Coen, Deborah R. (Author)
University of Chicago Press
Physical Details: 464 pp.
Language: English
Today, predicting the impact of human activities on the earth’s climate hinges on tracking interactions among phenomena of radically different dimensions, from the molecular to the planetary. Climate in Motion shows that this multiscalar, multicausal framework emerged well before computers and satellites. Extending the history of modern climate science back into the nineteenth century, Deborah R. Coen uncovers its roots in the politics of empire-building in central and eastern Europe. She argues that essential elements of the modern understanding of climate arose as a means of thinking across scales in a state—the multinational Habsburg Monarchy, a patchwork of medieval kingdoms and modern laws—where such thinking was a political imperative. Led by Julius Hann in Vienna, Habsburg scientists were the first to investigate precisely how local winds and storms might be related to the general circulation of the earth’s atmosphere as a whole. Linking Habsburg climatology to the political and artistic experiments of late imperial Austria, Coen grounds the seemingly esoteric science of the atmosphere in the everyday experiences of an earlier era of globalization. Climate in Motion presents the history of modern climate science as a history of “scaling”—that is, the embodied work of moving between different frameworks for measuring the world. In this way, it offers a critical historical perspective on the concepts of scale that structure thinking about the climate crisis today and the range of possibilities for responding to it.
...MoreReview Alison Frank Johnson (2020) Review of "Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale". American Historical Review (pp. 955-958).
Essay Review Martin Mahony (2019) Climatography for the Anthropocene. Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (pp. 435-440).
Review Lydia Barnett (2020) Review of "Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 674-675).
Review Cahan, David (October 2019) Review of "Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale". Technology and Culture (pp. 1103-1105).
Similar Citations
Book
Malcolm F. Purinton;
(2023)
Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste and Empire
Article
Lukas Rieppel;
Eugenia Lean;
William Deringer;
(2018)
Introduction: The Entangled Histories of Science and Capitalism
Book
Soeren Urbansky;
(2020)
Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border
Article
Mackenzie Cooley;
(2021)
The Giant Remains: Mesoamerican Natural History, Medicine, and Cycles of Empire
Book
Amrith, Sunil S;
(2013)
Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants
Chapter
Renn, Jürgen;
Hyman, Malcolm D.;
(2012)
Survey: The Globalization of Modern Science
Article
Jeannie N. Shinozuka;
Rohan Deb Roy;
(2024)
White Ants: Biotic Borders to Biocultural Frontiers
Article
Karol Witkowski;
Konrad Meus;
(2024)
The Oder-Vistula-Dniester Canal - the infrastructural legacy of the Habsburg Empire
Article
Tiago Kramer de Oliveira;
(2019)
Cultura geográfica, colonialidade e economia-mundo: o centro da América do Sul nos ‘mapas sertanistas’ (primeira metade do século XVIII)
Book
Malard, Bregoire;
(2009)
Global Science and National Sovereignty: Studies in Historical Sociology of Science
Article
Philipp Lehmann;
(2018)
Average Rainfall and the Play of Colors: Colonial Experience and Global Climate Data
Book
Brooke, John L.;
(2014)
Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey
Thesis
Benjamin W. Goossen;
(2021)
The Year of the Earth (1957-1958): Cold War Science and the Making of Planetary Consciousness
Book
Jasanoff, Sheila;
Martello, Marybeth Long;
(2004)
Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance
Book
Head, Lesley;
Atchison, Jennifer;
Gates, Alison;
(2012)
Ingrained: A Human Bio-Geography of Wheat
Article
Jankovic, Vladimir;
(2010)
Climates as Commodities: Jean Pierre Purry and the Modelling of the Best Climate on Earth
Article
Seth Bernard;
Joseph McConnell;
Federico Di Rita;
Fabrizio Michelangeli;
Donatella Magri;
Laura Sadori;
Alessia Masi;
Giovanni Zanchetta;
Monica Bini;
Alessandra Celant;
Angela Trentacoste;
Lisa Lodwick;
J. Troy Samuels;
Marta Mariotti Lippi;
Cristina Bellini;
Claudia Paparella;
Dan-el Padilla Peralta;
James Tan;
Peter van Dommelen;
Andrea U. De Giorgi;
Caroline Cheung;
(2023)
An Environmental and Climate History of the Roman Expansion in Italy
Thesis
Mariam Sabri;
(2022)
Epistemic Entanglements: Exact Sciences, the Environment and Empire in Early Modern India
Book
Fiona Williamson;
(2025)
Imperial Weather: Meteorology, Science, and the Environment in Colonial Malaya
Article
Elaine Lafay;
(2025)
Winds of Empire: Knowing Imperial Climates in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf South of the United States
Colonial Latin American Review
Environment and History
Journal of Historical Geography
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Be the first to comment!