How did the ocean end up on the table? Who traveled to the moon in the 19th century? What fears and expectations were stirred by the monkeys in the museum? This book examines, through three case studies, the strategies of staging knowledge and science that shaped the modernization processes of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It shows that with the museum, the observatory, and the zoo, places emerged where, at least temporarily, fears were confronted and dispelled, while knowledge was transformed into sensually experienceable forms. In the examined knowledge stagings, there is a recurring attempt to organize things and ideas in order to confront an increasingly complex reality. As the known world expanded in the 19th century, so did the need for explanations and systems of order.