Philosophy, literature, religion, and geology (Part III)

In Part I of this series, I talked about Voltaire's mention of the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 in his novella Candide.  In Part II of this series, I discussed a little bit about the geology of the earthquake itself.  To wrap things up now, I will reiterate how this natural disaster caused people to think very seriously about, basically, why bad things happen to good people.  Back, full circle, to our initial discussion of theodicy.

What were the reactions to the earthquake?  Well, as Voltaire amusingly rote in Candide:

After the earthquake had destroyed three-fourths of Lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to prevent utter ruin than to give the people a beautiful auto-da-fé; for it had been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret to hinder the earth from quaking.

Not so amusing in real life.  An "Auto-da-fé" ("act of faith) was a public ritual for those identified as heretics by the Inquisition.  It began with a Catholic mass (it was, after all, a religious ceremony), a public precession of those pronounced guilty by the Inquisition (often those people had no idea what they were even being charged with), a "trial" of sorts, and then the reading of the sentence.  Many would then be tortured and/or burned alive.  All done by people who considered themselves devout followers of Christ.

Anyway, the tens of thousands of deaths from the 1755 earthquake is no different from the hundreds of millions of deaths throughout history from natural disasters.  Just this week, we hear of little Angel Babcock, the 15-month-old toddler found in an Indiana field after a tornado killed her entire family.  She died in the hospital.

The obvious question that arises from such events is "Where's God?" Disease, famine, and natural disasters occur.  Either God allows innocent little babies to die miserable, painful deaths (which calls into question his or her omnibenevolance), or God is powerless to prevent it (which goes against omipotence).  Most Christian  theologians simply go with the the explanation that there are no good people (e.g. Romans 3:23), even "innocent" little babies are born in sin and we can't hope to understand what God is doing or thinking (e.g. Isaiah 55:8-9).  In other words, shut up and trust God.  Or, I suppose, you can rail against God.  Either way, it doesn't much matter.  The world is a shitty place because Adam and Eve ate the damn fruit off that tree and disobeyed God.

Charles Wesley (1707-1788), the great hymnist and leader of the Methodist movement said of the Lisbon earthquake "Sin is the cause, earthquakes the effect, of his anger."  Even today, this type of thinking persists with Pat Robsertson claiming that the 2010 Haiti earthquake was due to a Haitian pact with Satan.  Perhaps natural disasters a sign of God's anger and judgement?

The other option, of course, is atheism.  Why do bad things happed to good people?  They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Random dumb luck (or lack of it).  Winds blow, the Earth moves, and cancer cells grow.  Sucks to be you.  The problem, of course, with this idea is that it's profoundly unsettling when you think about it too much.

Anyway, many people date the real beginnings of atheism as a philosophical idea in the Western world to the Lisbon earthquake and the contrast between the writings of philosophers like Leibnitz and Voltaire.  One could spend a lifetime reading all that has been written about theodicy and I have no answers (although I certainly lean more toward the "random events in a godless natural world" camp).

But the whole thing is pretty cool, right?  Starting with the co-inventor of calculus, writing about theodicy and philosphical optimism.  Then a big earthquake in one of the most prosperous cities in Europe.  Tens of thousands die a horrible death - many while worshipping God.  Voltaire writes his satirical novella Candide mocking Leibnitz's optimism.  From this discussion develops both Christian and atheist responses to theodicy that persist to the present day.  Why learn history?  Why learn philosophy?  Why learn science?  Because it's all interesting!

Philosophy, literature, religion, and geology (Part II)

Are you then sure, the power which would create
The universe and fix the laws of fate,
Could not have found for man a proper place,
But earthquakes must destroy the human race?”

The Lisbon Earthquake

Voltaire (1755)

Yesterday, in Part I of this post, I talked about Voltaire's mention of the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 in his novella Candide.

Lisbon isn't a place we normally associate with earthquakes.  Portugal is a small country nestled up against Spain, on the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula, and Lisbon, its capital, is located at the mouth of the Tagus River (Tejo in Portugeuse) where it flows into the Atlantic.

Note the nicely curved, southwest-facing coastline funneling into the estuary of the Tagus River.  This feature will be significant when we discuss the tsunami which struck Lisbon shortly after the earthquake.

Seismicity in this part of the world is due to the tectonic plate boundary between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate (which runs through the Straits of Gibralter out to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge).

This boundary is called the Azores-Gibralter Fault Zone (AGFZ) and movement along this boundary is complex.  East of the Azores, the AGFZ has divergent movement where the plates pull apart along the Tercieira Ridge.  In the middle segments, there's transform movement along the Gloria Fault where the plates grind sideways past each other.  And, finally, near the Gulf of Cadiz and Straits of Gibralter, the plates have a convergent motion where they're pushing together.

