Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
dead specimens. “The plant species, like every organic creature, wants to be
conceived and understood in its total appearance in the magnificent thou-
sandfold interconnected organism of nature, in its total belonging to the
infinitely diverse conditions that influence it powerfully and to the thereby
determined relations to the external world, in short in its total
living
phe-
nomenon as a
living,
dependent microcosm in the
living
kingdom of nature,
in order to be judged rightly.”
87
Brügger's view of nature evidently owed
much to romantic
Naturphilosophie,
but it also resonated with forel's more
pragmatic search for an integrated view of life and its physical conditions.
As these lines also hint, Brügger was not an easygoing man. He was ap-
parently fanatical about his ideas and work and intimidating to students.
Nonetheless, he was a highly effective organizer. In the 1850s he organized
a private network of meteorological observing stations, ninety in total,
which became a crucial part of the Swiss national meteorological network
in 1863. In conjunction with the network, he also published instructions
for phenological observations. His seismological network presumably de-
pended on the same circle of acquaintances.
Brügger's notes from the early 1880s shed light on the evolution of a
system for processing seismological observations. for each seismic event,
Brügger listed every locale to which he mailed a questionnaire and the per-
son or institution to whom he addressed it (such as an observatory or clois-
ter). With the exception of the first event (7 January 1880), he numbered
these locations. He seems to have used the following annotations: “ret” or a
strike-through to indicate a response received; “not observed” for a negative
response; in some cases, he also noted the direction of shaking. for instance,
on 4 July 1880 an earthquake was felt throughout much of Switzerland,
and on 6 July Brügger sent out forty-eight questionnaires (out of the two
hundred given to each commission member). He seems to have received
twenty-one responses, at least five of them negative. Some of his notes on
this event are illegible, but they seem to include dates of subsequent com-
munications with the observers, perhaps indicating that he followed up with
questions about certain reports. Subsequently, his notation process became
more streamlined, resulting in a single observer list for each event. In 1881,
perhaps due to forel's exhortations about precise timekeeping, Brügger be-
gan noting the reported time of observation to the minute. And in 1883 he
began assigning intensities, in keeping with the commission's introduction
that year of the rossi-forel scale. In 1883 he tallied how many locations
experienced shaking of degree 3, 4, or 5. He then abandoned this practice,
perhaps realizing that this information revealed little in the absence of a
map. In later years, perhaps in growing recognition of the ambiguities of
