Grégory Quenet
48
phenomena hitherto and turned notions of space on their head. How
could an event occurring in Lisbon be felt at the very same instant
thousands of miles from there? Having previously sought to address
the role of earthquakes in Earth history, existing models of thought
were unable to answer the question.
38 This is emphasized by the editor
of one collection of seismological reflections published in London in
1757: “the effects of the earthquake […] were distributed over very
nearly four millions of square English miles of the earth’s surface: a
most astonishing space! and greatly surpassing any thing, of this kind,
ever recorded in history”.
39 The Encyclopédie revisited the same
question, since “un des phénomènes les plus étranges des tremblemens
de terre, c’est leur propagation, c’est-à-dire la manière dont ils se
communiquent à des distances souvent prodigieuses, en un espace de
tems très-court”.
40
In the months following the spate of Europe-wide tremors,
dozens of new theories were elaborated and published. They are extremely diverse in character, as is illustrated by the fact that of the ten
extant essays submitted to the Académie de Rouen’s essay competition on earthquakes in 1756 no two essays propose the same explanatory model. These texts are in no way content simply to reprise the
Ancients’ views on earthquakes. Of course, they cite them and borrow
widely from them; but borrowings and citations relate to specific,
quite concrete, points. No treatise of the 1750s adopts the Ancients’
general cosmology, nor do they accept in its entirety Aristotle’s theory
of meteors, which was nonetheless ubiquitous in the first half of the
seventeenth century. Earthquakes were still a poorly constituted object
of knowledge, since they did not belong to any single branch of science, and since it was impossible to prove the explanations put forward for them. As Kant writes:
Nous connaissons la surface de la terre à peu près complètement en ce qui concerne
son étendue. Mais nous avons aussi sous nos pieds un monde, avec lequel, encore à
notre époque, nous sommes très peu familiers. […] La plus grande profondeur à
___________________________
38 Grégory Quenet, Les tremblements de terre, pp. 305-54.
39 The History and philosophy of earthquakes, collected from the best writers on the
subject by a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin with a particular account of the
great one of November, the 1st 1755 in various parts of the globe (London: 1757), p.
5.
40 “Tremblemens de terre”, in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné, 35 vols (17511780), XVI, pp. 580-83.
48
phenomena hitherto and turned notions of space on their head. How
could an event occurring in Lisbon be felt at the very same instant
thousands of miles from there? Having previously sought to address
the role of earthquakes in Earth history, existing models of thought
were unable to answer the question.
38 This is emphasized by the editor
of one collection of seismological reflections published in London in
1757: “the effects of the earthquake […] were distributed over very
nearly four millions of square English miles of the earth’s surface: a
most astonishing space! and greatly surpassing any thing, of this kind,
ever recorded in history”.
39 The Encyclopédie revisited the same
question, since “un des phénomènes les plus étranges des tremblemens
de terre, c’est leur propagation, c’est-à-dire la manière dont ils se
communiquent à des distances souvent prodigieuses, en un espace de
tems très-court”.
40
In the months following the spate of Europe-wide tremors,
dozens of new theories were elaborated and published. They are extremely diverse in character, as is illustrated by the fact that of the ten
extant essays submitted to the Académie de Rouen’s essay competition on earthquakes in 1756 no two essays propose the same explanatory model. These texts are in no way content simply to reprise the
Ancients’ views on earthquakes. Of course, they cite them and borrow
widely from them; but borrowings and citations relate to specific,
quite concrete, points. No treatise of the 1750s adopts the Ancients’
general cosmology, nor do they accept in its entirety Aristotle’s theory
of meteors, which was nonetheless ubiquitous in the first half of the
seventeenth century. Earthquakes were still a poorly constituted object
of knowledge, since they did not belong to any single branch of science, and since it was impossible to prove the explanations put forward for them. As Kant writes:
Nous connaissons la surface de la terre à peu près complètement en ce qui concerne
son étendue. Mais nous avons aussi sous nos pieds un monde, avec lequel, encore à
notre époque, nous sommes très peu familiers. […] La plus grande profondeur à
___________________________
38 Grégory Quenet, Les tremblements de terre, pp. 305-54.
39 The History and philosophy of earthquakes, collected from the best writers on the
subject by a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin with a particular account of the
great one of November, the 1st 1755 in various parts of the globe (London: 1757), p.
5.
40 “Tremblemens de terre”, in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné, 35 vols (17511780), XVI, pp. 580-83.