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in the first section of the tunnel). The real dangers would turn out to come
from flooding and unexpectedly high temperatures. Scientists faced accusa-
tions that they should have warned of the risks involved. Albert Heim, who
consulted on the tunnel from the 1880s, gave a revealing response to these
charges. rather than shifting the blame, Heim retorted that a geologist's
knowledge was inherently uncertain.
40
As he later put it, “It is self-evident
that the viewpoint emerging from the geological investigation cannot alone
be decisive. What strikes us though, is the uncertainty in the assessment of
many natural circumstances.”
41
Heim had cast his original assessment of
the tunnel project in similar terms. It was, he wrote, “impossible for me to
foresee” the subterranean dimensions of decomposing gneiss. Likewise, he
and his colleagues could not say for sure how high the temperatures might
climb during construction; they could only judge which of the proposed
routes would be safest in this respect.
42
repeatedly in his role as scientific
consultant, Heim stressed the limits of his ability to predict the environ-
mental consequences of engineering projects. In this way, Heim circum-
scribed his own authority as an adviser on matters of public interest. “How
it would have pleased me to have been able to present a clear and com-
pletely satisfying solution to the question,” he wrote in an expert report on
the provision of drinking water to an alpine town. “Nature, however, which
has so unequally distributed its gifts, cannot be made other than it is—we
can only observe
how
it is, and use it according to its possibilities. Much of
the
how
is hidden and only within certain limits to be discovered, so that
much uncertainty still attends our judgment and our foresight.”
43
With his
unusual insistence that nature be used only “according to its possibilities”
and with due regard to the scope of scientific uncertainty, Heim erected a
wise counterweight to the ambitions of nineteenth-century engineering.
44
In keeping with Heim's sense of caution, the Earthquake Commission
helped remind the Swiss of the principle of unintended consequences. A
remarkable example occurred in 1913, when moderate earthquakes shook
the vicinity of Grenchen near Solothurn. Never before in the history of the
commission had earthquakes originating in this region been reported. Two
years earlier, construction had begun on a tunnel through the Grenchen
Mountain. In early 1913, the engineers struck the local spring, flooding the
tunnel and cutting off the village's water supply—the first of several such
mishaps. four months later the tremors began. The press began to raise
questions. The director of the Earthquake Commission, Alfred de Quervain,
studied the reports of earthquake observers alongside the engineering of the
tunnel. This, he concluded, was the first clear evidence that the boring of
