The Great Stink of London

It is a trait of human memory to forget, to take things for granted: especially those things pertaining to the "truth of the pipes", the infrastructure of reality, of the comforts of day-to-day existence. Joseph Bazalgette turned this melancholy aspect of human nature into a virtue of engineering: for him, an engineer should make things so well that the user may forget about their workings, about even the fact that they are there. Good engineering is synonymous to routine: after all, what good is a pipeline which breaks every other month? Or a space rocket which works 'most of the time'? Succinctly, good engineering is genuine freedom from material constraint.
Anthropologists propose many definitions of 'civilization', most of them confusing it with any hodge-podge collection of human-made artifacts. From such a perspective, no difference can be made between pyramids, megalomanic expressions of political hubris and puerile transcendentalism, and those artifacts which seamlessly integrate into the human existence, projecting it to a different qualitative level, rendering it more... humane: such as the humble-but-well-made sewer... Bazalgette's take on engineering deontology allows, once and for all, a definite criteria for distinguishing what is genuine civilization from what is just a pointless burst of thymos.
Thus, Joseph Bazalgette's implicit understanding of civilization complements that of Thomas Paine, who saw it not as **any** social order, but **a** social order built around the imperative of individual liberty. Together, freedom from material constraint and political liberty, are the great gifts of the British ethos of life to the world. Too bad that the faculty of forgetting and taking things for granted extends also to these two principles, cornerstones for passing through this world in dignity... [CSD & A. M. Arsian]

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In the sweltering summer of 1858 the stink of sewage from the polluted Thames was so offensive that it drove Members of Parliament from the chamber of the House of Commons. Sewage generated by a population of over two million Londoners was pouring into the river and was being carried to and fro by the tides. The Times called the crisis "The Great Stink". Parliament had to act - drastic measures were required to clean the Thames and to improve London's primitive system of sanitation. The great engineer entrusted by Parliament with this enormous task was Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and this book is a fascinating account of his life and work. [The History Press, GoodReads]