Meteorology (Greek: Μετεωρολογικά; Latin: Meteorologica or Meteora) is a treatise by Aristotle. The text discusses what Aristotle believed to have been all the affections common to air and water, and the kinds and parts of the earth and the affections of its parts. It includes early accounts of water evaporation, earthquakes, and other weather phenomena.
Meteorologica
An Arabic compendium of Meteorology, called al-'Athar al-`Ulwiyyah (Arabic: الآثار العلوية) and produced c. 800 CE by the Antiochene scholar Yahya Ibn al-Batriq, was widely circulated among Muslim scholars over the following centuries.[1] This was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century – and by this means, during the Twelfth-century Renaissance, entered the Western European world of medieval scholasticism.[2] Gerard's "old translation" (vetus translatio) was superseded by an improved text by William of Moerbeke, the nova translatio, which was widely read, as it survives in numerous manuscripts; it received commentary by Thomas Aquinas and was often printed during the Renaissance.[3]
In On the Universe (a possibly spurious work), Aristotle writes:
...the motion of these latter bodies [of four] being of two kinds: either from the centre or to the centre. (339a14-15) So we must treat fire and earth and the elements like them as the material causes of the events in this world (meaning by material what is subject and is affected), but must assign causality in the sense of the originating principle of motion to the influence of the eternally moving bodies. (339a27-32)
...four bodies are fire, air, water, earth. (339a15-16) Fire occupies the highest place among them all, earth the lowest, and two elements correspond to these in their relation to one another, air being nearest to fire, water to earth. (339a16-19) Fire, air, water, earth, we assert, originate from one another, and each of them exists potentially in each, as all things do that can be resolved into a common and ultimate substrate. (339a36-b2)
All terrestrial matter consists of these four elements. Various ratios of the elements combine to create the diverse materials found in nature. Aristotle explains this in terms of the four primary contrary qualities, heat, cold, dryness, and moisture (Meteorology book 4 chapter 7); the first two being active causes and the latter being the underlying matter (378b10). Compositions of the elements in things like milk, blood, flesh, or metals will include both earth and water, and sometimes air. These composite bodies involve a form which combines contraries in the same body, i.e. both moisture and dryness (Aristotle explained the flexibility and ductility of metal by theorizing that it had moisture in its composition). They do so by forming proportions among the contraries. Flesh involves all four elements in a proportioned combination.
The theory of elements was meant to replace the Atomism of Democritus (which Aristotle refuted in On Generation and Corruption and De Caelo). The elements are not, therefore, tiny building blocks like atoms, but rather the constitutive properties (i.e. contraries) of the simple bodies (fire, air, water, earth) found in sense-perception.
Meteorology deals primarily with the interaction of three elements: air, water, and earth. A cloud is a composite that mixes all three. Books 1-3 of Meteorology apply a method of explanation (contrary qualities) which explains different phenomena as an interaction of forces in a natural system (relations of agent and patient, potency, and activity). Thus the sun and air are "movers" within meteorological phenomena, while water and earth are "moved" and act as matter. Book 4 is a sustained investigation of the properties and effects of heat and cold on organic processes. In "Meteorologica" (1, 2) in free translation as follows: "They boil the sea water and suspend large sponges from the mouth of a brass vessel to absorb what is evaporated, and after drawing the liquid from the sponges they find it to be sweet water." This is a practical application of Aristotle's theory of distillation and that the rain cycle is some sort of natural distallation, without having said the word (Book 1, Chapter 9).
