Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Darwin as a naturalist on Louis Agassiz's Brazil expedition. He was undoubt-
edly familiar with their stories of their own first earthquakes. indeed, he had
been disappointed that his voyage to Brazil did not bring much in the way
of adventure.
41
Moreover, James was a psychologist fascinated by the study
of the human mind under the extreme conditions that could be generated
in the laboratory; yet he had an abiding aversion to laboratory work. so
perhaps we should not be surprised that James's reaction, as his bedroom at
stanford began to shake on 18 April 1906, was “delight.” Beyond his sense
of good fortune, James's account departed from the traditional form of sci-
entific earthquake observations. He did not describe the duration, intensity,
and direction of the quake, nor a scene of pandemonium in its aftermath.
“Little thought, and no reflection or volition were possible” as the ground
shook. Although he felt no fear, James had the sense that the quake was a
“demonic power,” “an individualized being,” a “living agent,” which he
likened to “earlier mythologic versions of such catastrophes.” James's nar-
rative then turned to his observations in san Francisco later that day and in
the weeks that followed. Where others told tales of crowds gone “mad with
terror” and of “bacchanalian orgies,”
42
James stressed the remarkably sober,
cooperative behavior of the urban populace. James insisted that this ability
to organize in an emergency was not merely “American” and “Californian”
but also deeply “human.” Cooperation was a firmly rooted feature of the
human response to catastrophe: “one's private miseries were merged in the
vast general sum of privation and in the all-absorbing practical problem of
general recuperation.” James's account was characteristic of his efforts to
bridge materialism and idealism. it suggested at once the fundamental un-
predictability of the universe and the harmonies between world and mind.
The experience proved “how artificial and against the grain of our spontane-
ous perceiving are the later habits into which science educates us.” At the
moment of crisis, James claimed, the keenest observations were the product
of instinct, not scientific training.
43
James's account bears comparison to that of the German physician Er-
win Baelz, who lived in Japan in the late nineteenth century. in 1901 Baelz
described his state of mind during an earthquake as “emotional paralysis”:
suddenly, really absolutely suddenly, a complete transformation occurred
within me. All the higher emotional activity was extinguished, all compas-
sion for others, all sympathy for possible calamities, even concern for one's
endangered relatives and for one's own life had vanished and left the mind
completely clear; indeed it seemed to me as if i was thinking more easily and
freely and faster than ever. it was as if a prior inhibition had suddenly been
