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taught to disaggregate their experience of an earthquake into basic factual
statements of time, direction, and other physical “elements.” seismologists
were then in a position to put these pieces together into an approximately
complete picture of the physical phenomenon. It was only by combining
the partial perspectives of individual observers that such a picture could
emerge.
“Reassurance and Enlightenment”
Rather than drawing a dichotomy between “professional” and “popular”
science, the practitioners of
Erdbebenkunde
contrasted two ways of bringing
science to the people. The sensationalistic predictions of Rudolf Falb (chap-
ter 3) represented the wrong way, stimulating panic rather than rational
reflection. The alternative was to enlist members of the public as scientific
observers, training them in the methods of modern science and teach-
ing them to view earthquakes as a vital and natural part of the earth's life
cycle.
Few were surprised when Falb rushed to the scene of the Zagreb earth-
quake and claimed to have predicted it. As he began to issue prophecies of
catastrophes to come, professional scientists abandoned the wary skepti-
cism with which they had initially responded to him. now they were angry.
none responded more aggressively than Rudolf Hoernes, a fellow styrian.
Hoernes denounced Falb's theory as “scientific humbug” and cast Falb as a
charlatan and demagogue. He contrasted Falb's theory—speculative, dog-
matic, and hubristic—with the modesty and empiricism of the swiss earth-
quake Commission. Falb had claimed that there “no longer remains in the
whole, seemingly so inextricable earthquake question a single enigmatic
point.” The swiss instead acknowledged that the causes of earthquakes were
still uncertain and “multiple.” Clarification could only come from “these
precise studies of earthquake phenomena, founded on comprehensive ob-
servations.”
33
Meanwhile, back in the imperial capital, in the last weeks of november
1880, the private scientific Club organized a pair of lectures by prominent
geologists with the aim of raising money for the earthquake's victims. But
the lectures had another explicit goal: “to bring reassurance and enlighten-
ment from the standpoint of science in the face of the alarming theories of
unauthorized people [
Unberufener
].” The first was delivered by the vienna
geologist and ethnologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter.
34
He lamented the
fear caused by “false prophets” and denounced a certain theorist's reliance
