| The first widely observed national moment of silence | | | | results in an acute appreciation of the remaining |
| occurred in Britain in 1919, in commemoration of the | | | | senses. Prochnik points out that at Gallaudet University, |
| nation's inaugural Armistice Day. For two minutes, | | | | the premier American institution of higher education for |
| switchboard operators declined to connect telephone | | | | the deaf, faculty and staff cultivate Deaf Space, an |
| calls, subway cars and factory wheels ground to a | | | | appealing philosophy of architecture that emphasizes |
| halt, and ordinary citizens held their tongues. Within 10 | | | | natural light, soft shapes, and colonnades and |
| years, the somber annual tradition had grown so | | | | porches-"space that helps people remain in each |
| popular that the BBC began to air the sound of the | | | | other's visual embrace." |
| silence. One broadcaster mused that the communal | | | | If silence has so many benefits, why are head-splitting |
| silence served as a "solvent which destroys | | | | rock concerts popular and iPods ubiquitous? In part |
| personalities and gives us leave to be great and | | | | because loud sounds have their pleasures. As |
| universal." | | | | explained by one partisan of boom cars-which sport |
| While state-sanctioned silence was novel, the | | | | subwoofers capable of producing more noise than is |
| sentiment of the broadcaster was not. Silence has | | | | audible 30 feet away from a jet at takeoff-the sound |
| long acted as a leveler of ego. From the communal | | | | he experiences is "sensual." Yet people also crowd |
| meditation that opens Quaker meetings to the lulling | | | | their lives with noise, Prochnik incisively argues, |
| quiet that defines the lives of Buddhist monks, silence is | | | | because they are resistant to the virtues that silence |
| central to various religious traditions. "For many people, | | | | exemplifies: contemplation, attention, prudence, and |
| silence is the way God speaks to us, and when we | | | | restraint. |
| ourselves are in silence, we are speaking the language | | | | Garret Keizer, a contributing editor at Harper's, tackles |
| of the soul," observes George Prochnik, author of a | | | | essentially the same subject, but from the opposite |
| previous book about Sigmund Freud and the American | | | | end, in The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want. |
| psychologist James Jackson Putnam. In his fascinating | | | | Perceptions of noise vary, he notes-Swedish and |
| new book, In Pursuit of Silence, Prochnik sets out to | | | | Dutch scientists have found that people lodge fewer |
| understand the complicated reasons for silence's | | | | noise complaints about wind turbines when they |
| power. | | | | financially profit from their use. Yet he points out that |
| Silence enriches the mental life of humans, but, as | | | | "noise took a quantum leap with industrialization," and |
| Prochnik shows, it ensures the very survival of some | | | | the racket was compounded with the advent of the |
| in the animal kingdom. By being silent, animals avoid | | | | automobile and the airplane. |
| detection by predators, and sharpen their wits. | | | | The volume in many places around the world is now |
| Prochnik highlights the intriguing case of the red-eyed | | | | objectively dangerous (one child in eight in the United |
| tree frog, whose embryos are capable of distinguishing | | | | States suffers from hearing loss), and Keizer argues |
| the vibrations of a raindrop from the movement of a | | | | that, saddled with poor infrastructure and fewer |
| hungry snake. When the vibrations are caused by a | | | | resources, people on the social margins are |
| snake, the embryos prematurely launch themselves | | | | disproportionately affected. He acknowledges that |
| from their jellied clutch and attempt to survive in their | | | | when compared to poverty, violence, and disease, |
| underdeveloped state. | | | | noise is a minor environmental issue. But with noise as |
| The inability to hear (or sense vibrations, a related skill) | | | | his cause, he seizes the opportunity to decry |
| spells doom for some animals. But the biologically | | | | America's "loud" political discourse and climate change |
| imposed silence of deafness, at least in humans, often | | | | stoked by noisy factories. |