natures impartiality

8/10/2019 Natures Impartiality

1/9

Disasters, 2002, 26(1): 19

Overseas Development Institute, 2002.Published by Blackwell Publishers, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Natures Impartiality, Mans Inhumanity:Reflections on Terrorism and World Crisisin a Context of Historical Disaster

David AlexanderUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst

Experience isnt interesting till it begins to repeat itselfin fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart(1938)

Would words like these to peace of mind restoreThe natives sad of that disastrous shore?Grieve not, that others' bliss may overflow,Your sumptuous palaces are laid thus low;Your toppled towers shall other hands rebuild;With multitudes your walls one day be filled;Your ruin on the North shall wealth bestow,For general good from partial ills must flow;You seem as abject to the sovereign power,As worms which shall your carcasses devour.

Voltaire,Pome sur le Dsastre de Lisbonne(1756)

This paper compares the terrorist outrages of 11 September 2001 in New York City and

Washington to the Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755. Both events occurred,

literally out of the blue, at critical junctures in history and both struck at the heart of

large trading networks. Both affected public attitudes towards disaster as, not only did

they cause unparalleled destruction, but they also represented symbolic victories of

chaos over order, and of moral catastrophism over a benign view of human endeavour.

The Lisbon earthquake led to a protracted debate on teleology, which has some

parallels in the debate on technological values in modern society. It remains to be

seen whether there will be parallels in the reconstruction and the ways in which major

disasters are rationalised in the long term. But despite the differences between thesetwo events which are obviously very large as nearly 250 years of history separatethem and they were the work of different sorts of forces there are lessons to be

learned from the comparison. One of these is that disaster can contribute to a perilous

form of self-absorption and cultural isolation.

Keywords:terrorism, earthquake, disaster, moral philosophy, international relations.

Introduction

The terrorist outrages in New York City and Washington, D.C., on 11 September 2001were unprecedented in scale, coordination and daring. Yet no single aspect of theseoperations was without some kind of a forerunner among events in the recent or distant


2/9

David Alexander2

past. For instance, in New York a B-25 bomber aircraft crashed into the 79th floor ofthe Empire State building in 1945. My aim in this paper is to search the historicalrecord of disaster for some possible analogues of the events of that fateful day inSeptember and to consider the lessons that might be learned from historical analysis interms of both moral philosophy (Beatley, 1989) and international relations. The event

that I believe offers the most fruitful comparison is the earthquake that struck Lisbon,Portugal, in 1755. This is not the only historical catastrophe that might help throw lighton the US tragedies, but it is one of the more significant episodes in terms of a numberof striking parallels, as outlined below. First, I shall outline the two events anddescribe the subsequent reactions to them. In the case of the US attacks, though theevents are exceedingly well known, it is important to recap them in order to ensure thatthe comparative analysis is based on a clear version of the facts. However, the analysisis necessarily provisional, as at the time of writing less than three months have passedsince the disaster and not all problems of information are fully resolved.

The terrorist attacks of 11 SeptemberAt 0845 hrs EDT (US Eastern Daylight Time) on 11 September 2001 a Boeing 767 ona routine commercial flight was hijacked and deliberately flown into the upper floors ofthe north tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New Yorks financial district atthe southern end of Manhattan Island. Eighteen minutes later another hijacked 767crashed into the adjacent south tower. At 1010 hrs a Boeing 757 was flown into thePentagon military headquarters in Washington, and at the same time another 757crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania, apparently missing the target that the hijackersaboard it had intended to fly into.

The Boeing 767s have a fuel capacity of 90,770 litres and the 757s 42,680

litres. All had taken off with full tanks only minutes before from airports in the easternUS. The 265 people aboard the airliners, including all 19 hijackers, died instantly inthe crashes. The jet fuel ignited fierce conflagrations in all three buildings. Fireballswere injected into each of the 110-storey WTC towers, igniting the 95th103rd floorsof the north tower and the 82nd93rd floors of the south tower. The fire at thePentagon burned for many hours but was contained by the massive structure of the

building, which had been designed to resist attack.The WTC was built of steel beams clad in concrete, with a strong central

column, containing elevator shafts, stairs and utility wells, from which steel beamsradiated outwards to connect with the rest of the load-bearing structure. The fires

overwhelmed sprinkler systems and increased in intensity to 8001,100C. This turnedconcrete into powder or soot, and the structural steel first buckled, then melted. Sixty-two minutes after impact the south tower collapsed, and the north tower followed suitat 1028 hrs, 103 minutes after it was hit by the first airliner. The towers were designedto resist the impact of a smaller jet liner, and to retard a fire for two hours (thecalculated evacuation time), but it would have been extremely difficult to build them toresist the impact, blast and fireball effects of the deliberate attacks that occurred on 11September.

