National Spaces and Deepest Places: Politics and Practices of Verticality in Speleology (2020)
Mattes, Johannes (Author)
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Volume: 62
Issue: 4
Pages: 670-696
This paper examines the practices and epistemic dimensions relating to subterranean space that led to a new three-dimensional understanding of the terrain, its scientific investigation, and its political acquisition as territory. Although caves had been explored by upright descent since the 18th century, improved techniques for surveying, mapping, and exploring deep shafts established speleology (“cave study”) as a scientific discipline. As political interest in the military and economic uses of caves was growing, national cave cadasters, state-owned speleological research institutes, and legal regulations evolved accordingly. This development resulted in a vertical concept of territory in Europe during World War I and the interwar period. Especially in archeology and prehistory—so-called “national” sciences—politics and scholarly research became resources for each other, with both, in their respective ways, being committed to the natural and cultural underground heritage.
...MoreArticle Wilko Graf von Hardenberg; Martin Mahony (2020) Introduction—up, down, Round and Round: Verticalities in the History of Science. Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (pp. 595-611).
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