Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
new discovery about the relationship between cause and effect in nature has
a great value for humanity, for it helps free the human spirit from the chains
in which it was once imprisoned by the base fear of what is not understood
and, therefore, seems arbitrary [
vor dem nicht zu Begreifenden und deshalb
vielleicht Willkürlichen
].”
32
Heim echoed an ancient philosophical tradition,
in which the highest aim of natural knowledge was to release man from
fear. Consider, for instance, the famous response of the poet Seneca to an
earthquake that struck the region of Campania in 62 CE. “What consola-
tion—I do not say help—can you have when fear has lost its way of escape?”
for the stoic, the proper response to such boundless terror was rational ex-
planation. Seneca therefore invoked Greek theories of underground water
and trapped air, ultimately explaining earthquakes as the result of strain on
one part of the “body” of the cosmos.
33
In this vein, Heim suggested that
seismology could serve a therapeutic purpose, consoling and fortifying the
mind in the face of terror. Yet Heim's aspiration was unique to the nine-
teenth century in two respects. first, he reconceived seismology as a popu-
lar, empirical practice, and thus as a means of mass enlightenment. Second,
the source of spiritual comfort for Heim did not lie in an all-encompassing
explanation, which was forever beyond the reach of empirical science, but
rather in the empirical attitude itself. A parallel was evident in Heim's re-
sponse to the 1881 rock slide in Elm, in the Glarus Alps, which killed over
a hundred people. He called for public participation in recognizing and
reporting the warning signs of disaster: “Even with respect to rock slides, we
want to enter the enlightened age [
Zeitalter der Erkenntnis
].”
34
Scientific earthquake observation was thus fundamentally different from
weather observation, and the difference derived not just from the absence
of instruments. More fundamental was the human threat that earthquakes
posed. Historians have argued that the Swiss nation was forged to a signifi-
cant degree through common measures to protect against natural disasters.
As Daniel Speich shows, Hans Conrad Escher's canalization of the Linth
river at the turn of the nineteenth century aimed to improve not just the
land but the moral fabric of the nation. Nature, Escher wrote, “forces us into
a social condition, as we have to act united, if one man alone is without
help.” The swamplike conditions in the valley were considered morally de-
bilitating to the local peasantry, whom Escher recruited to build the canal.
To reverse these effects, Escher provided the workers with special schooling.
Speich points out that such a combination of environmental engineering
and public education was unlikely after the early nineteenth century, due
to growing technical specialization.
35
In this light, the Swiss Earthquake
Service is all the more surprising. It was a combination of environmental
