What Is the Earth? - The Earthquake Observers - page 151

alization, based merely on statistical distributions and not on field studies.
Such laws were “only valid for one and the same region, where they deter-
mine the direction of the largest ground tremors; they become incorrect
however if they are carried over from one region to another. this is because
earthquakes, apart from the geological aspects, also derive in part as causa
efficiens from the mutual adjustment of matter on the surface. these laws
thus have a far more narrow range than those that result from geological-
seismic studies, which are undertaken on the whole surface of the planet
and extended across it.” 11 Without local field studies, seismology would be
blind to the ways in which local conditions determined the development
and impact of earthquakes.
Analogously, Montessus's investigations of earthquake-resistant con-
struction methods showed him that there could be no universal rules of
seismic safety. “No one knows how to establish general rules. Sometimes
hard soils are to be preferred, sometimes soft soils. here the heights are less
vulnerable than the lowlands, elsewhere it's the opposite.” indeed, Montes-
sus advocated the complete cessation of construction in certain areas, such
as ischia after its disastrous quake of 1883. “the point,” he explained, “is
that the entanglement of the conditions of location and composition ex-
cludes any general solution to the problem.” 12 Like recent scholars, Montes-
sus recognized that the study of earthquakes as disasters—as conjunctions
of geological, geophysical, and human factors—often required a regional
rather than global lens. 13
Gerland's Observatory
gerland envisioned an altogether different path to a global seismology. in
his opinion, the methods of local observation were already being rendered
obsolete by the progress of globalization in its widest sense: “today, how-
ever, the earth is freely accessible, humanity rises and unites ever more to a
common enterprise; and thus earthquake research has also reached a new
level. What formerly a single country was for its inhabitants, such is the
earth as a whole for us today.” 14 But what indeed was the earth?
gerland's answer was that the earth was nothing but a “gigantic totality
of cosmic material.” Such was the definition he had offered a decade earlier
in a bid to redefine “geography” ( Geographie or Erdkunde, terms he used
synonymously) as the study of this totality—minus its human inhabitants.
this was an astonishing move from a man best known to this point for his
contributions to anthropology. gerland's immediate goal was to establish