Huler’s Defining the Wind

Posted by jns on March 27, 2008

Back in the days when we roamed at video stores looking for something that might pique my interest, my attention would invariably be drawn to any movie that reviewers blurbed as–and publicists dared print on the package–”quirky”. So, when my eyes landed on Scott Huler’s Defining the Wind : The Beaufort Scale, and How a Nineteenth-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry (New York : Crown Publishers, 2004, 290 pages), it looked guaranteed to be quirky. I grabbed it.

As I expected I enjoyed it. What I hadn’t expected was to enjoy it quite so much as I did. The subject is indeed odd, the style idiosyncratic, the topics covered diverse and wide-ranging, but in Huler’s hands it all adds up to a delightful and informative adventure of research and discovery that the author shares vividly with the reader in an unexpectedly intimate way.

Huler is not a scientist but his approach to discovering and understanding the times and circumstances surrounding the creation of Beaufort’s Scale is remarkably scientific; he is aware of this and seems to ascribe it to an awakening of a high-definition awareness of the natural world that resulted from spending so much time contemplating the Beaufort Scale. All this makes the book itself a thing of high scienticity; reading it is to hone one’s intuition about how science actually works.

In fact, the book is akin to what the author came to call a Beaufort Moment: “A Beaufort moment is any moment where instead of merely passing through my surroundings I notice them, notice them in a way that engenders understanding. [p. 242]” I loved this realization that he described late in the book, the summation of his experience as it transcended a mere research project:

And that is what I finally figured out the Beaufort Scale was trying to tell me. The Beaufort Scale is about paying attention. It’s about noticing whether smoke rises vertically or drifts, whether it’s the leaves shaking or the whole branches, whether your umbrella turns inside out or just rattles around some. More, it’s about taking note of those details, filing them away, in memory or, as the Manual of Scientific Enquiry would have it, in the notebook you’d never leave the house without (along, of course, with your pencil and your map and compass). It’s about being able to express what you’ve seen simply and clearly, in as few words as possible, so that others can share it. It’s about the good of sharing that knowledge, of everyone paying attention so that, together, we can all learn as much as possible.

The Beaufort Scale is a manual, a guide for living. It’s like a cross between the Boy Scout Handbook and the Old Farmer’s Almanac: a bunch of cool information that you’ll never be sorry you have, and a general policy of being prepared to deal with it: to notice that information and share it for the good of everybody involved. It’s a philosophy of attentiveness, a religion based on observation: an entire ethos in 110 words. One hundred ten words, that is, and four centuries of backstory. [pp. 237—238]

If, by the way, you need to see a version of the Scale to see what he refers to by the “110 words”, this version from the [UK] Meteorological Office comes the closest to Huler’s original inspiration. (After you’ve read the book you’ll appreciate the futility of trying to define the Beaufort Scale.) Personally, I think my favorite phrase is “umbrellas used with difficulty” (which is, therefore, how I know that the stormy afternoon when I arrived in New York City a few weeks ago was accompanied by Beaufort Scale 6 winds of roughly 25-30 mph).

It’s a book I can recommend most heartily to non-scientists and scientists alike; everyone is certain to find plenty to stimulate their thoughts and refine their perceptions of the natural world.

Lienhard’s Inventing Modern

Posted by jns on March 27, 2008

When I went recently on my cultural trip to New York with Bill, I traveled with a couple of books: reading for the train trip and for those quiet moments at the hotel. One of the books I took was John H. Lienhard’s Inventing Modern : Growing up with X-Rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2003. 292+ix pages). Fortunately I started reading first thing on the train, and I made sure there were enough quiet moments at the hotel for me to finish the book in a couple of days. What a page turner! My book note is here.

Lienhard observes that in the early part of the 20th Century there was a feeling of Modern. It was something more than just modern, more than just new technology or new science–there was some indefinable spirit of adventure, feeling of invention, and optimistic attitude that seemed to dominate American culture. Naturally, given something indefinable like Modern, Lienhard set out to define it.

Lienhard, Anderson Professor of Technology and Culture, Emeritus, at the University of Houston was there for much of the Modern adventure, and his first-hand experiences adds heft to his discussion of the ideas, technology, and cultural currents of the time that met up in Modern.

I had previously read his book How Invention Begins, which impressed me very much, so I was excited to start on this one and I wasn’t disappointed. I did think that Invention had more profound insights on offer, but that doesn’t mean that Inventing Modern was an intellectual lightweight, although its tone was much more personal and somewhat more casual. They are both eminently readable and thoughtful and stimulating, but likely to stimulate different trains of thought.

I admit that there was an extra little frisson from reading about the nearby Empire State Building, which we could see from the street in front of our hotel, and the Chrysler Building, which we could see from the Brooklyn Bridge and which we visited one day. I’m certain however, that readers can enjoy the book without being in Manhattan to read it.