Aristotle METEOROLOGY Complete

Translated by E. Webster.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

100 pages - You are on Page 51

Hurricanes are commonest in autumn, and next in spring: Aparctias, Thrascias, and Argestes give rise to them most. This is because hurricanes are generally formed when some winds are blowing and others fall on them; and these are the winds which are most apt to fall on others that are blowing; the reason for which, too, we have explained before.

The Etesiae veer round: they begin from the north, and become for dwellers in the west Thrasciae, Argestae, and Zephyrus (for Zephyrus belongs to the north). For dwellers in the east they veer round as far as Apeliotes.

So much for the winds, their origin and nature and the properties common to them all or peculiar to each.

Part 7

We must go on to discuss earthquakes next, for their cause is akin to our last subject.

The theories that have been put forward up to the present date are three, and their authors three men, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and before him Anaximenes of Miletus, and later Democritus of Abdera.

Anaxagoras says that the ether, which naturally moves upwards, is caught in hollows below the earth and so shakes it, for though the earth is really all of it equally porous, its surface is clogged up by rain. This implies that part of the whole sphere is 'above' and part 'below': 'above' being the part on which we live, 'below' the other.

This theory is perhaps too primitive to require refutation. It is absurd to think of up and down otherwise than as meaning that heavy bodies move to the earth from every quarter, and light ones, such as fire, away from it; especially as we see that, as far as our knowledge of the earth goes, the horizon always changes with a change in our position, which proves that the earth is convex and spherical. It is absurd, too, to maintain that the earth rests on the air because of its size, and then to say that impact upwards from below shakes it right through. Besides he gives no account of the circumstances attendant on earthquakes: for not every country or every season is subject to them.

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