:Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private Life

Deborah R. Coen's book provides a sweeping panorama of Viennese liberal culture in the nineteenth century by reconstructing the history of three generations of its leading scientific family, the Exners. Franz S. Exner, the founder of the dynasty, achieved prominence in the 1830s and 1840s as a liberal philosopher and educational reformer responsible for creating the blueprint for modernizing and secularizing the monarchy's higher education system. Exner's educational reforms, which were put into effect after 1848, were based on the conviction that all knowledge had to be grounded on probabilistic reasoning and directed toward the cultivation of ethical individualism. Rejecting both determinism and skepticism, Exner's probabilistic liberalism, Coen argues, was peculiarly suited to the needs of Habsburg politics, which had to distinguish itself from the dogmatisms of clerical conservatism on the Right and the skepticism of socialist radicalism on the Left. Although Franz Exner died early, two generations of descendants carried on his philosophic legacy by elaborating the implications of relativistic reason in disciplines as varied as physics, neurology, psychology, jurisprudence, optics, and art. The story of this remarkable family, which began in the 1840s with the struggle against religious dogmatism and political reaction, came to an end in the late 1930s with Adolf Hitler's invasion of Austria and the emigration or collaboration of family members.