So, around 9:40 am (local time), on Saturday, November 1, 1755 (All Saints Day), the convergent portion of this plate boundary slipped, possible 10 - 20 meters, by thrusting along a shallowly-dipping eastward-directed fault plane.  This fault is just offshore from the Cape St. Vincent (Cabo de São Vicente), the extreme southwestern tip of Portugal  (reference).  The movement along this fault generated an estimated 8.5 - 9.0 magnitude earthquake (no seismic instruments back then, the magnitude is estimated from the size of the fault and damage estimates).

The first strong shock wave (the P wave arrival) damaged many of the buildings, but it was the arrival of the second shock (surface waves) which caused the extensive damage and collapsed structures throughout the city.  Among those structures were many of the stone churches filled with worshippers celebrating mass.  This phase lasted a reported 3.5 minutes (a long time when you're experiencing such a terrifying event).  Fissures up to 15 feet wide opened up in the city.  After the main shocks, people worked their way down to the riverside quays of the Tagus River (Rio Tejo in Portuguese) where they gathered for comfort.

Lisbon, across the Tagus River

People presumably watched in confusion as the water in the Tagus estuary pulled out to see exposing a "sea floor littered by lost cargo and old shipwrecks."  Today we all should know what that presages but people in the mid-1700s in Portugal had no idea.  Some 40 minutes after the quake, the waters came rushing back up the river.  So fast, according to contemporary accounts, people on horseback, galloping at full speed, barely escaped.  At least three waves of tsunami came up the river, the largest being an estimated 20 meters (65 feet) in height.  All of the ships in Lisbon's harbor were destroyed and tens of thousands of people drowned.

Just as happened with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Lisbon was then beset by several days of uncontrolled fire which burned through the city killing and injuring even more people.  As one researcher writes:

Fanned by steady northeast winds, the great fire burned out of control through the ruins of the city for more than 3 days. It swept everything in its path and destroyed houses, churches and palaces. Lisbon's magnificent museums, and its magnificent libraries - housing priceless documents and papers dealing with the great history of Portugal's great past - burned to the ground. Archives and other precious documents were completely destroyed. Works of art, tapestries, books, manuscripts, including the invaluable records of the India Company were destroyed. Also burned was the king's palace and its 70,000-volume library. Over two hundred fine, priceless paintings , including paintings by Titan, Reubens, and Coreggio, were burned in the palace of the Marques de Lourcal.

The earthquake caused damage in many more places than Lisbon.  Other cities in Portugal, Spain, and Morocco were heavily damaged as well.  The earthquake was felt as far away as Finland.  The tsunami raced across the Atlantic causing damage in England and Ireland and large waves struck several islands in the Caribbean.  Seismologists have estimated that this was a 1,000 year earthquake.

Tomorrow, in Part III of this series, I'll talk about how this earthquake affected Europe.  I'll leave you with a basically unanswerable question: If God exists, why would He allow an earthquake to drop a cathedral on devout worshippers celebrating mass? 

Philosophy, literature, religion, and geology (Part I)

The Théodicée, or more precisely, the Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal (Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil), was a philosophical work published in 1710 by the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716).  Anyone who's ever taken calculus knows of Liebniz since he is given credit, along with Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), for independently developing this incredibly useful branch of mathematics (which was far more important than any of his philosophical ramblings).

Liebniz invented the term theodicy - derived from the Greek roots  θεός (theos, “god”) and δίκη (dikē, “justice”).  It refers to a branch of Christian apologetics dealing with the problem of evil - attempts to reconcile God's supposed omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence (all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving) characteristics with the obvious fact that the world is a really shitty place sometimes.  Bad things happen to good people and vice-versa.

Leibniz dealt with this problem by arguing that, despite all its imperfections, this is the best of all possible worlds (that phrase may have just rung some bells in the heads of my more literate readers, we'll get to that shortly).  It must be the best of all possible worlds because it was created by a perfect God.  If it wasn't the most perfect world He could create, He would have created something better.  In a later work, La Monadologie (from the Greek μονάς monas or "unit"), published in 1714, Leibnitz further discussed his philosophy which has been described as "Leibnitzian Optimism".  He argued that everything exists according to a reason and everything which exists is better than anything non-existent.  His conclusion was "Therefore this is the best of all possible worlds."

Convinced?  No?  Neither were a lot of other people, most notably the French writer and philosopher François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), better known by his pen name of Voltaire.  Voltaire was a prolific writer and social commentator (often using satire) whose ideas on liberty and freedom of expression influenced the leaders of the French and American Revolutions.  In 1759, Voltaire wrote (supposedly in only three days!) Candide, a satirical novella mocking Leibnitz's philosophical optimism (later versions of the book were subtitled All for the Best and The Optimist).

