Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of antisemitic violence.

When We Cease to Understand the World discusses a number of interrelated scientific discoveries and the scientists who made them, starting with the invention of the first synthetic pigment at the beginning of the 18th century and ending with the death of the French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck in the mid-2010s. However, the book focuses primarily on the scientific innovations and conflicts that occurred in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The 19th century saw the rise of modern nation-states in Europe. As territories across Europe unified and created national identities, they also sought to ensure their dominance through scientific innovation. These nation-states, particularly Germany following unification in 1866, funded scientific research that spurred industry, public health, and—critically—military technology (Von Gizycki, Rainald. “Science, State and Industry in Nineteenth-Century Germany.” Minerva, vol. 14, no. 2, 1976, p. 268). European scientists during this time period frequently saw themselves as supporting their nation through their work, as in the examples of Fritz Haber and Karl Schwarzschild.

This growing nationalism and technological advances converged and exploded into conflict at the turn of the 20th century with World War I.