The cause that united world science (before the covid)

The historian Andrea Wulf in 2016, during a visit to Madrid.Samuel Sanchez

Scientists from rival nations, and sometimes directly confronted, across borders and conflicts, from their own kings and governments, from their geographical interests, come together for a common cause that involves all of humanity.

No, it is not about the search for the vaccine against covid-19, but about something that happened in the 18th century: the collective effort to measure the distance between the earth and the sun, which the historian Andrea Wulf portrays in her latest book published in Spain,

(Taurus).

Wulf, who achieved international success with

, his award-winning biography of Alexander von Humboldt, reconstructs that collective feat in which he sees undeniable parallels with the global fight against the pandemic.

"That was the first time that the international scientific community worked together and globally," explains Andrea Wulf (New Delhi, 1972) by phone from a country house in Germany, where much of the pandemic has passed, although his habitual residence is in London.

“For me at that moment the global village begins.

Right now we are leaning on those astronomers.

And it is without a doubt the foundation of what is happening right now with the vaccine.

It is a network similar to the one we have established now, which transcends national agendas.

All countries want to have the vaccine for their people, but to achieve this, everyone has to work together, which is the same as the astronomers did.

They overcame national boundaries, religious differences, even worked together during a war, and shared the results.

And only later did national sentiments grow stronger.

Each State wanted to sell that it had been the first to calculate the distance from the Sun. I think the same thing will happen with the vaccine: once it is reached, discussions will begin to find the privileged ones who are the first to try it ”.

Holy grail of astronomy

In Search of Venus

(translated by Joaquín Chamorro Mielke) tells of two transits of Venus, a very rare astronomical phenomenon that occurs every century.

In this case, the first was in 1761 and the second in 1769. The transit is the moment when the planet crosses the face of the Sun and is visible as a black point.

By measuring the time during which this phenomenon lasts, the distance between the Sun and the Earth can be calculated.

It was an idea proposed by the great British astronomer Edmond Halley in 1716. This is how Wulf describes in his book that founding moment for international scientific cooperation: “The more people participated, the greater the probability of success.

It was not enough to observe the passage of Venus from Europa;

astronomers would have to travel to remote places.

And only if they combined their results could they achieve something that until then had been almost unimaginable: a mathematical measurement of the dimensions of the solar system, the Holy Grail of astronomy.

Halley's call was answered: Hundreds of astronomers joined the project.

It was a crucial moment for the beginning of a new era in which man tried to understand nature using reason ”.

This interview was first conducted at the Hay Festival in Cartagena de Indias, in Colombia, at the end of January 2020, when the pandemic was a distant threat.

Travelers or policemen with masks were beginning to be seen at airports, but they were the minority.

Few scientists then sensed that this disease had already surpassed the borders of China and was running rampant throughout the world.

In fact, Wulf planned to return to Colombia in the spring for the Bogota Book Fair, but all plans were interrupted.

His book was due out in March, but was delayed until September.

In that first interview, the reflections on the common efforts of science focused on the fight against climate change and the historian's outrage at Brexit.

As a German resident in London for decades, she felt stranded in a no-man's-land outside the EU.

The interview was completed in October by phone in a totally different world (except that the Boris Johnson government still does not accept a Brexit deal to which it committed).

"It is interesting to see that, for once, politicians are listening to science," explains the researcher.

“We are living in an unusual time when scientists are taken seriously, but the question is whether they will be taken seriously on other problems as well.

Hopefully the same would happen with climate change, because researchers have shown what is happening for a long time and politicians have not listened to them.

Now they are doing it;

but because of the coronavirus.

I highly doubt that they will deliver on their promises to rebuild on the back of a green economy.

A pandemic affects us very directly, because of our sick loved ones or because we ourselves are afraid of getting sick, but long-term climate change will be much more devastating for all of us ”.

Wulf's books focus on the birth of modern science, through his account of the life of Humboldt, the creation of the great botanical gardens -

, not yet translated - or the measurement of the transit of Venus , “An event that lasted for six hours and that mobilized more than 200 researchers, who traveled all over the world”.

“Then they went back to their countries, shared their calculations.

Hundreds of charts traveled the planet from one side to the other and came to measure the distance between the Sun and the Earth in a way quite close to what we know now.

All of our scientific collaborations follow that same pattern, "he says.

Wulf's thesis on Humboldt is that he was the first scientist to understand that ecosystems function as a whole - hence the title of his book,

- and he believes that the same theory is now more current than ever, for climate change, but also because the coronavirus emergency responds to the same bankruptcy in the relationship of our species with the natural world.

And the historian believes that this is only the beginning: “Right now a huge change is taking place, because we no longer think that the next generation will live better than ours.

And the idea of ​​progress has been reversed as something positive: when I think of my daughter and my daughter's generation, who is now 29;

and in Greta Thunberg's generation, they suffer from uncertainty about the future much deeper than we do.

What if we are the last generation that had a very good life?

Only a new search for Venus, an international scientific endeavor supported by politicians, stands between that black future and humanity.