At least 189 people died in the Pentagon and 2,889 in the WTC, in the lattercase including hundreds of foreigners from a total of 60 countries. The WTC death tollwas limited by early efforts to evacuate this complex of seven buildings, which at peak

times contained as many as 40,000 people. A small proportion of the dead took theirown lives by jumping out of windows in order to avoid being burned in the fire.


3/9

Terrorism and World Crisis in a Context of Historical Disaster 3

Among the dead in New York there were 343 firemen and 78 policemen who rushed tothe scene right after the crashes and in many cases went up the stairs of the towers inorder to rescue people.

The collapses could have been much more destructive if the impacts and fireshad occurred lower down the two towers, which might have made them fall over rather

than subside vertically. As it was, the load shift, which was probably of the order of100,000 tonnes, led to progressive collapse on to a restricted site. The collapse causedtremors equivalent to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake. In all, five tall buildings wereentirely destroyed,1 three collapsed partially and 10 suffered major damage. The 1.2million tonnes of debris at the site formed a compact heap that rendered search-and-rescue operations difficult and dangerous. Dust and fires also inhibited the rescue,which was carried out by relays of up to 1,200 rescue workers.

Early reactions to the US tragedy

It is fair to conclude that the US disasters of 11 September have a greater significancethan comparison of the death toll (about 3,122) and injured (6,408 people, about 500 ofthem hospitalised) with other recent disasters would suggest.2 This is because theyhave had a disproportionate impact on world affairs, including international relations,commerce, travel and the military balance of power.

Reactions noted during the aftermath were exceedingly heterogeneous, as onewould expect from a large and pluralistic country. They include the following:disbelief (normalcy bias, in the sociological jargon, Drabek, 1986: 72), sadness anddepression, shock and disorientation, widespread anxiety and uncertainty, blind

patriotism, patriotism as a focus for solidarity, spontaneous economic conservatism,

religious fundamentalism, suspicion of foreigners, racist outbursts, paralysis oftransport, recrimination for defects of emergency management, manifestations ofpacifism and fear of further attacks. At an official level, serious debate ensued over thepossible restriction of civil liberties resulting from tightened security. On both apopular and an official level, there was (as is so often the case in disaster) a widespreadneed to focus the sense of blame (cf. Bucher, 1957; Olson, 2000): it was firmly directedat Osama bin Laden and the shadowy Al-Qaeda organisation, although US residents ofnon-Western origin also suffered.

3 On a positive level, the therapeutic community so

often noted by sociologists in disaster (Barton, 1970) acted to reinforce a sense ofidentity with victims and the bereaved, as well as with the nation. But on a less

positive note, such a strong national consensus developed that there was little

opportunity publicly to debate the issues in anything other than a simplified form.4

The Lisbon tragedy

In the mid-1750s Lisbon was a thriving port city and the opulent capital of a colonialand trading empire that stretched vast distances across the globe. It looked optimis-tically to the wide expanses of the Atlantic Ocean, which carried its merchantmen,soldiers and adventurers overseas to feats of prowess and commercial gain.

The morning of Sunday, 1 November 1755, was bright and sunny with a brisknorth-east wind. It was All Saints Day, and at 0940 hrs the people were in church,

where the priests had begun the Gaudemus omnes in Deo. A small foreshock set thechurches swaying and immediately afterwards the first of several huge earthquakes

5


4/9

David Alexander4

brought them crashing down upon the hapless worshippers. Contemporary accounts bysurvivors indicate that dense clouds of dust turned the atmosphere black and screamsrent the air.

