Scientific and Technological Expertise in Industrial Europe

In continuation of a project on eighteenth-century scientific-technological experts, useful knowledge and “useful sciences," this project follows the figure of hybrid expert in nineteenth-century industrial Europe. It further reconstructs the epistemological, socio-political, and institutional factors that drove the development of the technological sciences as well as its consequences for the field of the natural sciences. In so doing, it also aims to uncover deeper cultural changes concerning the understanding of “science” and its role in society. The method is comparative, covering Prussia and other German states, France, and England. The goal is to achieve a broader, more global picture of the role of science, natural and technological, in European industrialization