Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T08:48:19.283Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Introduction: Witness to Disaster: Comparative Histories of Earthquake Science and Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2012

Deborah R. Coen
Deborah R. Coen*
Affiliation:
Barnard College, Columbia University E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For historians of science, earthquakes may well have an air of the exotic. Often terrifying, apparently unpredictable, and arguably even more deadly today than in a pre-industrial age, they are not a phenomenon against which scientific progress is easy to gauge. Yet precisely because seismic forces seem so uncanny, even demonic, naturalizing them has been one of the most tantalizing and enduring challenges of modern science. Earthquakes have repeatedly shaken not just human edifices but the foundations of human knowledge. They have been known to cast doubt on divine providence, on the predictive ability of the sciences, and on the capacity of the human mind to learn from an experience of sheer terror. Most recently, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011 have forced nuclear experts around the world to confront the limits of their knowledge and the vulnerability of their best-laid plans.

Type
Introduction
Information
Science in Context , Volume 25 , Issue 1: Witness to Disaster: Earthquakes and Expertise in Comparative Perspective , March 2012 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Translated by Attell, Kevin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Katharine. 2005. Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Anon. 1897. “On the Trail of a Ghost.” The Times of London, 6 November, p. 9.Google Scholar
Barth, Kai-Henrik. 2003. “The Politics of Seismology: Nuclear Testing, Arms Control, and the Transformation of a Discipline.” Social Studies of Science 33:743–781.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean. “Paroxysm: The Seismic Order.” 1991. European Graduate School. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-seismic-order.html (last accessed May 1, 2008).Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Biel, Steven, ed. 2001. American Disasters. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Braun, Theodore, and Radner, John, eds. 2005. The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: Representations and Reactions. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.Google Scholar
Briese, Olaf. 1998. Die Macht der Metaphern. Blitz, Erdbeben und Kometen im Gefüge der Aufklärung. Stuttgart: Metzler.Google Scholar
Brush, Stephen G. 1980. “Discovery of the Earth's Core.” American Journal of Physics 48:705–724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchenau, Jürgen, and Johnson, Lyman L., eds. 2009. Aftershocks: Earthquakes and Popular Politics in Latin America. Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Buckle, Henry Thomas. 1886. History of Civilization in England. New York: Appleton.Google Scholar
Charvolin, Florian, Micoud, André, and Nyhart, Lynn, eds. 2007. Des sciences citoyennes? La question de l'amateur dans les sciences naturalistes. Paris: Editions de l'Aube.Google Scholar
Clancey, Gregory. 2006a. Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1868–1930. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Clancey, Gregory. 2006b. “The Meiji Earthquake: Nature, Nation, and the Ambiguities of Catastrophe.” Modern Asian Studies 40:909–951.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1989. Voyage of the Beagle. Edited by Browne, Janet and Neve, Michael. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1979. The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 2008a. “Life, Chances, and Life Chances.” Daedalus 137:5–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 2008b. “On Scientific Observation.” Isis 99:97–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daston, Lorraine, and Park, Katherine. 2001. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750. Cambridge MA: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Davids, Karel. 2006. “River control and the evolution of knowledge: a comparison between regions in China and Europe, c. 1400–1850.” Journal of Global History 1:59–79.Google Scholar
De la Beche, Henry Thomas. 1836. How to Observe: Geology. London: Charles Knight.Google Scholar
Dewey, James, and Byerly, Perry. 1969. “The Early History of Seismometry (to 1900).” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 59:183–227.Google Scholar
Dörries, Matthias. 2005. “Krakatau 1883: Die Welt als Labor und Erfahrungsraum.” In Welt-Räume. Geschichte, Geographie und Globalisierung seit 1900, edited by Schröder, Iris and Höhler, Sabine, 51–73. Frankfurt am Main: Campus.Google Scholar
Dörries, Matthias. 2009. “The Chilean Earthquake and the Pulse of the Earth.” Paper presented at the History of Science Society Meeting, Phoenix.Google Scholar
Fan, Fa-ti. 2007. “Redrawing the Map: Science in Twentieth-Century China.” Isis 98:524–538.Google Scholar
Geschwind, Carl-Henry. 1998. “Embracing Science and Research: Early Twentieth-Century Jesuits and Seismology in the United States.” Isis 89:27–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geschwind, Carl-Henry. 2001. California Earthquakes: Science, Risk and the Politics of Hazard Mitigation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Gisler, Monika. 2007. Göttliche Natur? Formationen im Erdbebendiskurs der Schweiz des 18. Jahrhunderts. Zurich: Chronos Verlag.Google Scholar
Gisler, Monika. Unpublished. “Seismological Expertise: The Case of Eighteenth-Century Switzerland.”Google Scholar
Goodstein, J. R. 1984. “Waves in the earth: Seismology comes to southern California.” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 14:201–230.Google Scholar
Greene, Mott. 1982. Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Views of a Changing World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Harper, Kristine C. 2008. Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heringman, Noah. 2004. Romantic Rocks, Aesthetic Geology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Susanna, and Oliver-Smith, Anthony, eds. 2002. Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster. Santa Fe: School of American Research.Google Scholar