Altar candles set light to draperies in the churches, blazing hearths ignited thefallen timbers of houses, and the wind relentlessly fanned the flames. Survivors rushed

into the citys open spaces and down to the waterfront to congregate on the newly builtmarble quay, the Cais de Pedra. Seismic liquefaction caused this to plunge into theestuary and several hundred people were promptly drowned. Twenty minutes after thefirst earthquake, the waters drew back and then repeatedly surged on land as threegigantic tsunami waves coursed up the River Tagus estuary. They attained heights of1015m in Lisbon.6

It is estimated that 60,000 people, perhaps one in five inhabitants, died whenthe earthquake, fire and tsunami razed the city. The catastrophe was not entirelywithout precedent, as in 1531 another earthquake and tsunami had destroyed thousandsof Lisbons buildings. This time it was followed by the fires of the auto da f, as theInquisition sought culprits among the survivors. They need hardly have bothered:

famine and pestilence reaped a heavy toll among the makeshift camps on the fringes ofthe city (Frana, 1983).

Contemporary interpretations

Any disaster should be analysed in relation to the context of its times. The Lisboncatastrophe took place at a particularly critical juncture in European intellectual life. Itwas a moment of tension between opposing views of teleology. Leaving aside theopportunists and pragmatists, whose Weltanschauung (world-philosophy) wasunchanged by the disaster (they plundered or they invented, as opportunities allowed),

there were two schools of thought. The rationalists were led by Gottfried WilhelmLeibniz, who believed that life was guided by un progres continuel et non interrompu de plus grands biens (1981), and Alexander Pope (1982) who reasoned, similarly,that:

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;All discord, harmony not understood;A partial evil, universal good.

Hence, the prevailing 18th-century maxim was whatever is, is right. In fact, naturalphilosophy revealed to Pope the all-embracing unity of the world, and to Leibniz suchterrible setbacks as earthquake catastrophes were all part of Gods plan. If that schemeappeared at times monstrous, Bishop Joseph Butler argued in his book Analogy ofReligion (1893) which was popular at the time of the Lisbon catastrophe, that humanbeings could not be expected to comprehend a creation planned on such a colossalscale.

But as the scholar Clarence Glacken put it:

Complacent attitudes toward the earth as a habitable planet were seriouslyundermined by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. This frightful catastrophe and

the accompanying tsunami dramatized the problem of evil and the role ofphysical catastrophe affecting living things indiscriminately; it also raised


5/9


questions about the order and harmony on earth and the fitness of theenvironment, and the validity of final causes in nature (1967: 521).

In fact, intellectuals and ordinary folk perceived Lisbon as the worst event of its kindsince the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79. It began to look very dark indeed.

In his Pome sur le Dsastre de Lisbonne, Voltaire launched a frontal attackon the tout-est-bienphilosophy of Pope and Leibniz:

Say what advantage can result to all,From wretched Lisbons lamentable fall?Are you then sure, the power which could createThe universe and fix the laws of fate,Could not have found for man a proper place,But earthquakes must destroy the human race?

In Candide, as Glacken put it, Voltaire shoved aside the ... smug optimism in human

affairs, and uncritical assumptions of an inevitable improvement in the course of time(1967: 527).7 More pragmatically, Johann Sssmilch, chaplain in the Prussian Armyand a founder of the science of demography, whose intellectual influence spreadthroughout Europe, saw the Lisbon disaster as Gods way of controlling the relentlessrise of population.8 He was thus a progenitor of Malthusianism before Malthus, thegreat economic moraliser. In short, Lisbon plunged Europe into gloom.

Nevertheless, the catastrophe also stimulated a rational pragmatic approach toearthquakes, as evinced by Immanuel Kant, who speculated on earthquake lights andanimal behaviour, and John Mitchell, the reverend lecturer of Cambridge, who soughtto establish a basis for observational seismology (Alexander, 1989). Yet he did so in

the shadow of his predecessor Robert Hooke, whose lectures, collected 67 years beforethe Lisbon disaster, were the first, tentative excursions in observational catastrophism(1705).

Parallels between the Lisbon and the US disasters

For almost a century, George Santayanas dictum, Those who cannot remember thepast are condemned to repeat it (1998) has elicited controversy. To what extent ishistory repetitive? Could it even be a cyclical process? If it repeats itself, is that aninevitable process or does it reflect the historical ignorance of key participants, who

unwittingly replay the dramas of the past? Or are the apparent repetitions of historymere coincidences? After all, we construct history from a pot-pourri of selectedevidence and load it with our interpretations, which in their turn are the fruit ofcontemporary preoccupations.

