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](Papers by Philipp Lehmann
Surprise: 107 Variations on the Unexpected, 2019
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2018
This paper examines the co-construction of global and local views of the weather and climate at t... more This paper examines the co-construction of global and local views of the weather and climate at the turn of the twentieth century through a history of data gathering efforts in the German colonies in Africa. While both governmental officials and metropolitan practitioners aimed at producing standardized e and thus globally comparable and economically useful e data in different environments, these efforts often tended to break down in practice. Rather than being able to turn the field into a finely tuned laboratory, both European and African data gatherers were confronted with complex and challenging environmental and institutional realities. Faced with these difficulties, colonial practitioners tended to embrace alternative strategies of recording weather conditions, which placed a higher value on individual sensory perception and qualitative descriptions. Thus, in a seemingly paradoxical dynamic, the attempts to gather quantitative colonial data for global maps and models also facilitated the development of a particular colonial approach to climatology that highlighted local specificities and direct embodied experience.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2018
The Scales of Experience introduces the special issue Experiencing the Global Environment by focu... more The Scales of Experience introduces the special issue Experiencing the Global Environment by focusing on three dimensions of the theme that are reflected to various degrees in the constitutive essays. First, the introduction highlights the links between the epistemological and political contexts of the historical constitution and development of the global environment (or global environments) in the earth and environmental sciences from the late nineteenth century to today. Second, it argues for a historical approach to the complex concept of scientific experience, whose mutable and contingent qualities are demonstrated by the contributions to the special volume. Lastly, the introduction presents one of the central issues to be tackled by the essays to follow: the development – and, at times, the failure – of strategies and technologies to bridge the seemingly incommensurate gulf between individual, localized experience and the all-encompassing scale of the global environment.
History of Meteorology, 2017
Fueling Culture: 101 Words for Energy and Environment, 2017
American Historical Review, Feb 2016
History of Meteorology, 2016
In 1890 Eduard Brückner published his major climatological work with the wordy title Climate Osci... more In 1890 Eduard Brückner published his major climatological work with the wordy title Climate Oscillations Since 1700, With Remarks About Climate Oscillations Since the Diluvial Epoch. 1 The book brought a new impetus to the ongoing debate about climatic changes and variability, which had been a major point of contention in the climatological community throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Brückner's postulation of periodic and global 35-year climatic cycles made a large and lasting impact. Among many others, Svante Arrhenius discussed the findings; and more than half a century later, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie used Brückner's data collection as important material for his own work in climate history. 2 The research and writing of the book, however, had not been an easy task for Brückner. In the foreword, he professed that the completion of the work "had been forced to be delayed again and again." 3 Even a cursory reading of Climate Oscillations suffices to reveal the likely cause for the difficulties: in order to bolster his claims of persistent universal climatic cycles, Brückner had to cover large evidentiary ground. On the basis of information on glacial 1 Eduard Brückner, Klimaschwankungen seit 1700, nebst Bemerkungen über die Klimaschwankungen der Diluvialzeit, Geographische Abhandlungen 4 (Vienna: Ed. Hölzel, 1890); unless otherwise indicated, all translations into English are my own.
German History 32.4, 2014
Conference Presentations by Philipp Lehmann
Surprise: 107 Variations on the Unexpected, 2019
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2018
This paper examines the co-construction of global and local views of the weather and climate at t... more This paper examines the co-construction of global and local views of the weather and climate at the turn of the twentieth century through a history of data gathering efforts in the German colonies in Africa. While both governmental officials and metropolitan practitioners aimed at producing standardized e and thus globally comparable and economically useful e data in different environments, these efforts often tended to break down in practice. Rather than being able to turn the field into a finely tuned laboratory, both European and African data gatherers were confronted with complex and challenging environmental and institutional realities. Faced with these difficulties, colonial practitioners tended to embrace alternative strategies of recording weather conditions, which placed a higher value on individual sensory perception and qualitative descriptions. Thus, in a seemingly paradoxical dynamic, the attempts to gather quantitative colonial data for global maps and models also facilitated the development of a particular colonial approach to climatology that highlighted local specificities and direct embodied experience.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2018
The Scales of Experience introduces the special issue Experiencing the Global Environment by focu... more The Scales of Experience introduces the special issue Experiencing the Global Environment by focusing on three dimensions of the theme that are reflected to various degrees in the constitutive essays. First, the introduction highlights the links between the epistemological and political contexts of the historical constitution and development of the global environment (or global environments) in the earth and environmental sciences from the late nineteenth century to today. Second, it argues for a historical approach to the complex concept of scientific experience, whose mutable and contingent qualities are demonstrated by the contributions to the special volume. Lastly, the introduction presents one of the central issues to be tackled by the essays to follow: the development – and, at times, the failure – of strategies and technologies to bridge the seemingly incommensurate gulf between individual, localized experience and the all-encompassing scale of the global environment.
