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Meteorology By Aristotle

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Bathos
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« Reply #30 on: August 30, 2009, 11:45:32 pm »

Men whose outlook is narrow suppose the cause of such events to be
change in the universe, in the sense of a coming to be of the world
as a whole. Hence they say that the sea being dried up and is growing
less, because this is observed to have happened in more places now
than formerly. But this is only partially true. It is true that many
places are now dry, that formerly were covered with water. But the
opposite is true too: for if they look they will find that there are
many places where the sea has invaded the land. But we must not suppose
that the cause of this is that the world is in process of becoming.
For it is absurd to make the universe to be in process because of
small and trifling changes, when the bulk and size of the earth are
surely as nothing in comparison with the whole world. Rather we must
take the cause of all these changes to be that, just as winter occurs
in the seasons of the year, so in determined periods there comes a
great winter of a great year and with it excess of rain. But this
excess does not always occur in the same place. The deluge in the
time of Deucalion, for instance, took place chiefly in the Greek world
and in it especially about ancient Hellas, the country about Dodona
and the Achelous, a river which has often changed its course. Here
the Selli dwelt and those who were formerly called Graeci and now
Hellenes. When, therefore, such an excess of rain occurs we must suppose
that it suffices for a long time. We have seen that some say that
the size of the subterranean cavities is what makes some rivers perennial
and others not, whereas we maintain that the size of the mountains
is the cause, and their density and coldness; for great, dense, and
cold mountains catch and keep and create most water: whereas if the
mountains that overhang the sources of rivers are small or porous
and stony and clayey, these rivers run dry earlier. We must recognize
the same kind of thing in this case too. Where such abundance of rain
falls in the great winter it tends to make the moisture of those places
almost everlasting. But as time goes on places of the latter type
dry up more, while those of the former, moist type, do so less: until
at last the beginning of the same cycle returns.
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