With that disclaimer in mind, it is nevertheless possible to trace some parallelsbetween the Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755 and the terrorist attacks of 11September 2001 in the eastern US. To begin with, they both occurred at a critical

juncture in Western intellectual development. The mid-18th century was anuncomfortable time of transition in both natural and moral philosophies. It also

presaged a technological revolution which was shortly to cause major upheavals inWestern society. Similarly, the third millennium begins at a time when humanity

struggles to assimilate the technology it has created, which has caused immenseupheavals in the ground rules of human relations. Both disasters affected great


6/9

David Alexander6

commercial cities with extensive networks of influence abroad. Both dealt a bodyblow to trade and prestige, though not a fatal one.

On a smaller scale, some of the physical parallels are remarkable: the intrusionof disaster into a bright, sunny, tranquil day; the abrupt collapse of large, apparentlysolid and immutable buildings; the passage of multiple events and successive waves of

death and destruction; and the clouds of dust that obscured the vision of terrifiedsurvivors.It remains to be seen whether there will be parallels in the reconstruction. At

the time of writing this (December 2001) it seems possible, though by no meanscertain, that there will be. After the Lisbon disaster many buildings were given shearwalls that were designed to resist both excessive seismic displacement and the spreadof fire. Avenues and open spaces were rationally designed (under the crampedconstraints of the site, which is in a valley) to permit safe movement duringemergencies (Davis, 1978). After the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, thereis much talk of limiting the height of tall buildings and improving their emergencyevacuation facilities. Indeed, after years of neglect, conferences are now being held on

this theme. Both would be sensible precautions and, like the Lisbon reconstruction,would represent a rare incidence of architectural Darwinism, the survival of the fittest

building (Alexander, 2000: 67). But history does not allow us to be very sanguineabout this, as lessons are learned far too rarely in post-disaster reconstruction.

But perhaps the most striking parallel is in contemporary attitudes. Bothevents represent a symbolic victory of chaos over order (that was, of course, one of theobjectives of the terrorists in New York and Washington). In this, the world seems toenter a dark tunnel of fear and uncertainty. Moral catastrophism gains a victory over its

better-disposed adversaries: benignity, utilitarianism, uniformitarianism. Both eventsthreaten, not merely a world order carefully constructed on the basis of the social and

economic expedients of powerful oligarchies, but also the sense of community which isthe only defence that ordinary people have against the rigours of such a world. AfterLisbon, the prevailing sense of optimism in the human condition suffered a period ofcollapse; after the World Trade Center disaster, optimism in the power of technology toadvance human interests faltered, though perhaps temporarily. In synthesis, bothevents were stiff reminders that human society is tempered by both progress andretrogress.

Lessons to be learned from the comparison

The Lisbon earthquake was the result of natural causes and was generally regarded asimpartial, a visitation upon humanity but not a reprisal. The WTC disaster was thework of human malevolence, fruit of a system of ethics that few of us can begin tocomprehend, but that we universally condemn. In both cases it proved difficult toresist the temptation to moralise. But in such cases the only moral certainties are thosethat are based on highly selective readings of the evidence. In Lisbon, the city fell inon those who had gone to pay their obsequies to the Creator and the population wasdecimated. It was a curious sort of judgement for wickedness, if that is what it was.Moreover, within 40 years Lisbon had been rebuilt in a flashy, opulent style, withtriumphal arches and monumental buildings: the Enlightenment was back, propelled bycommerce (Frana, 1983; Alexander, 2000: 183).

In 2001, terrorist activities were born of the distress caused by Americanforeign policy in the Middle East, with all its inhumanity and inherent contradictions.


7/9


Many of the latter stem in turn from the changed alliances of the post-cold war era.Suddenly, as common causes disappeared, allies turned into enemies. Freedomfighters, armed, trained and financed by Western concerns, abruptly became thegovernments or agents of rogue states. The stock markets of the Western worldfinanced the activities of those who later on would be branded terrorists,9 while its

armaments industries supplied much of the hardware that they would use to resist anyreprisals.A disaster on the scale of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, with

more than 2,800 fatalities, gives rise to such a powerful sense of outrage that it tends tostifle rational debate about the underlying causes (see note 4). Perhaps in the sameway, the horror of the Lisbon tragedy led to some crude outbursts of moralism abouthuman wickedness and the propensity of our species to reproduce too freely. In themodern world, there is a politically driven tendency to couch problems in black-and-white terms, and to ignore their underlying contradictions. In the Middle East, this isfuelled by poverty and disadvantage, which prepare the ground for what in the West isknown rather misleadingly as religious fundamentalism. Like the nations of the

Balkans and Caucasus, the Middle Eastern countries (and Afghanistan) are buffer statesthat tend to suffer the worst effects of global strategic alliances and enmities. Here theUS and Lisbon catastrophes differ: the former results from the visitation of extra-territorial extremism, the latter results in extremism at home in the form of extra-ordinary measures and repression in effect martial law amid the ruins of the city.

