Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of terms and abbreviations
- 1 Map of the regions covered in the book, from Moscow in the west to Kemerovo oblast' in Western Siberia
- 2 The Volga and Kama River networks
- 3 Moscow and Moscow oblast'
- 4 The Urals and its major rivers
- The Kuzbass and the River Tom'
- Introduction
- 1 The impossible task: keeping cities clean
- 2 Water
- 3 Personal hygiene and epidemic control
- 4 Diet and nutrition: the 1947 food crisis and its aftermath
- 5 Infant mortality
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface and acknowledgements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of terms and abbreviations
- 1 Map of the regions covered in the book, from Moscow in the west to Kemerovo oblast' in Western Siberia
- 2 The Volga and Kama River networks
- 3 Moscow and Moscow oblast'
- 4 The Urals and its major rivers
- The Kuzbass and the River Tom'
- Introduction
- 1 The impossible task: keeping cities clean
- 2 Water
- 3 Personal hygiene and epidemic control
- 4 Diet and nutrition: the 1947 food crisis and its aftermath
- 5 Infant mortality
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Thomas Kuhn, in his pathbreaking book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, notes that prevailing scientific paradigms determine how, or even if, we observe specific phenomena. One of the examples he uses to illustrate this is that of the motion of a heavy object tethered to the end of a chain:
Since remote antiquity most people have seen one or another heavy body swinging back and forth on a string or chain until it finally comes to rest. To the Aristotelians, who believed that a heavy body is moved by its own nature from a higher position to a state of natural rest at a lower one, the swinging body was simply falling with difficulty. Constrained by the chain, it could achieve rest at its low point only after a tortuous motion and a considerable time. Galileo, on the other hand, looking at the swinging body, saw a pendulum, a body that almost succeeded in repeating the same motion over and over again ad infinitum. And having seen that much, Galileo observed other properties of the pendulum as well and constructed many of the most significant and original parts of his dynamics around them.
I was reminded of this a few years ago when I came across an article in the Guardian newspaper in Britain on the water crisis faced by the Chinese city of Shanghai. The city's rapid industrial expansion had brought with it almost irremediable pollution to its main river, the Huangpu.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist RussiaHealth, Hygiene, and Living Standards, 1943–1953, pp. xvi - xxiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010