Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
seismological field research pioneered by the Swiss and Austrians, and the
investigation brought out some of the features that would set American seis-
mology apart in years to come. With Rockwood's help, Dutton circulated
a questionnaire and ultimately collected about four thousand observations
from 1,600 localities. The journal
Science
judged of the Charleston catas-
trophe that “no earthquake of ancient or modern times has been observed
with such care and fullness of detail. Besides the observations made by Pro-
fessors in several Colleges, by hundreds of railway officials, and at signal
stations, a large number of intelligent private citizens have given an account
of their own experiences.”
68
Dutton acknowledged the european precedent
for this approach, but he perceived a difference in the United States: the
questionnaires “were much fewer and more simple than those employed
in europe, because european investigators depend almost wholly upon the
educated classes to answer them, while in this country the uneducated but
intelligent and practical classes of the people must be the main reliance.”
Dutton's doubts about lay observation alert us to an important
perception
of cultural difference. even as Dutton invoked the myth of American equal-
ity and meritocracy, he betrayed a hesitation about the consequences of
democracy for intellectual culture. Dutton may not have appreciated that
the “practical classes” in the United States were proving to be reliable ob-
servers in various fields of natural history, as well as in meteorology. More
to the point, his pessimism about human observers was tied to his vision
for seismology. For Dutton, seismology was a branch of physical science; its
object was the precise measurement of physical forces and the elucidation
of universal causes. He was far less interested in seismology as it was widely
pursued by lay observers in europe—as part of geohistory, local history, and
the assessment of environmental risk.
Dutton was therefore skeptical of the felt reports from the Charleston
quake. He treated them as a meager substitute for instrumental data. He was
particularly dissatisfied when it came to measuring what was commonly
called “intensity.” The new Rossi-Forel scale was still relatively unknown
in the United States. in 1884 Rockwood had been content with a rough
qualitative scale running from “very light (noticed by a few persons but
not generally felt)” to “destructive (causing general destruction of build-
ings, etc.).”
69
Dutton employed the Rossi-Forel scale, but worried that it
was nothing short of “crude and barbarous.” As such language suggests,
Dutton recoiled from macroseismological methods without attempting to
understand them on their own terms. What Dutton sought was an absolute
measure of the “real energy” of the seismic wave at its origin below the sur-
face. As he explained,