In the West, periodic disasters have contributed to a self-absorption that somemay regard as an unwitting form of arrogance. Its origins are far older than Lisbon,1755, its continuity right up to the present day is impressive, and its implications are

profound. As Klaus Meyer-Abich put it:

We see that Eurocentrism is not only a political issue but is rooted in ourmodern consciousness. The depth of the roots may explain why occidentalrationality seems even more overwhelming for other cultures than the politicaland economic power of the industrialized countries (1997: 178).

One way that the self-absorption might be gauged is in cash flow. Americans donatedabout $1.2 billion to funds set up for the victims of the 11 September outrages ($500million was collected by the American Red Cross alone). In comparison, they donated$16 million to the appeal that followed the Gujarat earthquake of 26 January 2001. I

believe that this discrepancy reflects both a sense of isolation from the worldsproblems and the well-known proportionate effect of mass media coverage on the scale

of charitable giving, the emotion tax of publicity (Cater, 2001).Patriotism in the US serves the useful purpose of encouraging unity but is so

often reduced to a form of dogmatic orthodoxy. After 11 September the desire forunity was so overwhelming that the dogmatism became stifling. As a result, it wasvery difficult to conduct an open debate in which the events in New York andWashington, could be condemned as outrages, but at the same time the overall picture,including the causes, could be acknowledged to have more complex, less black-and-white explanations. Patriotism by definition inward looking reinforced theisolationism, which contributed to a failure to understand, for example, the forms of

pluralism that exist in the Islamic world. In the popular mass media this led to the

development of an us and them mentality, with scarce consideration of who themmight really be. As in the auto da fof the Lisbon aftermath, it fuelled an instinctivedesire to defend the root of Western culture against perceived outside influences. Long,


8/9

David Alexander8

critical debates on this were published in the UK and US, respectively, in the LondonReview of Books (2001, www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/) and Z Magazine (2001,www.zmag.org/znet.htm). They tended to run counter-currently to official

pronouncements and popular sentiment.In essence, this paper is about the lessons of history. Potentially, these are far

too numerous to be debated in a brief conclusion, though only time will tell which ofthem is the most significant. One serious contender for that honour is the question ofpluralism. As described above, the mid-18th century in Europe was a time of greatplurality and intellectual energy (despite the stultifying effects of absolutism), though itlater provoked a backlash of orthodoxy when it began to spawn revolutions. Thelesson is that, in the end, it will be healthier and safer to confront awkward truths withopen debate (namely, to encourage pluralism) than to try to enforce consensus.Paradoxically, disasters are born in extreme conditions, but reactions to them are mostsuccessful if they are moderate. It would be well to remember this as the war onterrorism enters its next phase.

Notes

1. The third to collapse was World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-storey block which fell downat 1720 hrs on the day of the attacks.

2. For instance, the Gujarat earthquake of 26 January 2001 killed 19,739, injured 166,836, andleft nearly a million people homeless.

3. In 150 pages of debate on 11 September that appeared in the US publicationZMagazineduring September and October 2001, the concept of blame appeared 24 times. Fifteen ofthese instances referred to US attitudes to other countries: ten of them concerned officialcriticism and five referred to popular attitudes. Circumstantial evidence suggests that theproportion was reversed in the popular press (Z Magazine is not mainstream US news

literature, but is intellectual, pluralistic and radical in character).4. The same was true of the death of Princess Diana in 1997. Here the presence of an invisible

grief police seemed to ensure that no one dissented from the national collective anguish(see Jack et al., 1997).

5. The first main shock lasted at least three minutes and had an estimated magnitude of 8.75.Its source was located somewhere in beneath the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and itaffected an area of 1.6 million km. Within the next three hours it was followed by twoother large earthquakes. The seismologist Charles Richter (1958) judged it the largestearthquake ever registered, and the only one to have reached 9.0 on his magnitude scale(which, however is inaccurate at very high seismic energy expenditures).