Atmosphere
Water vapor
Some of the vapour that is formed by day does not rise high because the ratio of the fire that is raising it to the water that is being raised is small. (347a13-15) Both dew and hoar-frost are found when the sky is clear and there is no wind. For the vapour could not be raised unless the sky were clear, and if a wind were blowing it could not condense. (347a26-28) ...hoar-frost is not found on mountains contributes to prove that these phenomena occur because the vapour does not rise high. One reason for this is that it rises from hollow and watery places, so that the heat that is raising it, bearing as it were too heavy a burden cannot lift it to a great height but soon lets it fall again. (347a29-34)
Weather
When there is a great quantity of exhalation and it is rare and is squeezed out in the cloud itself we get a thunderbolt. (371a17-19) So the whirlwind originates in the failure of an incipient hurricane to escape from its cloud: it is due to the resistance which generates the eddy, and it consists in the spiral which descends to the earth and drags with it the cloud which it cannot shake off. It moves things by its wind in the direction in which it is blowing in a straight line, and whirls round by its circular motion and forcibly snatches up whatever it meets. (371a9-15)
So it is clear, since there will be no end to time and the world is eternal, that neither the Tanais nor the Nile has always been flowing, but that the region whence they flow was once dry: for their effect may be fulfilled, but time cannot. And this will be equally true of all other rivers. But if rivers come into existence and perish and the same parts of the earth were not always moist, the sea must needs change correspondingly. And if the sea is always advancing in one place and receding in another it is clear that the same parts of the whole earth are not always either sea or land, but that all this changes in course of time.. (353a14-24)
Geography
To judge from what is known from journeys by sea and land, the length [of the inhabited earth] is much greather than the width; indeed the distance from the pillars of Heracles [at Cadiz] to India exceeds that from Aethiopia [Sudan] to Lake Maeotis [Sea of Azov] and the farthest part of Scythia is the proportion of more than five to three (362b19-23)
Hydrology
The Red Sea, for instance, communicates but slightly with the ocean outside the straits,... (354a1-3) The whole of the Mediterranean does actually flow. The direction of this flow is determined by the depth of the basins and by the number of rivers. Maeotis flows into Pontus and Pontus into the Aegean. After that the flow of the remaining seas is not so easy to observe. (354a11-14)
Spherical Earth
The earth is surrounded by water, just as that is by the sphere of air, and that again by the sphere called that of fire. (354b23-25)
Aristotle is describing a spherical lithosphere (Earth), hydrosphere (water) and atmosphere (air and fire).[citation needed]
Book 4
The authorship of the fourth book is disputed.[5][6] This is due partially to its content. It deals with an altogether different set of questions from the other three books, and is much more similar to On Generation and Corruption. Recently, its authenticity, or at the very least, its consistency with other Aristotelian texts, has been defended.[7][8] Where exactly it should be placed in the corpus is another question. Alexander placed it with GC, but thought it was a different work from it. Olympiodorus placed it between Cael. and GC, while Patrizi placed it before Parts of Animals. Only Ammonius claims it is both genuine and in the right place.[7]
The fourth book consists of a detailed investigation of organic and natural processes, and attempts to explain the interaction and composition of elements by reference to the contrary physical qualities. It also provides a theory of secondary qualities, which emerge from different compositions of the primary qualities. This means that hardness or brittleness are due to the underlying relations between the primary contraries (hot, cold, dry, and moist).
"The so-called fourth book of Aristotle's Meteorological is not about meteorological phenomena at all. It describes the formation out of the four elements of 'homoeomerous' substances, by which are meant minerals such as stones and metals, and organic substances like flesh, skin, and hair, and the changes they can undergo under the influence of heat, cold, and moisture."[5]
Chapter analysis:
Summary of the doctrine of four prime contraries (hot, cold, moist, dry) and their relation to the four elements (fire, air, water, earth). Hot and cold are the active factors responsible for generation and destruction.
Two and Three are an investigation of the effects of heat and cold on natural processes, in particular, concoction [πέψις]. Concoction is defined as the maturing process [τελέωσις] of a substance which initiates its own development by means of an inner heat, i.e. it is its own internal moving cause (379b18-25). The appropriate heat will "masters the indeterminacy" of the material elements, so as to give them form (380a1). Proper concoction is a sign of health (380a2).