Hones, Sheila. 2001. “Distant Disasters, Local Fears: Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Revolution, and Passion in The Atlantic Monthly, 1880–84.” In American Disasters, edited by Biel, Steven, 170–196. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Howell, Benjamin F. Jr. 1990. An Introduction to Seismological Research: History and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irwin, Alan. 1995. Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise, and Sustainable Development. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
James, William. 1911. “On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake.” In Memories and Studies, by James, William, 209–226. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Keller, Susanne B. 1998. “Section and views: visual representation in eighteenth-century earthquake studies.” British Journal for the History of Science 31:129–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kozák, Jan, and Čermák, Vladimir. 2010. The Illustrated History of Natural Disasters. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Mauch, Christof, ed. 2009. Natural Disasters, Cultural Responses. Lanham MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Mauelshagen, Franz. 2009. “Disaster and Political Culture in Germany since 1500.” In Natural Disasters, Cultural Responses: Case Studies Toward a Global Environmental History, edited by Mauch, Cristof, 41–75. Lanham MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
McCook, Stuart. 2009. “Nature, God, and Nation in Revolutionary Venezuela: The Holy Thursday Earthquake of 1812.” In Aftershocks: Earthquakes and Popular Politics in Latin America, edited by Buchenau, Jürgen and Johnson, Lyman L., 43–69. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Montessus de Ballore, Comte de. 1904. “L'art de construire dans les pays à tremblements de terre.” Beiträge zur Geophysik 7:137–281.Google Scholar
Mulcahy, Matthew. 2006. Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624–1783. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Neumayr, Melchior. 1887. Erdgeschichte. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut.Google Scholar
Oeser, Erhard. 2001. Historical Earthquake Theories. Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution & Cognition Research. http://www.univie.ac.at/wissenschaftstheorie/heat/heat.htm (last accessed September 17, 2010).Google Scholar
Oldroyd, David. 1996. Thinking About the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Oreskes, Naomi. 1999. The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Palm, Risa, and Carroll, John. 1998. Illusions of Safety: Culture and Earthquake Hazard Response in California and Japan. Boulder: Westview.Google Scholar
Poliwoda, Guido. 2007. Aus Katastrophen Lernen. Sachsen im Kampf gegen die Fluten der Elbe 1784 bis 1845. Cologne: Böhlau.Google Scholar
Richards, Robert J. 1987. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richter, Charles F. 1935. “An Instrumental Earthquake Magnitude Scale.” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 25:1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Daniel N. 1990. “Wisdom Through the Ages.” In Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development, edited by Sternberg, Robert J., 13–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rozario, Kevin. 2007. The Culture of Calamity: Disaster & the Making of Modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheuerman, William E. 1997. Between the Norm and the Exception: The Frankfurt School and the Rule of Law. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. 2005. Dialogues and Letters. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Şengör, A. M. Celâl. 2003. The Large-Wavelength Deformations of the Lithosphere: Materials for a History of the Evolution of Thought from the Earlist Times to Plate Tectonics. Boulder: Geological Society of America.Google Scholar
Shaler, Nathaniel. 1887. “The Stability of the Earth.” Scribner's Magazine 1:259–279.Google Scholar
Snowden, Frank M. 2002. “From Triumph to Disaster: Fascism and Malaria in the Pontine Marshes, 1928–1946.” In Disastro! Disasters in Italy Since 1860: Culture, Politics, Society, edited by Dickie, John, Foot, John, and Snowden, Frank M., 113–140. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Solnit, Rebecca. 2009. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Strehlau, Jürgen. 2006. “‘Earthquakes occur on specific points and lines which. . .mostly coincide with traceable fracture lines. . .’: Eduard Sueß’ study of earthquakes in Lower Austria and southern Italy.” Berichte des Geologischen Bundesanstalts 69:67–68.Google Scholar
Valencius, Conevery Bolton. 2002. The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Vetter, Jeremy, ed. 2011. “Lay Participation in the History of Scientific Observation.” Science in Context 24:127–141.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Voss, Martin. 2006. Symbolische Formen. Grundlagen und Elemente einer Soziologie der Katastrophe. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.Google Scholar
Walker, Charles F. 2008. Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wegener, Alfred. 1920. Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane. Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn.Google Scholar
Westermann, Andrea. 2010. “Disciplining the Earth: Earthquake Observation in Switzerland and Germany circa 1900.” Environment and History 16:483–508Google Scholar
White, Paul. 2009. “Darwin's Emotions: The Scientific Self and the Sentiment of Objectivity.” Isis 100:811–826.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilkinson, Iain. 2001. Anxiety in a Risk Society. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Williams, G. D. 2006. “Greco-Roman Seismology and Seneca on Earthquakes in Natural Questions 6.” Journal of Roman Studies 96:124–146.Google Scholar
Winchester, Simon. 2005. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Wittich, William. 1845. Curiosities of Physical Geography. London: Charles Knight.Google Scholar
Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle, and Sanders, Donald Theodore. 2004. Earthquakes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Seismic Disruptions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar