Wind: Nature and Culture

“Wind, with its invisible, ineffable force, has shaped the Earth, the cosmos and the course of human civilization for millennia,” according to this colorful if cursory cultural history. Pryke (Gilgamesh), a history lecturer at the University of Sydney, Australia, surveys how air currents have factored into human history, myths, art, and entertainment. She notes that China invented the windmill around 200 BCE to pump water for crop irrigation, and that a tornado hindered British troops’ advance into Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812, but she doesn’t address the larger import of either. Delving into artistic representations of wind, she reports on a study that found Vincent van Gogh’s paintings show an uncanny understanding of “the deep mathematical structures of turbulent air flow” and relates how sound designers lowered the pitch of a camel’s moan to produce cyclonic sound effects for the 1994 blockbuster Twister, but any takeaways are again hazy. There are plenty of stimulating tidbits (the evolutionary advantages of standing upright likely included greater “evaporative cooling” from air currents moving over a larger proportion of the body), but in the absence of an overarching vision to unite them, they only add up to a serviceable compendium of aeolian trivia. This breezy outing doesn’t quite get off the ground. Photos. (July)