Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
assigning intensity, he often assigned a range (e.g., 2-3) rather than a single
degree. His final step at the end of each year appears to have been to review
the list of events and number them. In this way he identified each separate
and genuine “earthquake,” according to forel's definition. In June 1891,
for instance, eight reports over a two-day period received one number (a
single earthquake), while two reports from July of that year received no
number—perhaps because they were not confirmed by other observers, or
because they seemed to originate outside Graubünden and were therefore
the responsibility of another commission member.
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Here, then, is part of
the process by which the observations of ordinary citizens were reinscribed
as scientific evidence.
Coming to the Aid of Science
The most consistent and prolific lay earthquake observers in nineteenth-
century central Europe tended to be individuals who were otherwise in-
volved with
Landeskunde,
the term for regional history, both natural and
human. As Lynn Nyhart argues, the suffix
kunde
in the nineteenth-century
German-speaking world indicated a form of knowledge marked by three
characteristics: it was comprehensive even at the expense of intellectual
coherence; it derived from personal, sensory experience; and it was open
to popular participation.
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Likewise the adjective
lokalkundig
designated in-
dividuals endowed with scientifically relevant local knowledge, as in the
geologist Melchior Neumayr's conviction that “a sharp and
localkundiger
observer who knows a volcano near his home in detail, will often foresee
its eruption.”
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for proponents of the monographic method, the depth of
their local knowledge was one marker of the distance between their
Erdbe-
benkunde
and the mere “theories” of upstarts like rudolf falb (chapter 3).
Habitual earthquake observers tended to be active in their local scientific
society, in a mountaineering club like the Swiss Alpine Club, or, by the end
of the century, in the emerging nature protection movement. for instance,
the feat of observing over three hundred seismic shocks in the year 1885
was achieved by secondary school teacher David Gempeler in Zweisimmen
(canton Bern), who won praise from the commission for his “conscientious,
persistent observation and numerous, clear and precise reports.” Gempeler
was a member of the Alpine Club, a contributor to a regional botanical
catalog, and the author of a
Heimatkunde
and a collection of local folklore,
including tales reproduced in the local dialect. In 1885, the second most
valued observer was a pastor in Mett (Bern) by the name of Ischer, brother
of the geologist Gottfried Ischer. Pfarrer Ischer was a member of the Alpine
