Flat Earth and Amazons

Vol 454|21 August 2008 BOOKS & ARTS Flat Earth and Amazons Charles-Marie de La Condamine’s quest to Peru to calculate Earth’s flattened shape included some adventures that didn’t make it into the offical records at the time, finds D. Graham Burnett. Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America by Neil Safier University of Chicago Press: 2008. 336 pp. $45 European explorers, those sturdy peripatetics of reason in the age of empire, generally enjoyed lording it over the ‘natives’ — or at least they tended to write things up that way for the people back at home. What actually went on in the jungle, desert or Arctic has always been tough to sort out; and what the locals made of these transitory self-promoters dressed in puttees is unrecoverable. Sometimes we catch a tantalizing glimpse, such as when the globe-trotting French nobleman and savant Charles-Marie de La Condamine recorded an unexpected Peru- vian comedy review in the Andean high- lands in the eighteenth century. The butt of LIBRARY ART FRANCE/LAUROS/GIRAUDON/BRIDGEMAN CHANTILLY, MUSÉE CONDÉ, L. C. CARMONTELLE, the show was La Con- damine himself, and his coterie of snooty scientific Argo nauts, BIBLIOTHÈQUE DE L’INSTITUT, PARIS/RMN/G. BLOT PARIS/RMN/G. DE L’INSTITUT, BIBLIOTHÈQUE who had been fussing with a set of instruments in the mountains near Quito for several years in the late 1730s. The Euro- peans knew that they were intrepid luminaries from the Académie des La Condamine lost the race to map the meridian arc (left) and determine Earth’s true shape. Sciences in Paris, sent on a geodetic expedition to Historian Neil Safier begins his fun. Although Safier has admirable linguistic resolve pressing questions book on science and South America gifts, shows an impressive command of his in what we would now call in the mid-eighteenth century with sources and writes with verve, Measuring the geophysics. But the valley’s this alluring scene of satirical inversion. He New World is mostly a frustrating book. inhabitants thought that they were goofballs, asks: “What if we were to follow the Tarquian This is despite the romance and fascination and worked up a skit to prove it. Dragging out a mimics in looking at the gestures and prac- of its subject. La Condamine and his fellow stage-set scientific observatory — giant gradu- tices of European science overseas?” This explorers embarked on one of the great quests ated quadrants of wood and pasteboard, along might mean that Safier intends to stage his of the age: nearly a decade of South American with various accoutrements of the enlightened own comic pantomime, an undertaking that wandering, collecting, surveying and astro- natural philosopher — the villagers of Tarqui would push the boundaries in the academic nomical observation, together with plenty of launched into a spirited masquerade, drama- history of Latin America, but no such luck. arguing, sex, madness and even some killing, tizing in opera buffa style the absurd attentions Rather, he tells an unheroic story of science all for the purpose of resolving a fundamental that the Frenchmen lavished on their instru- in the making, a story that uncovers the fibs, question: what is the shape of Earth? Round, ments. From the eyepiece to the notebook to elisions and erasures that happen between the you might say, but Isaac Newton’s late-seven- the eyepiece to the ... eek! Check the clock! muddy field and publication back in Paris. teenth-century work on the physical forces Belly laughs all around. This sort of ‘aha, gotcha’ history is not much acting on the planet suggested that the 942 NATURE|Vol 454|21 August 2008 OPINION spinning globe would not be perfectly of going halfway around the world to the reader to the “insidious effacement” of the spherical, but would bulge around its equator, equator, they had simply zipped up to Lapland, role of indigenous peoples in the production like a pumpkin. This contradicted theoreti- where favourable conditions and organizational of knowledge. Although this is an interest- cal work done by René Descartes earlier in zeal led to a speedy set of measurements of the ing topic, and one that has been pursued by a the century. Descartes’ champions contested polar degree, which could be compared with number of scholars in recent decades, Safier’s Newton’s prediction, as did measurements measurements already done in France. Mau- examples are not persuasive. It is true that La from surveyors working on the national pertuis — a playboy mathematician with a flaw- Condamine doesn’t say much about the por- map of France. Indeed, there seemed to be less sense of theatre and lots of yarns about ice ters who carried his equipment, but so what? evidence that Earth might be pointed at its and reindeer — was the toast of the town. The conclusion of the book raises the inter- poles like an