In recent years the modern city as a specific place of scientific (as well as medical and technological) practices has attracted a fair amount of interest among historians of science. Yet following this “urban turn” much remains to be explored. The lion’s share of the research on science and the city (in the formative period around 1900) has focused on the metropolis (London, Paris, Berlin etc.). Yet what about “second cities” such as Barcelona, Hamburg, Glasgow, Athens, Lisbon and so on? These cities have been under the radar of much of recent scholarship but surely deserve an in-depth-investigation.

What is more, there are thorny methodological issues to be resolved. In short: how to write an urban history of science? The sheer complexity of the topic, its abundant sources, innumerous actors, questions of scale and so on pose a serious historiographical challenge. One may argue for example that it makes no sense to neatly disjoin the spheres of art, architecture, science, medicine, politics etc. These spheres need to be understood as a seamless web with numerous intersections. Yet how would one describe such a seamless web? It seems clear that the urban space is always both: product and producer. Therefore the guiding research question is always a double one: how have science (technology and medicine) shaped the modern city? And inversely: in how far did the urban space condition the practices of producing, communicating and applying new knowledge?

We will pursue and discuss these questions in the Third Watson Seminar in the Material and Visual History of Science entitled: “How to write an urban history of science: New approaches and case studies”.