History of Meteorology, 2017
Fueling Culture: 101 Words for Energy and Environment, 2017
American Historical Review, Feb 2016
History of Meteorology, 2016
In 1890 Eduard Brückner published his major climatological work with the wordy title Climate Osci... more In 1890 Eduard Brückner published his major climatological work with the wordy title Climate Oscillations Since 1700, With Remarks About Climate Oscillations Since the Diluvial Epoch. 1 The book brought a new impetus to the ongoing debate about climatic changes and variability, which had been a major point of contention in the climatological community throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Brückner's postulation of periodic and global 35-year climatic cycles made a large and lasting impact. Among many others, Svante Arrhenius discussed the findings; and more than half a century later, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie used Brückner's data collection as important material for his own work in climate history. 2 The research and writing of the book, however, had not been an easy task for Brückner. In the foreword, he professed that the completion of the work "had been forced to be delayed again and again." 3 Even a cursory reading of Climate Oscillations suffices to reveal the likely cause for the difficulties: in order to bolster his claims of persistent universal climatic cycles, Brückner had to cover large evidentiary ground. On the basis of information on glacial 1 Eduard Brückner, Klimaschwankungen seit 1700, nebst Bemerkungen über die Klimaschwankungen der Diluvialzeit, Geographische Abhandlungen 4 (Vienna: Ed. Hölzel, 1890); unless otherwise indicated, all translations into English are my own.
German History 32.4, 2014
German History 30.4, 2012
Environment and History 17.4, 2011
This dissertation examines the impact of the nineteenth-century discussions about climate change ... more This dissertation examines the impact of the nineteenth-century discussions about climate change and desiccation on large engineering projects in desert regions between 1870 and 1950. It demonstrates that the debate over the variability of global climatic conditions was a product of both internal academic and transnational political developments, and that the perceived threat of advancing desert conditions found a popular and technocratic expression in climate engineering designs.
Against the background of new theories about the earth’s geological history, the development of academic geography, the travels of Sahara explorers, and imperialism in North Africa, European geographers and geologists initiated an enduring discussion on the origin of desert environments and the question of large-scale climatic changes in the recent past and present. Using a wide array of evidence ranging from cave paintings found in the interior Sahara and classical travel accounts to modern meteorological data, scientists debated whether North Africa, the entire continent, or even the whole world were undergoing desiccation. While the lack of a widely-accepted causal mechanism behind large climatic changes meant that the academic debate remained unresolved by the beginning of the twentieth century, images of progressing desert conditions had already left the confines of academia, heightening public anxiety over the possibility of future climatic catastrophes on a global scale.
From the early stages of the nineteenth-century debate on climate change, fears of desiccation inspired scientists and engineers to come up with solutions to detrimental climatic shifts, whether these were viewed as man-made or natural. The resulting climate engineering projects were an expression of environmental pessimism paired with a powerful technological optimism. This was apparent in French and British schemes in the late nineteenth century that aimed to flood large parts of the Sahara and effect wide-ranging climatic changes; in the plan of a German architect to engineer a geographically and climatically transformed new Euro-African continent in the 1920s; and eventually in Nazi designs to Germanize and green the “desertified” areas of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.