In 1918 the Danube Monarchy ceased to exist and its provinces became parts of the Monarchy's successor states, which increasingly assumed the character of nation-states. The regimes of these countries were usually oblivious and/or hostile to remnants of the erstwhile Austrian rule due to ideological reasons: they treated them as traces of a superimposed imperial power and an alien – democratic, pluralistic, liberal – tradition. Notwithstanding that fact, erasing the Habsburg Empire from maps of Europe did not entail the entire cancelation of its legacy on the former Habsburg territories. Although officially neglected or suppressed, this legacy made itself felt, overtly or tacitly, in discourses present in the public sphere of the countries that superseded the Monarchy.

This Open Access book combines philosophical and historical analysis of various forms of alternatives to mechanism and mechanistic explanation, focusing on the 19th century to the present. It addresses vitalism, organicism and responses to materialism and its relevance to current biological science. In doing so, it promotes dialogue and discussion about the historical and philosophical importance of vitalism and other non-mechanistic conceptions of life. It points towards the integration of genomic science into the broader history of biology. It details a broad engagement with a variety of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century vitalisms and conceptions of life. In addition, it discusses important threads in the history of concepts in the United States and Europe, including charting new reception histories in eastern and south-eastern Europe. While vitalism, organicism and similar epistemologies are often the concern of specialists in the history and philosophy of biology and of historians of ideas, the range of the contributions as well as the geographical and temporal scope of the volume allows for it to appeal to the historian of science and the historian of biology generally.

A pioneering regional approach to the study of international order in Central Europe following the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, and the subsequent creation of the League of Nations.

In 1918 the Danube Monarchy ceased to exist and its provinces became parts of the Monarchy's successor states, which increasingly assumed the character of nation-states. The regimes of these countries were usually oblivious and/or hostile to remnants of the erstwhile Austrian rule due to ideological reasons: they treated them as traces of a superimposed imperial power and an alien - democratic, pluralistic, liberal - tradition. Notwithstanding that fact, erasing the Habsburg Empire from maps of Europe did not entail the entire cancelation of its legacy on the former Habsburg territories. Although officially neglected or suppressed, this legacy made itself felt, overtly or tacitly, in discourses present in the public sphere of the countries that superseded the Monarchy.