The Tongues of Seismology in Nineteenth-Century Switzerland

Science in Context 25 (1):73-102 (2012)
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Abstract

ArgumentBetween 1878 and 1880, Switzerland, Italy, and Japan initiated the world's first national earthquake commissions, but only the Swiss made ordinary citizens a vital part of this undertaking. This paper examines the texture of communication between Swiss scientists and lay observers and traces the development of a language for seismology that was simultaneously scientific and vernacular. This is the story of an aborted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk, an alternative abandoned on the way to the increasingly technical science of the twentieth century.

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10.1017/s0269889711000305

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References found in this work

Objectivity.Lorraine Daston - 2007 - Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Edited by Peter Galison.
Histories of scientific observation.Lorraine Daston & Elizabeth Lunbeck (eds.) - 2011 - London: University of Chicago Press.
The empire of observation, 1600-1800.Lorraine Daston - 2011 - In Lorraine Daston & Elizabeth Lunbeck (eds.), Histories of Scientific Observation. University of Chicago Press.

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