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Meteorology By Aristotle

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Bathos
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« Reply #60 on: August 30, 2009, 11:51:51 pm »

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.

Democritus says that the earth is full of water and that when a quantity
of rain-water is added to this an earthquake is the result. The hollows
in the earth being unable to admit the excess of water it forces its
way in and so causes an earthquake. Or again, the earth as it dries
draws the water from the fuller to the emptier parts, and the inrush
of the water as it changes its place causes the earthquake.

Anaximenes says that the earth breaks up when it grows wet or dry,
and earthquakes are due to the fall of these masses as they break
away. Hence earthquakes take place in times of drought and again of
heavy rain, since, as we have explained, the earth grows dry in time
of drought and breaks up, whereas the rain makes it sodden and destroys
its cohesion.

But if this were the case the earth ought to be found to be sinking
in many places. Again, why do earthquakes frequently occur in places
which are not excessively subject to drought or rain, as they ought
to be on the theory? Besides, on this view, earthquakes ought always
to be getting fewer, and should come to an end entirely some day:
the notion of contraction by packing together implies this. So this
is impossible the theory must be impossible too.
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