Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
ship to its environment. in this new state of alertness, Humboldt and his
companions observed a meteor shower the following night, a phenomenon
that he and the inhabitants of Cumana speculated might be related to the
temblor. The earthquake thus primed Humboldt for empirical science—
not through conscious reflection on its causes and effects, but by plung-
ing him quite literally into a world in which nothing could be taken for
granted.
The allegorical quality of Humboldt's account further depended on latent
metaphors. Believing that earthquakes were the effect of subterranean uplift,
Humboldt worked with an implicit analogy between the earthquake as a
force of planetary formation (
Erdbildung
) and as a force shaping the human
mind (the humanist concept of
Bildung
). in this respect, Humboldt's earth-
quake narrative reimagined a lesson of classical philosophy. Plato had con-
ceived of vertigo as a formative experience for philosophers. in the “dizzy”
confusion over the significance of perceptual judgments lay the state of mind
that was “the beginning of philosophy.” As recent scholars have noted, echoes
of this position can be found from Descartes to the romantics.
24
in the nine-
teenth century, though, the earthquake became more than a metaphor for
knowledge making; it became a natural laboratory.
Humboldt's note therefore came with an important coda: “if these shocks
are repeated frequently over successive days, then fear quickly disappears.
On the Peruvian coasts we got as used to the earth tremors as sailors do to
rough waves.”
25
Humboldt made this point twice for emphasis: “i would
never have thought then that, after a long stay in Quito and on the Peruvian
coast, i would get as used to these often violent ground movements as in
europe we get used to thunder. . . . The casualness of the inhabitants, who
know that their city has not been destroyed in three centuries, easily com-
municates itself to the most frightened traveler.”
26
in other words, earth-
quake fears were by no means crippling. Like the natives, a visitor could
adjust to the unstable terrain. in this sense, Humboldt's story of the Cu-
mana earthquake and its aftermath encapsulated his larger ambitions for
his scientific voyage to the New World. As Michael Dettelbach has argued,
Humboldt styled himself as a radical empiricist. He cast himself as an exqui-
sitely sensitive measuring instrument for the registration of a dynamic in-
terplay of natural forces. Politically as well as philosophically, Humboldt's
empiricism had radical implications. He aimed at the “cultivation of free
individuals, a Reason free from the prejudices of theory, theology, or self-
interest.”
27
Since 1789, earthquakes and other natural cataclysms had be-
come common metaphors for political revolutions, and natural cataclysms
were increasingly perceived as threats to public order. Humboldt's tribute
