Scientific Nationalism: A Historical Approach to Nature in Late Nineteenth-Century Hungary

This chapter approaches various occurrences of scientific nationalism in nineteenth-century Hungary; the term ‘scientific nationalism’ stands for both nationalism occurring within science and nationalism based on science. The latter form of nationalism, which used science directly for political purposes as an argument and justification for nationalist politics, had gradually become a widespread ideology in Hungary in the second part of the nineteenth century. It was not science, but politics, that was nationalist; however, science could not stay neutral on this central political issue. It developed a national character manifested both in its institutional structure and in its cognitive contents.