Ripening is a specific kind of concoction [πέψις τις]: the process in which the nourishing elements in fruit attains maturity so that its seeds can produce life (380a11-15). Aristotle says we can speak metaphorically about other processes as maturation [τελέωσις], all processes in which "matter is determined by natural heat and cold" (280a18-22). The chapter then examines rawness as the antithesis of concoction: in-concoction of the nourishing element in fruit having indeterminate moisture (380a27-b13). He then investigates related processes in which external influences effect the inner equilibrium of forces in natural compounds: boiling, scalding, and roasting.
Four through Nine are an investigation of the passive factors, moisture and dryness, and develop a systematic explanation of their secondary properties, the primary two being hard and soft.
Aristotle says that hard and soft are produced by processes of solidification or liquefaction that are due to heat and coldness. Drying is one kind of solidification.
Further investigation of solidification and liquefaction. (1) watery liquids, which are solidified by cold, liquefied by heat. (2) In mixtures of earth and water (which may also thicken instead of solidifying), either earth dominates, or, in which water dominates.
Discussion of particular examples: cheese, milk, blood, stones, wood, ebony, clay. Conclusion: anything that will solidify or thicken contains earth.
Summary of his theories of hylomorphism and motion, as pertaining to the study of the physical properties of natural bodies. We are then given a list of the types of qualities that arise from the interactions between composite bodies. These are the effects of heat and cold on the passive components (moisture and dryness). The list is given in the form of a pair of opposites: "Capable or incapable of..."
Solidification
Melting
Softening from heat
Softening from cold
Bending
Breaking
Fragmentation
Impression
Plasticity
Being squeezed
Ductility
Malleability
Fissility
Being cut
Viscosity
Being compressed
Combustability
Giving off fumes
Further investigation of the nature of solidification and softening. Examples: bronze, soda, salt, wool, grain. Then all 18 properties are investigated.
Discusses homoiomerous bodies and the effects of heat and cold on the processes of solidification and liquification.
Discusses examples (bronze, gold, silver, tin, iron, stone, flesh, bone sinew, skin, intestine, hair, fiber, veins) which are differentiated from non-homoiomerous bodies: everything composed of homoiomerous bodies, e.g. face hand, foot, or wood, bark, leaf, root.
Discusses non-homoiomerous bodies. In the middle of the chapter he insists on the existence of functions [ἔργον] and purposes [ἕνεκα] in all natural processes, claiming they are only clearer in the case of living things like flesh, but no less present in inanimate nature (390a17). Despite this insistence on final causality, the author goes on immediately to claim that all homoiomerous bodies can be produced by heat, cold, or their combination. The chapter ends the book by looking ahead to a further investigation of homoiomerous bodies (blood, flesh, semen, and the rest), which would lead into the study of non-homoiomerous, and then to bodies composed of them "such as humans, plants, and the like." (390b24).
^This version was the basis for the early thirteenth-century Hebrew translation by Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon (Schoonheim 2000).
^Translations of both texts are in Peter L. Schoonheim, Aristotle's Meteorology in the Arabico-Latin Tradition, (Leiden: Brill) 2000.
^A copy of Meteorologicorum libri quatuor, edited by Joachim Périon with corrections by Nicolas de Grouchy (Paris, 1571) exists in the Morgan Library (New York), the Cambridge University Library, the Bibliotheek Universiteit Leiden and the Tom Slick rare book collections of the Southwest Research Institute library (San Antonio, Texas), and other libraries.
^Bos, A. P. (2003). The soul and its instrumental Body: A Reinterpretation of Aristotle's Philosophy of Living Nature. Brill's Studies in Intellectual History. Vol. 112. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. p. 210. ISBN9789004130166.
^Lee, H. D. P. (1952). Meteorologica. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. pp. ix–xxix.
^ abLewis, Eric (1996). On Aristotle Meteorology 4. London: Duckworth. pp. 1–10.
^Frede, Dorothea (2004). On Mixture and Mixables, in Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption I Book 1 Symposium Aristotelicum. New York: Oxford. p. 309.
