Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
a great earthquake like this the ground would not have ceased from trem-
bling, slight as a rule, but broken every now and then by violent shocks that
should have filled Robinson Crusoe with fresh terror. He certainly should
not have felt composed for several days.”
52
In “the Effects of Earthquakes
on Human Beings” (1900), Davison reversed seismology's usual order of
reasoning: rather than using human data to analyze physical phenomena,
he used physical data to analyze human phenomena. He took the behavior-
ist position that self-descriptions of mental states during earthquakes were
unreliable, and that “the resulting actions are less liable to error or exag-
geration.” He grouped these actions into four “rough” categories: “A) No
persons leave their rooms. B) Some persons leave their houses. C) Most
persons run into the streets, which are full of excited people. D) People rush
wildly for open spaces, and remain all night out of doors.” Mapping these
reactions for the Charleston earthquake of 1886 generated a first insight.
Initially, he had listed the “hasty dispersal of meetings” under category C,
but his map indicated that this reaction was typical of weaker earthquakes:
“A crowd in one room is more liable to excitement and fear than are persons
in separate houses.” other conclusions followed from plotting the regions
ABCD on a map of structural damage. “If the shock was strong enough to
throw down chimneys or make cracks in the walls of buildings, then people
thought it wiser to camp out for the night.. . . People rushed precipitately
into the streets if the movement made chandeliers, pictures, etc. swing.”
More surprisingly, “If the shock was not even strong enough to cause doors
and windows to rattle, some persons were so alarmed that they left their
houses, and public meetings were dispersed. whether these effects were due
to the rarity of the phenomenon or to the highly-strung nerves of the Ameri-
can people, it may, I think, be inferred that in no other civilized country
would such alarm be shown at a sudden and unexpected occurrence.” Davi-
son had turned the earthquake into an experiment in social psychology.
Leaving aside the question of the fairness of the national stereotype invoked
here, we can appreciate the significance of his conclusion that “the hu-
man effects of earthquakes” were culturally specific. Compare the perspec-
tive of his contemporary, the Hungarian seismologist R. de Kövesligethy.
Kövesligethy hoped to measure human responses to earthquakes on a
scale as simple and universal as the astronomer's new formula for defining
the magnitude of a star in relation to its luminosity. From Davison's point
of view, such a psychophysical law would be a hopeless simplification.53
53
Davison's work represents a lost opportunity. Late in life, he met and
advised the young geologist A. t. J. Dollar. Dollar went on to found the Brit-
ish Earthquake Enquiry and, from 1935 to 1967, he continued Davison's
