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to ignore low-tech research. In his pragmatic manner, he swiftly dismissed
the charge that felt reports were “subjective.” the search for an earthquake's
“'true' measure” was futile, as he explained sardonically: “It has been popu-
lar, of recent years, to belittle ratings of intensity because the subject enters
into the ratings. It is popular to talk of an as yet uninvented instrument,
inexpensive and accurate, which will measure some as yet unselected physi-
cal quantity which will be a 'true measure' of the earthquake. Apparently
this 'true' measure will enable one to conclude what damage occurred to
buildings in the region without inspecting them.” there was no good rea-
son, he argued, to favor instruments over human observers: “instruments
as we now know them are very selective in their response, and it would take
batteries of them scattered all over a town to give us as much information
regarding damage as one careful observer (if we can find him) will give us.
the human being has a very wide range of sensitivity qualitatively, albeit his
quantitative sense may not be all we would desire. We need intensity as well
as 'true measure.'” Byerly's pragmatic reasoning brought him to the same
conclusion as Wood: instruments might record the expected violence of an
earthquake, but only human observers could survey the actual damage. the
first could never replace the second. Wood and Byerly had realized what
human geographers did not articulate until the 1970s: that “the common
units of measurement employed for physical delimitation may be unsuited
for assessment of social impact.”
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Byerly put the point memorably: “One
of my colleagues in the days past used to harangue regarding 'apparent in-
tensity' (a description of what happened), and 'true intensity' (what would
have happened had the valley town been built on rock and all the buildings
soundly constructed). It reminds me of Rudyard Kipling's reference to 'the
god of things as they ought to be and the god of things as they are.'”
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then Byerly took this argument one step further. “every now and then
throughout the years a man who makes the statement that we need quan-
titative measures for assessing the strength of an earthquake adds that the
intensity evaluations now made should be suppressed. . . . It is the addition
of the recommendation that we should suppress the history of what hap-
pened to the county court house, merely because it was poorly designed,
shoddily constructed on filled ground, which has made me feel I should oc-
casionally speak up. . . . Whatever the originators of intensity scales expected
of it, its purpose today is to describe what happened. We must preserve
the history, the record of what happened.” Byerly was raising a provocative
charge. Seismologists' search for a “true” measure of intensity had abet-
ted the suppression of information about earthquake damage; it had al-
lowed Californians to shirk responsibility for poor construction. Wood had