External links
Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Μετεωρολογικά
(Alternate at mit.edu)
"Meteorologica", translated by E.W. Webster (Internet Archive, 1931)
meteorology, aristotle, meteorology, greek, Μετεωρολογικά, latin, meteorologica, meteora, treatise, aristotle, text, discusses, what, aristotle, believed, have, been, affections, common, water, kinds, parts, earth, affections, parts, includes, early, accounts,. Meteorology Greek Metewrologika Latin Meteorologica or Meteora is a treatise by Aristotle The text discusses what Aristotle believed to have been all the affections common to air and water and the kinds and parts of the earth and the affections of its parts It includes early accounts of water evaporation earthquakes and other weather phenomena Meteorologica An Arabic compendium of Meteorology called al Athar al Ulwiyyah Arabic الآثار العلوية and produced c 800 CE by the Antiochene scholar Yahya Ibn al Batriq was widely circulated among Muslim scholars over the following centuries 1 This was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century and by this means during the Twelfth century Renaissance entered the Western European world of medieval scholasticism 2 Gerard s old translation vetus translatio was superseded by an improved text by William of Moerbeke the nova translatio which was widely read as it survives in numerous manuscripts it received commentary by Thomas Aquinas and was often printed during the Renaissance 3 Contents 1 Physics 2 Four elements 3 Atmosphere 3 1 Water vapor 3 2 Weather 4 Geology 5 Geography 6 Hydrology 7 Spherical Earth 8 Book 4 9 See also 10 Notes 11 External linksPhysics EditIn On the Universe a possibly spurious work Aristotle writes the motion of these latter bodies of four being of two kinds either from the centre or to the centre 339a14 15 So we must treat fire and earth and the elements like them as the material causes of the events in this world meaning by material what is subject and is affected but must assign causality in the sense of the originating principle of motion to the influence of the eternally moving bodies 339a27 32 This is a reference to the unmoved movers a teleological explanation Although On the Universe is included in the Corpus Aristotelicum its status as a genuine Aristotelian text is disputed 4 Four elements Edit four bodies are fire air water earth 339a15 16 Fire occupies the highest place among them all earth the lowest and two elements correspond to these in their relation to one another air being nearest to fire water to earth 339a16 19 Fire air water earth we assert originate from one another and each of them exists potentially in each as all things do that can be resolved into a common and ultimate substrate 339a36 b2 All terrestrial matter consists of these four elements Various ratios of the elements combine to create the diverse materials found in nature Aristotle explains this in terms of the four primary contrary qualities heat cold dryness and moisture Meteorology book 4 chapter 7 the first two being active causes and the latter being the underlying matter 378b10 Compositions of the elements in things like milk blood flesh or metals will include both earth and water and sometimes air These composite bodies involve a form which combines contraries in the same body i e both moisture and dryness Aristotle explained the flexibility and ductility of metal by theorizing that it had moisture in its composition They do so by forming proportions among the contraries Flesh involves all four elements in a proportioned combination The theory of elements was meant to replace the Atomism of Democritus which Aristotle refuted in On Generation and Corruption and De Caelo The elements are not therefore tiny building blocks like atoms but rather the constitutive properties i e contraries of the simple bodies fire air water earth found in sense perception Meteorology deals primarily with the interaction of three elements air water and earth A cloud is a composite that mixes all three Books 1 3 of Meteorology apply a method of explanation contrary qualities which explains different phenomena as an interaction of forces in a natural system relations of agent and patient potency and activity Thus the sun and air are movers within meteorological phenomena while water and earth are moved and act as matter Book 4 is a sustained investigation of the properties and effects of heat and cold on organic processes In Meteorologica 1 2 in free translation as follows They boil the sea water and suspend large sponges from the mouth of a brass vessel to absorb what is evaporated and after drawing the liquid from the sponges they find it to be sweet water This is a practical application of Aristotle s theory of distillation and that the rain cycle is some sort of natural distallation without having said the word Book 1 Chapter 9 Atmosphere EditWater vapor Edit Some of the vapour that is formed by day does not rise high because the ratio of the fire that is raising it to the water that is being