Some weather words in Aristotle's Meteorologica

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Stephen Hughes
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Some weather words in Aristotle's Meteorologica

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:The treatises of Aristotle are thought to be lecture notes; the difficulty in reading them has always seemed to me to be ambiguities of referents of pronoun, relative pronoouns especially.
I'm reading the Meteorologica at present to be able to better fulfill a request put to me by another party. That work doesn't seem to be too difficult to follow the pronouns in.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: Some weather words in Aristotle's Meteorologica

Post by cwconrad »

I'm glad you're having good weather for a bon voyage through the Meteorologica. I can still remember my undergraduate initial experience with the Ethica Nicomachea decades ago, and working later through the Physics and Metaphysics.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Some weather words in Aristotle's Meteorologica

Post by Stephen Hughes »

The aspect that I find most difficult is the "other" scientific system at work behind the text. It is logical enough in the terms that it is presented, but not making a distinction between "physical changes" and "chemical changes" that is assumed within the now current scientific thinking takes some getting used to.

I wonder how much of this scientific understanding was accepted by the writers in the hellenised world of the Koine Sprachbund.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Some weather words in Aristotle's Meteorologica

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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