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defense and popular enlightenment in the mold of Escher's canal. And it
was an undertaking that was perhaps more urgent in Switzerland in the late
nineteenth century than ever before, as the rise of ethnic nationalism in the
rest of Europe threatened the civic nationalism of the federation. The Swiss
cultivated an ethic of “civic exceptionalism,” a “voluntary commitment to
a set of values and institutions, which in turn secured Switzerland's exis-
tence as a polyethnic state.” Swiss nationalism increasingly emphasized the
role of the Alpine landscape in forging a supra-linguistic unity. In 1891, for
instance, at a festival celebrating six hundred years of Swiss history, the char-
acter Helvetia, the embodiment of the Swiss nation, was said to be “shaped
by mountain peaks and valleys alike.” 36 The physical barrier of the Alps was
likewise central to the emerging Swiss ethos of isolationism. In this context,
earthquake observing was part of a lesson on civic identity. Not for nothing
did the Swiss Alpine Club, promoter of the nation's identification with its
landscape, contribute the cost of printing 1,450 German and 850 french
copies of the commission's instructions to observers. 37 The Swiss were being
taught to feel the forces exerted by the mountains that united them.
Switzerland's network of volunteer earthquake observers self-consciously
harked back to a pretechnical era, in which science stood for enlightenment
and civic conscience. It also looked ahead, to an age of rapid communica-
tion and precision timekeeping. It is a case that justifies Ted Porter's asser-
tion that “the Enlightenment—if this term may be taken to designate a faith
in progress through the popular diffusion of knowledge—took place in the
nineteenth century.” 38 What's more, enlightenment in this case was poten-
tially a more radical project than the mere diffusion of knowledge. It aimed
to enlist the public in the coproduction of knowledge. 39
Albert Heim, Nature's Physician
We can better grasp the ambitions of the Earthquake Commission by con-
sidering the public personae of its directors. Many of its members were af-
filiated with the Swiss federal Institute of Technology (ETH), founded in
1855 to serve the practical needs of a modernizing nation. Many also served
as geological consultants on state-sponsored engineering projects. one such
project was the Simplon Tunnel, a landmark feat that bored a road beneath
a five-thousand-foot peak. Most of Switzerland's top geologists advised on
the Simplon at some stage in its design and construction, which stretched
from the 1870s into the 1920s. Earthquakes were not prominent among the
hazards that imperiled its construction (though a quake did cause a fissure
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