Matthias Buschle - How Basel changed the world

Is it possible for the flap of a butterflys wing in Brazil to set off a tornado in Texas? The mathematician, meteorologist and co-inventor of Chaos Theory, Edward N. Lorenz, raised this issue in 1972. In our little chronicle, How Basel changed the world, we intend to pursue this butterfly effect, albeit from a rather local perspective: the centre of the world in this book is Basel. Here too, world-shaking events have taken place and the effects of experiences and discoveries here have ultimately been felt across the globe irrespective of their apparent irrelevance at the time or their subordinate importance, as well as the role originally played by chance.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel called the city of Basel a global city in pocket-book format. But is Basel really a city of world importance? Although global players of world renown have been active here, and indeed still are one only has to think of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Friedrich Nietzsche, Herzog & de Meuron and the Basel Chemische (chemical industries) Basel is more a provincial town than a metropolis. What is more, in the original sense of the term provincial it is an independent part of a larger whole. If small events can unpredictably alter a system in the long-term, then world history can also be changed from Basel. There would be a correspondence between the butterfly in Brazil and the black-headed gull in the air above the so-called knee of the river Rhine

This book tracks down such impacts by viewing the world from Basel and asking: What happened here that had global consequences? What ideas and products from Basel have influenced the course of world history?

How Basel changed the world is a book about local history, written out of love of country, and very much in the spirit of the great Swiss author Gerhard Meier: I believe that you only become a world citizen through being a provincial. You have to go through the official channels: from provincial to global citizen. How Basel changed the world may involve a touch of navel gazing, but it does so without self-aggrandizement. It is based on a different prototype, namely, the St. Mary Mead Principle. This fictional English town is in a position to present remarkable crime statistics: over a space of about forty years, sixteen murders were committed there. In the words of Miss Marple: Terrible things happen in a place like this, I tell you. You have the opportunity to observe things here like you never have in a city. Agatha Christies Miss Marple, a somewhat singular older lady, solves her cases with the help of a simple but extremely effective principle: she questions odd everyday things, finding in them the key to the crimes. Who cut holes in Mrs Joness net shopping bag? Why did Mrs Sims only wear her new fur coat once? How Basel changed the world does not engage in criminalistics, but like St. Mary Mead, Basel here becomes a backdrop against which to view the world.

But why Basel? The words of at least one prominent witness speak for the choice of the city on the knee of the Rhine: Basel seems to me to be either at the heart of Christianity, or else to be situated not very far from it. Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later known as Pope Pius II, wrote this on the occasion of the Council of Basel (1431 1449). To put it in todays terms: What is special about Basel is not that this city is more closely linked than any other with world history, but the way in which it is linked. Whereby world here means not the whole world but rather the surrounding world, the concentrically expandable region around the city. Sometimes the impacts have extended far out over the worlds oceans, sometimes they have only effected Europe.

This book is an essay in the original sense, an experiment. It actually consists of a number of essays, freely formulated texts in a non-scientific language. It is a book that keep to the facts, while sometimes pointing up links with a certain relish and humour The choice of stories adheres to the same principle: whereas an attempt has been made to take the most important world events into account, the intention is not to flaunt achievement. The small, sometimes almost forgotten story is of equal importance.

How Basel changed the world could of course have many more pages and include, for example, the significance of the 20th century church father, Karl Barth, the first Indian rhinoceros worldwide to be born in a zoo, the impact on everyday life of those little helpers Valium and Ritalin, the history of ready-made pastry, the links between capital, rum and the slave trade, the settlement of the dangerous giant hogweed in Europe or the birth of the concept of freedom from pain.

100 g dry matter contain mg of iron: Sugar 0 / Blood serum 0 / Chicken egg white trace / Honey 1.2 / Rice 1.0 2.0 / Pearl barley 1.4 1.5 / Pears 2.0 / Dates 2.1 / cows milk 2.3 / mothers milk 2.3 3.1 / Plums 2.8 / dogs milk 3.2 / figs 3.7 / raspberries 3.9 / peeled hazelnuts 4.3 / Barley 4.5 / Cabbage, inner yellow leaves 4.5 / Rye 4.9 / Peeled almonds 4.9 / Wheat 5.5 / Grapes (Malaga) 5.6 / Blueberries 5.7 / Potatoes 6.4 / Peas 6.2 6.6 / Cherries, black, stone-less 7.2 / Beans, white 8.3 / Carrots 8.6 / Wheat bran 8.8 / Strawberries 8.6 9.3 / Lentils 9.5 / Almonds, brown skins 9.5 / Cherries, red, stone-less 10 / Hazelnuts, brown skins 13 / Apples 13 / Dandelion, leaves 14 / Cabbage, outer green leaves 17 / Asparagus 20 / Egg yolk 10 24 / Spinach 33 39 / Pigs blood 226 / Hematogen 290 / Hemoglobin 340

It was this table compiled by the Basel physiologist Gustav von Bunge (1844 1920) that consolidated the victory of spinach as the vegetable with the highest iron content. It was printed in the first edition of his Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen (Textbook of Physiological and Pathological Chemistry) in 1901. The iron values rise as the list of substances proceeds: sugar has no iron, haemoglobin, the colour component of red blood vessels, has the most (moreover, haematogen is a substance that von Bunge himself first tracked down; the word haematogen coined by him as a transitional term means blood-producer). Spinach is the last vegetable on the list, so it is the vegetable containing the most iron.

There is a decisive qualification, however, and this is mentioned in the first line of the list: contained in 100 g dry matter. Now we do not eat spinach in powder form. The plant consists to a good 90 % of water, meaning that what we eat only contains 3.3 to 3.9 mg iron per 100 g which may make spinach an iron-rich vegetable, but does not achieve the outstanding values of the powder form.

Faulty reasoning : The spinach example is often used in reference texts and newspaper articles when writing about faulty reasoning. After all, this error had far-reaching effects: generations of children were fed spinach, although only very few of them like the bitter-tasting vegetable. There are even stories about mothers cooking vanilla pudding with spinach in the hope that this sweet camouflage might make eating it more pleasant for their children.