Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
tronomy, because it has offered too slight an appeal to the imagination, has
not made itself known, and in relation to human affairs has been without
practical significance.”141
141
Willis appealed to the “imagination” of Southern
Californians by placing earthquakes in a cosmic context, in the tradition
of Seneca. Like eduard Suess and Albin Belar, he portrayed seismicity as a
necessary feature of “the living globe,” a developmental process continuous
with the formation of the solar system. In the manner of Clarence King, he
tried to teach his audiences to see for themselves the geological forces at
work in familiar landscapes. He did not hide the romantic infatuation with
mountains that had led him to landscape painting and the conservation
movement. Indeed, he fed the public's fantasy with the “stupendous” image
of “a mountain chain or an ocean deep, conceived as a growing thing.”
142
He revealed “stories” of dramatic uplift and fracture: “He who would read
the history of a mountain range cannot be guided by the age or nature of
the rocks, since they are usually much older than the uplift, but must seek
to read the story in the canyons, valleys, hills, and peaks. their individual
forms and their relations to one another are full of meaning, and he who
rides [presumably on horseback] may read as his eye sweeps over them.”
In the end, his lesson was straightforward: “the universe is not an accom-
plished fact. It is a growing thing. It is evolving.” the point was to enable
the public to see this evolution with their own eyes: “With our own eyes
we see that the rains wash away the soil and thus attack the hills, which in
the course of ages must waste away, and thus we reason that the mountains
themselves are but transient features of the landscape.”
143
In this way, Willis
worked to fuse the environmental perceptions of scientists and of ordinary
Californians.
Willis presented the observation of earthquakes as an essential facet of
the aesthetic experience of California's landscape. It was “well known to
all
competent
observers that the mountains of California exhibit in their
sculptured forms the evidence of having experienced uplift.”
144
He asked
his audience to train their senses on this subterranean process. His message
was really quite simple: “We want to go to work and make [the earthquake
record] complete so that we may be able to make deductions from it. that
work also we shall ask for help on.”
145
Seeking Postmasters and Enthusiasts
Harry Wood agreed with Willis that seismology had suffered as a conse-
quence of the decline of earthquake reporting in the California press.
Weaker tremors, so revealing of seismic hazard, went unrecorded. “In early
