Susan Abrams Prize, 2007

Citation

The Susan Abrams Prize judges are delighted to announce that the 2007 award has been won by Deborah R. Coen´s book Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism and Private Life. The book breaks new scholarly ground in studying three generations of a family, rather than an individual, and in arguing that knowledge has a household component that rivals more widely studied institutional settings. Much of what she tackles is also unfamiliar territory: the scientific work, politics, and domestic life of three generations of the Exner family, Austrian scientists and public figures of the first order.  Looking at the domestic, public, and scientific sites of the Exners’ activity, Coen effectively challenges a central tenet of received Austrian cultural history: the portrayal of the aesthetics, subjectivity and skepticism of Austrian modernism as antithetical to the liberal rationalism of figures like the Exners.

But Coen’s work does more than develop a theme of interest to European cultural historians.   What is so remarkable about her analysis from the standpoint of the history of science is her demonstration of the intimate interrelations of the Exners’ family life, especially as nurtured at their summer retreat of Brunnwinkl, their liberal political stance, and the probabilistic methodologies that distinguished their scientific work, whether in physics, psychology, meteorology, color theory, biology, or other areas.  It is hard to think of other works in the history of science that explore so extensively and persuasively specific cases where science, politics, and domestic life fit together in such a mutually constitutive fashion. While individual sections of the book will interest specialists in different areas, the result is a wonderful whole. Of the family members studied, the biologist Karl von Frisch is the most widely known, but others like Karl’s uncle Franz Serafin Exner, who served as Rector of the University of Vienna and argued that probabilistic physics contained lessons for modern politics, are equally if not more interesting.  Profiting from their interactions with the Exners were other such luminaries as Erwin Schrödinger, whose embrace of indeterminism in physics, as the author explains, is better seen as the continuation of the tradition in Austrian physics that the Exners developed rather than as response to a hostile political environment. With the Exners, Coen shows, uncertainty was simultaneously of significance for its “moral value” in family life and politics as well as for its place in scientific theories and research.  Throughout the book, the author illuminates the cultural, intellectual, and family roles of the Exner women, including the writer and educational reformer Emilie Exner and the artists Hilde and Nora Exner. 

Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty plays out against a background of enormous political change, including the destruction of the Habsburg Empire and, two decades later, the takeover of Austria by the Nazis.  Deeply researched, nuanced in its analysis, and brilliantly executed, Deborah Coen shows the creativity and also ultimately the limitations of the Exners in their attempts to negotiate their complex and changing socio-political terrain. The reference to Popper towards the end reminds us of the broader philosophical issues at stake, the importance of the republic of letters, and the interesting ways in which scientific work is disseminated. In summary, the judges believe Coen´s book is ambitious, ground breaking, and brilliantly executed. Thanks to its originality, and broad appeal to those working in Austrian cultural history, the history of physics, psychology, and the Vienna Circle, Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty will become a work that is not only widely admired but of enduring scholarly value.