Product Description

“Nature, rightly questioned, never lies.” —A Manual of Scientific Enquiry, Third Edition, 1859

Scott Huler was working as a copy editor for a small publisher when he stumbled across the Beaufort Wind Scale in his Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary. It was one of those moments of discovery that writers live for. Written centuries ago, its 110 words launched Huler on a remarkable journey over land and sea into a fascinating world of explorers, mariners, scientists, and writers. After falling in love with what he decided was “the best, clearest, and most vigorous piece of descriptive writing I had ever seen,” Huler went in search of Admiral Francis Beaufort himself: hydrographer
to the British Admiralty, man of science, and author—Huler assumed—of the Beaufort Wind Scale. But what Huler discovered is that the scale that carries Beaufort’s name has a long and complex evolution, and to properly understand it he had to keep reaching farther back in history, into the lives and works of figures from Daniel Defoe and Charles Darwin to Captains Bligh, of the Bounty, and Cook, of the Endeavor.

As hydrographer to the British Admiralty it was Beaufort’s job to track the information that ships relied on: where to lay anchor, descriptions of ports, information about fortification, religion, and trade. But what came to fascinate Huler most about Beaufort was his obsession for observing things and communicating to others what the world looked like.

Huler’s research landed him in one of the most fascinating and rich periods of history, because all around the world in the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in a grand, expansive period, modern science was being invented every day. These scientific advancements encompassed not only vast leaps in understanding but also how scientific innovation was expressed and even organized, including such enduring developments as the scale Anders Celsius created to simplify how Gabriel Fahrenheit measured temperature; the French-designed metric system; and the Gregorian calendar adopted by France and Great Britain. To Huler, Beaufort came to embody that passion for scientific observation and categorization; indeed Beaufort became the great scientific networker of his time. It was he, for example, who was tapped to lead the search for a naturalist in the 1830s to accompany the crew of the Beagle; he recommended a young naturalist named Charles Darwin.

Defining the Wind is a wonderfully readable, often humorous, and always rich story that is ultimately about how we observe the forces of nature and the world around us.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #987638 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-10
• Released on: 2004-08-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
While working as a copy editor two decades ago, Huler chanced across the Beaufort scale in Merriam-Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. He was entranced by the scale's "quintessence of... verbal economy, the ultimate expression of concise, clear, and absolutely powerful writing, 110 words in six-point type" that describe the varieties of wind from "calm" to "hurricane." Huler soon turned to a successful career as a writer and NPR contributor, but the Beaufort scale stuck with him, and he decided to learn more about the man whose definition of a "strong breeze" reads: "large branches in motion; telegraph wires whistle; umbrellas used with difficulty." Huler's admittedly obsessive narrative ranges from the late–18th-century ships of the British West Indies Company to a wind tunnel at the University of Michigan, leading "through sailing and engineering and science and technology." But at its heart is a fascination with the language we use to describe the world around us. Less a piece of science writing than a writer's meditation on science, this gem of a book is equal parts history, mystery, textbook and memoir, as much a story about how we think about the wind as it is about the wind itself, and deserves a wide audience among readers interested in writing, nature and history. 30 illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
"Small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested wavelets form on inland waters." So runs the Beaufort scale's definition of a "fresh breeze," or one that blows between nineteen and twenty-four m.p.h. Huler's chance encounter with this guide for assessing wind force at sea sparks an infatuation with its spare, cadenced lines and a desire to learn about their origins. The eponymous Sir Francis Beaufort didn't actually write the famous descriptions but still acts as the book's presiding spirit, as Huler traces the rise of scientific classification at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Huler writes with self-deprecating wit, and although some of his scientific discussions are excessively rudimentary ("The Earth is a sphere"), he captures the Beaufort scale's "open-hearted intellectual decency."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist
During the course of copyediting, Huler encountered the Beaufort scale of wind strength in a dictionary and became curious about its eponym. Beaufort headed the British navy's office for charts and surveys from 1829 to 1855. Huler discovered that two biographies of Francis Beaufort already exist (Alfred Friendly's Beaufort of the Admiralty, 1977, and Nicholas Courtney's Gale Force 10, 2002), so he decided to explore the history of the scale itself. Ranging from how the scale rated inclusion in his dictionary to pre-Beaufortian attempts to regularize a wind scale, Huler digresses in directions that connect, in interesting fashion, to the scale. Some are directly pertinent, such as historical progress in understanding weather or biographical facts about Beaufort (who'd guess incest lurks among them?), while others muse upon the scale as an apex of observational, descriptive science. Whether tracing the scale's evolving linguistic content or the route of one of Beaufort's surveys, Huler wonderfully relays the history contained, as he so aptly writes, in the Beaufort scale's "one hundred ten words . . and four centuries of backstory." Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

The Wind for Poets
Defining The Wind by Scott Huler is a special book that combines two of my loves in life - earth science and language. Huler, a writer who is NOT a science writer by trade, fell in love with the Beaufort [Wind] Scale in 1983 while a copy editor scanning a copy of the dictionary. He was so impressed with the 110 words of the scale and their simple but poetic qualities, he embarked on an extended intellectual journey to discover the scale's author. Defining The Wind is Huler's wonderful retelling of that journey. Along the way, Huler learns to draw, learns to help sail a tall ship, and rummages through many a dusty archive. Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that Huler discovers that Francis Beaufort did not write the version of the scale that Huler fell in love with. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in meteorology, surveying, the ocean, sailing tall ships, history, or the use of language in science. Random thought: I wonder if this would be a good book to give to a teenage writer or artist who doesn't see the benefit of taking science and math classes in high school?

Where science and art meet
This is a thoroughly engaging true-life detective story. The author, Scott Huler, was struck by the poetic beauty of the Beaufort Scale, a way to determine the force and velocity of the wind by how it moves objects, i.e. "small trees in leaf begin to sway - MPH 19-24 - Name, fresh breeze - Beaufort # 5. He set out to discover the art of Sir Francis Beaufort. Through his search he shines a light on the what the essence of poetry is and the fact that nothing is born of itself.

A great read
I greatly enjoyed this book. It is a vivid introduction into the life of times of Admiral Beaufort, and the history of defining the wind. This book was well worth the money and the time to read it. It awakens in the reader the spirit of discovery and exploration that imbued Beauforts age. Mr. Huler gets a bit sentimental about his subject which detracts a bit from the story (hence 4 not 5 starts). Bottom line: you'll enjoy it.