raised is small 347a13 15 Both dew and hoar frost are found when the sky is clear and there is no wind For the vapour could not be raised unless the sky were clear and if a wind were blowing it could not condense 347a26 28 hoar frost is not found on mountains contributes to prove that these phenomena occur because the vapour does not rise high One reason for this is that it rises from hollow and watery places so that the heat that is raising it bearing as it were too heavy a burden cannot lift it to a great height but soon lets it fall again 347a29 34 Weather Edit When there is a great quantity of exhalation and it is rare and is squeezed out in the cloud itself we get a thunderbolt 371a17 19 So the whirlwind originates in the failure of an incipient hurricane to escape from its cloud it is due to the resistance which generates the eddy and it consists in the spiral which descends to the earth and drags with it the cloud which it cannot shake off It moves things by its wind in the direction in which it is blowing in a straight line and whirls round by its circular motion and forcibly snatches up whatever it meets 371a9 15 Aristotle describes the properties of tornadoes and lightning Geology EditSo it is clear since there will be no end to time and the world is eternal that neither the Tanais nor the Nile has always been flowing but that the region whence they flow was once dry for their effect may be fulfilled but time cannot And this will be equally true of all other rivers But if rivers come into existence and perish and the same parts of the earth were not always moist the sea must needs change correspondingly And if the sea is always advancing in one place and receding in another it is clear that the same parts of the whole earth are not always either sea or land but that all this changes in course of time 353a14 24 Geography EditTo judge from what is known from journeys by sea and land the length of the inhabited earth is much greather than the width indeed the distance from the pillars of Heracles at Cadiz to India exceeds that from Aethiopia Sudan to Lake Maeotis Sea of Azov and the farthest part of Scythia is the proportion of more than five to three 362b19 23 Hydrology EditThe Red Sea for instance communicates but slightly with the ocean outside the straits 354a1 3 The whole of the Mediterranean does actually flow The direction of this flow is determined by the depth of the basins and by the number of rivers Maeotis flows into Pontus and Pontus into the Aegean After that the flow of the remaining seas is not so easy to observe 354a11 14 Spherical Earth EditThe earth is surrounded by water just as that is by the sphere of air and that again by the sphere called that of fire 354b23 25 Aristotle is describing a spherical lithosphere Earth hydrosphere water and atmosphere air and fire citation needed Book 4 EditThe authorship of the fourth book is disputed 5 6 This is due partially to its content It deals with an altogether different set of questions from the other three books and is much more similar to On Generation and Corruption Recently its authenticity or at the very least its consistency with other Aristotelian texts has been defended 7 8 Where exactly it should be placed in the corpus is another question Alexander placed it with GC but thought it was a different work from it Olympiodorus placed it between Cael and GC while Patrizi placed it before Parts of Animals Only Ammonius claims it is both genuine and in the right place 7 The fourth book consists of a detailed investigation of organic and natural processes and attempts to explain the interaction and composition of elements by reference to the contrary physical qualities It also provides a theory of secondary qualities which emerge from different compositions of the primary qualities This means that hardness or brittleness are due to the underlying relations between the primary contraries hot cold dry and moist The so called fourth book of Aristotle s Meteorological is not about meteorological phenomena at all It describes the formation out of the four elements of homoeomerous substances by which are meant minerals such as stones and metals and organic substances like flesh skin and hair and the changes they can undergo under the influence of heat cold and moisture 5 Chapter analysis Summary of the doctrine of four prime contraries hot cold moist dry and their relation to the four elements fire air water earth Hot and cold are the active factors responsible for generation and destruction Two and Three are an investigation of the effects of heat and cold on natural processes in particular concoction pepsis Concoction is defined as the maturing process telewsis of a substance which initiates its own development by means of an inner heat i e it is its own internal moving cause 379b18 25 The appropriate heat will masters the indeterminacy of the material elements so as to give them form 380a1 Proper concoction is a sign of health 380a2 Ripening is a specific kind of concoction pepsis tis the process in which