Abstract

Nicolas Pethes: Milieu. Die Exploration selbstgenerierter Umwelten in Wissenschaft und Ästhetik des 19. Jahrhunderts The article introduces the basic epistemology of the concept of ›milieu‹ (or ›ambience‹) that was so significant for nineteenth-century studies of nature, society, and art: focusing on an object’senvironment means to include a formerly »unmarked space« (Niklas Luhmann) into the realm of observation. This paradoxical crossing of ›inside‹ and ›outside‹ was highly productive for innovative theories of life in philosophy, science, and literature: drawing from George Canguilhem’s reading of Claude Bernard’s concept of the milieu intérieur, the article reads Hegel’s description of the »prose of the world« as an early version of the awareness that reality is not found ›out there‹ butproduced by discourses which, as the naturalistic movement at the end of the century shows, also include aesthetic theories.