Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private LIfe
Coen, Deborah R. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
This
book uses the story of an important intellectual family, the Exners, to shed light on the science,
politics, intellectual thought, and culture of fin-de-siècle (end of century)
Vienna. Coen focuses on the family’s value of uncertainty, contradicting the
general assumption that certainty was considered the ultimate goal of knowledge
in this society. She is also concerned
with how family life influences intellectual life, particularly in the
case of the Exners, although her observations also apply to Austrian modern society generally. The
end result of this narrative is a comprehensive analysis of knowledge’s new social
place in Austrian liberalism.