the nourishing elements in fruit attains maturity so that its seeds can produce life 380a11 15 Aristotle says we can speak metaphorically about other processes as maturation telewsis all processes in which matter is determined by natural heat and cold 280a18 22 The chapter then examines rawness as the antithesis of concoction in concoction of the nourishing element in fruit having indeterminate moisture 380a27 b13 He then investigates related processes in which external influences effect the inner equilibrium of forces in natural compounds boiling scalding and roasting Four through Nine are an investigation of the passive factors moisture and dryness and develop a systematic explanation of their secondary properties the primary two being hard and soft Aristotle says that hard and soft are produced by processes of solidification or liquefaction that are due to heat and coldness Drying is one kind of solidification Further investigation of solidification and liquefaction 1 watery liquids which are solidified by cold liquefied by heat 2 In mixtures of earth and water which may also thicken instead of solidifying either earth dominates or in which water dominates Discussion of particular examples cheese milk blood stones wood ebony clay Conclusion anything that will solidify or thicken contains earth Summary of his theories of hylomorphism and motion as pertaining to the study of the physical properties of natural bodies We are then given a list of the types of qualities that arise from the interactions between composite bodies These are the effects of heat and cold on the passive components moisture and dryness The list is given in the form of a pair of opposites Capable or incapable of Solidification Melting Softening from heat Softening from cold Bending Breaking Fragmentation Impression Plasticity Being squeezed Ductility Malleability Fissility Being cut Viscosity Being compressed Combustability Giving off fumes Further investigation of the nature of solidification and softening Examples bronze soda salt wool grain Then all 18 properties are investigated Discusses homoiomerous bodies and the effects of heat and cold on the processes of solidification and liquification Discusses examples bronze gold silver tin iron stone flesh bone sinew skin intestine hair fiber veins which are differentiated from non homoiomerous bodies everything composed of homoiomerous bodies e g face hand foot or wood bark leaf root Discusses non homoiomerous bodies In the middle of the chapter he insists on the existence of functions ἔrgon and purposes ἕneka in all natural processes claiming they are only clearer in the case of living things like flesh but no less present in inanimate nature 390a17 Despite this insistence on final causality the author goes on immediately to claim that all homoiomerous bodies can be produced by heat cold or their combination The chapter ends the book by looking ahead to a further investigation of homoiomerous bodies blood flesh semen and the rest which would lead into the study of non homoiomerous and then to bodies composed of them such as humans plants and the like 390b24 See also EditClassical compass winds History of science Mpemba effect Timeline of meteorologyNotes Edit This version was the basis for the early thirteenth century Hebrew translation by Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon Schoonheim 2000 Translations of both texts are in Peter L Schoonheim Aristotle s Meteorology in the Arabico Latin Tradition Leiden Brill 2000 A copy of Meteorologicorum libri quatuor edited by Joachim Perion with corrections by Nicolas de Grouchy Paris 1571 exists in the Morgan Library New York the Cambridge University Library the Bibliotheek Universiteit Leiden and the Tom Slick rare book collections of the Southwest Research Institute library San Antonio Texas and other libraries Bos A P 2003 The soul and its instrumental Body A Reinterpretation of Aristotle s Philosophy of Living Nature Brill s Studies in Intellectual History Vol 112 Leiden Netherlands Brill p 210 ISBN 9789004130166 a b Gottschalk H B 1961 The Authorship of Meteorologica Book IV The Classical Quarterly 11 No 1 via https www jstor org stable 637747 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a External link in code class cs1 code via code help Lee H D P 1952 Meteorologica Cambridge MA Harvard University Press pp ix xxix a b Lewis Eric 1996 On Aristotle Meteorology 4 London Duckworth pp 1 10 Frede Dorothea 2004 On Mixture and Mixables in Aristotle s On Generation and Corruption I Book 1 Symposium Aristotelicum New York Oxford p 309 External links Edit Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article Metewrologika Meteorology translated by E W Webster Alternate at mit edu Meteorologica translated by E W Webster Internet Archive 1931 Modern aspects of Aristotle s Meteorology Meteorology public domain audiobook at LibriVox Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Meteorology Aristotle amp oldid 1136059533, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