6. The tsunamis, which reached the coast of Finland, were 4m high in the Caribbean, 2m highin southern Britain, and in Scotland caused a 70cm seiche to occur on Loch Lomond (Lyell,19901: 438). About a third of all tsunamis begin as the Lisbon one did with a trough (i.e.the water draws back) rather than a peak, in which the water flows straight on land(Habermann, 1995). While this was happening, huge landslides and gravitationaldeformations (Sackungen) occurred in the mountains of central Portugal (Pereira, 1988).Algiers was also severely damaged.

7. I would argue that the Pax Americana has been pursued with a similar sense of optimismabout the benefits of free trade and representative democracy.

8. Johann Sssmilch, Die Gttliche Ordnung (The Divine Order, 1741, revised 1765).9. The sum of US$2.8 billion was disbursed by the Western powers to the Mojaheddin of

Afghanistan when these forerunners of the Taliban were resisting the Russian invasion of1979. Furthermore, in May 2001, President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin

Powell announced a grant of $43 million to the Taliban to aid in the reduction of opiumpoppy cultivation in Afghanistan (Scheer, 2001).


9/9


References

Alexander, D.E. (1989) Extraordinary and Terrifying Metamorphosis: On the Seismic Causes ofSlope Instability. In K.J. Tinkler (ed.)History of Geomorphology.Unwin-Hyman, London.

Alexander, D. (2000) Confronting Catastrophe: New Perspectives on Natural Disasters. TerraPublishing and Oxford University Press, Harpenden and New York.

Barton, A.M. (1970) Communities in Disaster: A Sociological Analysis of Collective StressSituations. Anchor Books, Garden City.

Beatley, T. (1989) Towards a Moral Philosophy of Natural Disaster Mitigation.InternationalJournal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters7(1): 532.

Bucher, R. (1957) Blame and Hostility in Disaster. American Journal of Sociology62: 46775.Butler, J. (1893) The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course

of Nature (1736). George Bell, London.Cater, N. (2001) Why are we fundraising for the rich and not the poor? AlertNet (26 October

2001) www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/313087Davis, I. (1978) Shelter After Disaster. Oxford Polytechnic Press, Oxford.Drabek, T.E. (1986) Human System Response to Disaster: An Inventory of Sociological

Findings. Springer-Verlag, New York.

Frana, J-A. (1983)Lisboa pombalina e o illuminismo. Bertrand, Lisbon.Glacken, C.J. (1967)Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from

Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century. University of California Press, Berkeleyand Los Angeles.

Habermann, E. (1995) Tsunami run-up data base (numerical ftp archive). National GeophysicalData Center, US National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Administration, Boulder.

Hooke, R. (1705) Lectures and Discourses of Earthquakes and Subterraneous Eruptions (1688).Issued posthumously by an anonymous publisher in Cambridge.

Jack, I., and interviewees (1997) Those Who Felt Differently. Granta60: 935.Leibniz, G.W. (1981) New Essays on Human Understanding (trans. P. Remnant and J. Bennett).

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Lyell, C. (19901) Principles of Geology (3 vols, reprint of the 183033 edn., edited by M.Rudwick). University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Meyer-Abich, K.M. (1997) Humans in Nature: Toward a Physiocentric Philosophy. In J.H.

Ausubel and H.D. Langford (eds.) Technological Trajectories and the Human Environment.National Academy of Engineering, National Academy Press, Washington.

Mileti D.S. (ed.) (1999)Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the UnitedStates. John Henry Press, National Academy of Sciences, Washington.

Olson, R.S. (2000) Toward A Politics of Disaster: Losses, Values, Agendas and Blame.International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters18(2): 26587.

Pereira, E.J. (1988) The Great Earthquake of Lisbon. Transactions of the Seismological Societyof Japan 12: 519.

Pope, A. (1982) An Essay on Man (17334). Methuen, London.

Richter, C.F. (1958)Elementary Seismology. W.H. Freeman, San Francisco.Santayana, G. (1998) The Life of Reason, or, The Phases of Human Progress (1905)Prometheus

Books, Amherst.Scheer, R. (2001) Bushs Faustian deal with the Taliban. The Los Angeles Times(22 May).

Address for correspondence: University of Massachusetts, Morrill ScienceCenter, 611 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01003-9297, USA. E-mail:

natures impartiality

Documents