstract

More often than not, finding the proper title for a book turns out to be quite a challenge. Yet this volume may be particular with respect to what term does not feature in the title (anymore). The project which eventually culminated in this book for several years went by the name “Urban Peripheries? Science and the City around 1900.” At first glance, “periphery” might sound like a perfect common denominator for the cities we picked for our case studies: Athens, Barcelona, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Dublin, Glasgow, Helsinki, Lisbon, and Naples. Yet in the end we did not put that tricky term in the title. In this introduction, we discuss the common themes that bind our ten Urban Histories of Science together. In its first part, we will discuss the potential but also the limits of the concept “periphery.” In the three sections that follow, we will try to show how other categories of analysis such as modernities, nationalisms, and agencies may help to unfold the thematic richness of our case studies.