In the novella (read it here online), Candide is a young man brought up by the scholar and philosophical optimist Professor Pangloss (whose philosophy can be summed up by the phrase "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds").

Pangloss was professor of metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology. He proved admirably that there is no effect without a cause, and that, in this best of all possible worlds, the Baron's castle was the most magnificent of castles, and his lady the best of all possible Baronesses.

"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the best end. Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear spectacles - thus we have spectacles. Legs are visibly designed for stockings - and we have stockings. Stones were made to be hewn, and to construct castles - therefore my lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Pigs were made to be eaten - therefore we eat pork all the year round. Consequently they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best."

Through a convoluted variety of events, Candide and Pangloss come to be traveling through Europe, South America, and eventually Turkey while a whole host of misfortunes befall them and those they meet.  While Candide becomes disillusioned with Pangloss's optimistic philosophy, Pangloss himself keeps the faith.

"Well, my dear Pangloss," said Candide to him, "when you had been hanged, dissected, whipped, and were tugging at the oar, did you always think that everything happens for the best?"

"I am still of my first opinion," answered Pangloss, "for I am a philosopher and I cannot retract, especially as Leibnitz could never be wrong; and besides, the pre-established harmony is the finest thing in the world..."

Voltaire wrote this novella mocking Leibnitz's ideas because he believed, with some justification, that current events like the Seven Years War (1756-1763) and the Great Lisbon Earthquake (1755) showed that we certainly did not live in the "best of all possible worlds."

As soon as they recovered themselves a little they walked toward Lisbon. They had some money left, with which they hoped to save themselves from starving, after they had escaped drowning. Scarcely had they reached the city, lamenting the death of their benefactor, when they felt the earth tremble under their feet. The sea swelled and foamed in the harbour, and beat to pieces the vessels riding at anchor. Whirlwinds of fire and ashes covered the streets and public places; houses fell, roofs were flung upon the pavements, and the pavements were scattered. Thirty thousand inhabitants of all ages and sexes were crushed under the ruins.

The Seven Years War was understandably bad, but what was so bad about the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake?  The earthquake occurred on November 1 and some historians estimate that of the 200,000 people living in Lisbon, Portugal at the time, some 30,000–40,000 were killed in the earthquake - 20% of the population.  The quake occurred on a Saturday morning and, as it was All Saints Day, an important Roman Catholic holiday, many people were in the Lisbon Cathedral and other churches celebrating mass - structures that were almost totally leveled by the earthquake.  A tsunami followed the shaking making things worse.

Read this gripping contemporary description of the earthquake by the Reverend Charles Davy.

I'll pick up the thread of this story tomorrow...

In like a lion...

So there's a common saying regarding weather during the month of March.  That if March comes in like a lion (bad weather) it will go out like a lamb (nice weather) and vice-versa.  Well March is certainly coming in like a lion here in the Hudson Valley - just look at the 12-hour forecast map on the evening of February 29!

We're in for a nasty day today with a Winter Weather Advisor from the National Weather Service due to the mix of rain, sleet, and snow forecast for the day.  I'm not much of a fan of such weather as it leaves me house-bound and restless.  I also have two classes this morning which may well be canceled requiring extra work on my part to make up (snow days aren't really a vacation for me).  At least we're not getting the nasty tornadoes along the leading edge of that cold front causing all the devastation and loss of life out in Branson, Missouri and elsewhere.

So anyway, since March is coming in like a lion, can we now hope it will go out like a lamb?  I hope so since I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of spring!  That got me to wondering where the expression came from and if it has any validity (alas, I suspect not).  While some weather adages are based on observation and may generally hold true, others are simply rhymes or sayings that seem to have no basis in reality.

March is a changable month, containing the vernal equinox, and being the transitional month between the cold and snows of winter and the warm greening days of spring.  As such, it can be either lion-like or lamb-like at either the beginning or the end of the month.  The saying may well be a desire to see a symmetry between the start and end of the month, a yin-yang balancing of the cosmic forces.

Doing a little research (OK, I used Google), I was only able to ascertain that it's a traditional English folk saying. Here it is in the book Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British collected by Thomas Fuller, M.D. and published in London in 1732 (page 295).

     "March balkham, Comes in like a Lion, goes out like a Lamb."

No, I don't know what "balkham" means!

Here's the late, great John Belushi discussing this adage on an old Saturday Night Live skit.


So is it true?  Well, we do have weather records and the general consensus is that March often does go in like a lion and out like a lamb simply because the beginning of March is simply the tail end of winter here in our region and the end of March is the beginning of spring.  It's not surprising to see an improvement of the weather over the month.  Other than that general trend, there really is no correlation (nor would you expect a reason for such).

I supposed I could dig out all the weather records to statistically show this, but I have better things to do with my day!