[Sci-tech-public] REMINDER -- STS Special Lecture by Conevery Bolton Valencius, today @ 4:00 pm

[Debbie Meinbresse]

>Please join us this afternoon
>
>STS Special Lecture
>
>
>Vernacular Science in the Early U.S.:
>Investigating the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-12
>
>Conevery Bolton Valencius
>Harvard University
>
>  4:00 pm, MIT, E51-095
>
>
>Abstract
>In the winter of 1811 and 1812, a series of earthquakes shook the 
>middle Mississippi Valley like a bowl of jelly and reverberated 
>across eastern North America.  As quakes far from a plate boundary, 
>the New Madrid earthquakes (named for the Missouri town near the 
>epicenters) are poorly explained by the plate tectonic model, and 
>their mechanisms are still little understood.  These quakes were the 
>subject of intense inquiry in 19th-century popular media and in 
>seismology today.
>
>This talk argues that early accounts of the quakes reveal in 
>American culture a lively and broadly-shared interest in 
>contributing to scientific explanations of the world.  Reports about 
>the quakes demonstrate the fluidity of expert and nonexpert 
>discussions in the early nineteenth century.  Because of the lack of 
>clear consensus about the mechanisms or causes of earthquakes, 
>people in borderland regions along the Ohio and Mississippi Valley 
>became not simply witnesses but theorists of the dramatic seismicity 
>they had experienced.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/sci-tech-public/attachments/20080205/078f120a/attachment.htm