egg. National pride (France ver- Not to be outdone, La Condamine broadened esting possibility that La Condamine used sus England), scientific approach (mathema- the scope of his investigations. He descended his ideas about native American women and ticians versus cartographers) and bragging the Amazon River on the lookout for Amazons runaway slaves to buttress his claims about rights in physics (Newton versus Descartes) and El Dorado, throwing himself into botanical the reality of Amazons, and there is a strong were all at stake — not to mention the accu- and zoological collection, writing extensively, chapter on the French republishing of a Span- racy of charts and maps, crucial in a world of if not very accurately, about Amerindians, and ish history of the Incas. But on the whole, few expanding global trade. generally trying to rescue a more-or-less failed readers will enjoy Measuring the New World. Resolving the question demanded the care- geodetic expedition by transforming it into a Freed from the straitened preoccupations of ful measurement of the length on the ground grand exploration of Spanish America, com- disciplinary history, the palpably smart Safier of a degree of meridian arc — first in one place, memorated in texts and maps. might yet give us a lovable and insightful work ideally near the equator, and then in another, It is with these latter documents that Safier on Latin American exploration. Perhaps a ideally near a pole. If each 360th of Earth’s axial is, on the whole, concerned. He attempts to satirical play? ■ cross-sections was the same length, then we trace the paths by which the explorer’s experi- D. Graham Burnett is an editor at Cabinet stood on a sphere; a difference in those lengths ence in the field — native informants, empiri- magazine in Brooklyn, New York, and would indicate a spheroid, be it oblate like a cal observations, elements of fantasy — make teaches history of science at Princeton pumpkin, or prolate, like an egg. their way into books, pictures and charts. But University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, The fieldwork for these precise measure- the yield is meagre. He repeatedly alerts the USA. His latest book is Trying Leviathan. ments was arduous. Highly accurate astro- nomical observations were needed to establish that the endpoints of the arc marked off a true degree. Working out the length of the degree on the ground required fanatically attentive Microbial fuels for the future techniques of land surveying: first pace off a baseline, then project this length through an Bioenergy introduction and each author positions their array of triangles, sighted from promontories Edited by Judy D. Wall, Caroline S. Harwood favourite fuel within the larger context of along the degree. With all the angles of the and Arnold Demain energy production and utilization. Nancy triangles known, it was mere trigonometry ASM Press: 2008. 454 pp. $149.95 Nichols and her colleagues note that in 2008, to work out the lengths of their sides, and the United States will produce 30 billion litres thereby, the length of the degree itself. After of fuel ethanol, mainly from corn (maize). In several months of these exertions, most of the An individual in the United States consumes 2006, around 20% of the US corn crop was Frenchmen had stopped talking to each other, the equivalent of 100 watts of continuous used to make ethanol, which represented more having fallen out over protocol and procedure. power from food, but it takes more than a than 2% of all liquid fuels used for transporta- It looked as if each team was going to work up hundred times this amount to sustain their tion. Z. Lewis Liu and co-workers say that if a separate set of results. So much for scientific lifestyle. Fossil fuels cannot provide this all of the corn grown in the United States was universalism. Throw in hostile encounters with much power for every person on the planet, used to make fuel, only 15% of current US fuel the locals, a shortage of cash, and larger politi- and we must reduce our dependence on needs would be satisfied. These numbers show cal machinations — the Spanish crown and its these fuels to address global carbon dioxide that we will need more than corn ethanol to officers had mixed feelings about a bunch of emissions and climate change. To succeed, fuel our cars. foreign scientific interlopers making maps in we need sustainable and carbon-neutral Using any food source as a fuel is contro- the heart of an Iberian colony — and you have sources of energy. How can we find or make versial. Perhaps reflecting this, only one of all the ingredients for a fiasco. these fuels? the twelve chapters on bioethanol directly This, in many ways, is how the La Condam- Microbes, according to the microbiologists addresses the use of food crops.

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