Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
“the
Grubenhund
is the symbol of the spoofing of pretended universal
knowledge, the protest against the assumed authority of the printer's ink
in everything, but especially in technical matters.”
82
Kraus credited the
Gru-
benhund
with having “unmasked the scientific intonation [
Tonfall
].” It had
exposed the complicity of science with the press: “For science is by nature
so constructed that surprises are not excluded, and its credit rests on mis-
appraisal. In duping journalism, it proved their equivalence and bedded
down with it.”
83
the laughter that greeted the
Grubenhund
had, according to
Kraus, “a tragic feature: it comes from the heartlessness of a belief that has
been disappointed.”
84
In Kraus's view, the prank had accomplished what
the earthquake itself could not: it had finally shaken the public's faith in
scientific progress.
Conclusion
Before the advent of lay observing networks, the science of earthquakes re-
lied heavily on the press for its data. this was a compromising position, as
scientists well knew. editors were in the business of selling papers, and a
gripping account was far more valuable to them than one that was scien-
tifically observed. Likewise, the prophecies of a rudolf Falb might boost
sales better than the more sober theories of a professional. Nonetheless, the
liberal press also needed science. As Kraus demonstrated with his usual wit,
disaster stories required the counterpoint of a few confident words from a
scientific expert. Nature could not be given the last word. hence the uneasy
partnership that developed between seismology and journalism. It is easy
to see why some seismologists would have been tempted to skirt the media-
tion of newspapers altogether—to build, in other words, their own direct
avenue of communication with the public.
Kraus spied a profound irony in the fin-de-siècle culture of earthquake
observing. It might seem that the public was more attentive than ever to
nature's violence. In reality, though, the alliance of science and the press
shrouded natural disasters in a veil of false certainty. Kraus charged that
earthquake observations had become a genre unto themselves, a mere liter-
ary convention. By recasting seismological evidence as a modern style, a
Tonfall,
Kraus contributed to modernism's deconstruction of disasters as
scientific objects.
Nonetheless, Kraus did not deny what was at stake in the practice of
earthquake reporting. he agreed with scientists like hoernes and Belar that
cultivating the right attitude toward natural disasters was a matter of popu-
lar enlightenment. Kraus insisted, though, that enlightenment could not
