Modern Geodesy as Liberal Arts: Spreading Mephisto's Cloak

My book published in 2015, "A Journey into the History of Modern Surveying," led me into a new world. It became a topic of conversation more in science and engineering fields such as mapping, surveying, earth sciences, and civil engineering than among the literary researchers I had targeted, and it even led to a connection with the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan.

Goethe, a favorite of an era when science and literature coexisted under the name of "philosophy/liberal arts," lamented in his later years that the two had become specialized and parted ways. For me, however, his name is the magic spell that lightly leaps over the strict boundaries between the humanities and sciences. Since my previous book surprised people because "a Goethe scholar wrote a research book on the history of surveying," I took on the challenge of writing this book with the concept of "a story of geodesy that only a Goethe scholar can write," using a soft writing style that general readers can also enjoy.

While there are many map enthusiasts and fans of Tadataka Ino, there are few books that deal with the history of geodesy, and those that do exist focus mainly on technical explanations. However, the modern spatial awareness and technical environment led by GPS were established only recently. In this book, many figures fascinated by the shape of the Earth appear, including Goethe's contemporaries Euler, Gauss, and A. v. Humboldt, as well as the next-generation optical trio of Zeiss, Abbe, and Schott, Daguerre and Nadar of photography, and within Japan, Hisashi Kimura of the Z-term, Aikitsu Tanakadate who also studied at the Juku, and Fusakichi Omori of seismology. I also wove in episodes following Kenji Miyazawa's visit to the Mizusawa Latitude Observatory in Iwate and Jiro Nitta's "Mt. Tsurugi," as well as Aya Koda's "Kuzure" and the Tateyama Sabo erosion control. Seismographs, telescopes, globes, planetariums, plotting machines, and benchmarks are also important "protagonists."

According to the editor, who is a Keio University alumni, a characteristic of this book is that "it becomes a single historical narrative centered on Goethe, making it read like a roller coaster." To convey the thrill of the reading experience, after much deliberation, I chose "Mephisto's Cloak" as the subtitle. In Goethe's tragedy "Faust," this is the means by which the devil takes the protagonist out of his gloomy laboratory into the outside world, but it is actually set against the historical background of the success of "manned flight by hot-air balloon."

Following the example of Goethe, who traveled until his later years, I flew around Japan and abroad to condense a vast amount of collected materials into this single volume. Why not embark on an intellectual time travel? Furthermore, I paid close attention to the quality and binding of the "physical book" so that the illustrations can be seen clearly. Please do pick up a copy and take a look.

Modern Geodesy as Liberal Arts: Spreading Mephisto's Cloak

Aeka Ishihara

Hosei University Press

392 pages, 3,500 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.