Abstract
Ten years ago, in exceptional circumstances, a diploma course in environmental sciences was founded at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. It was to be the first of its kind in Continental Europe and a distinguishing feature was the rigorous inclusion throughout of elements from the humanities and social sciences. Free from the ties of the old disciplines, remarkable development opportunities opened up in this new field at a technical institute which enjoys considerable autonomy, along with exceptional financial and ideological potential. Nevertheless, the development did not manage to remain exempt from the general conceptual bottlenecks existing within the field of environmental research, the problems relating to the employment market, and the legacy of obsolete ideas from the past.
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