How wrong was Aristotle?

Day before yesterday, I saw this on CMI:

In the 4th century BC, Aristotle described the water cycle more accurately, but like Thales, remained convinced that subterranean water was the main source of stream flow. He wrote that it was absurd “if one were to suppose that rivers drew all their water from the sources we see (for most rivers do flow from springs).”1

Referring to Thales, Plato, and Aristotle, Dooge writes, “A common error in all their thinking was the firm conviction that rainfall was not sufficient to provide the flow of springs and rivers.”2 This mistake was perpetuated well into the following centuries. Leonardo da Vinci (writing just after AD 1500) pondered on the underground mechanisms that would lift water into the mountains. And Galileo (around AD 1600) said that he was personally frustrated because he couldn’t understand the source of stream flow.

A correct understanding of the water cycle didn’t emerge until late in the 17th century. In 1674, Pierre Perrault published his research on the water cycle.3 “He presented a study of a substantial section of the Seine River, beginning at its source, northwest of the city of Dijon. Using numerical estimates, he demonstrated that the river runoff annually amounted to only one-sixth of the volume of water falling over the drainage basin as rain or snow in a year.”4

In determining this, a more complete understanding of the hydrologic cycle finally emerged.

From : CMI : The water cycle
by Ron Neller
https://creation.com/water-cycle

And footnote 1 is Aristotle, Meteorology, Book 1, Part 13, 350 BC, Tr. E.W. Webster.

Now, I think I owe some Aristotelians - including today's Saint, Albert the Great, teacher of St Thomas Aquinas, for very long accused of having written books of Magic (which are arguably not by him) and therefore canonised very recently, by Pius XI - to check out that section and find out precisely how wrong or nearly right Aristotle was.

Part 13

Let us explain the nature of winds, and all windy vapours, also of rivers and of the sea. But here, too, we must first discuss the difficulties involved: for, as in other matters, so in this no theory has been handed down to us that the most ordinary man could not have thought of.

Some say that what is called air, when it is in motion and flows, is wind, and that this same air when it condenses again becomes cloud and water, implying that the nature of wind and water is the same. So they define wind as a motion of the air. Hence some, wishing to say a clever thing, assert that all the winds are one wind, because the air that moves is in fact all of it one and the same; they maintain that the winds appear to differ owing to the region from which the air may happen to flow on each occasion, but really do not differ at all. This is just like thinking that all rivers are one and the same river, and the ordinary unscientific view is better than a scientific theory like this. If all rivers flow from one source, and the same is true in the case of the winds, there might be some truth in this theory; but if it is no more true in the one case than in the other, this ingenious idea is plainly false. What requires investigation is this: the nature of wind and how it originates, its efficient cause and whence they derive their source; whether one ought to think of the wind as issuing from a sort of vessel and flowing until the vessel is empty, as if let out of a wineskin, or, as painters represent the winds, as drawing their source from themselves.

We find analogous views about the origin of rivers. It is thought that the water is raised by the sun and descends in rain and gathers below the earth and so flows from a great reservoir, all the rivers from one, or each from a different one. No water at all is generated, but the volume of the rivers consists of the water that is gathered into such reservoirs in winter. Hence rivers are always fuller in winter than in summer, and some are perennial, others not. Rivers are perennial where the reservoir is large and so enough water has collected in it to last out and not be used up before the winter rain returns. Where the reservoirs are smaller there is less water in the rivers, and they are dried up and their vessel empty before the fresh rain comes on.

But if any one will picture to himself a reservoir adequate to the water that is continuously flowing day by day, and consider the amount of the water, it is obvious that a receptacle that is to contain all the water that flows in the year would be larger than the earth, or, at any rate, not much smaller.

Though it is evident that many reservoirs of this kind do exist in many parts of the earth, yet it is unreasonable for any one to refuse to admit that air becomes water in the earth for the same reason as it does above it. If the cold causes the vaporous air to condense into water above the earth we must suppose the cold in the earth to produce this same effect, and recognize that there not only exists in it and flows out of it actually formed water, but that water is continually forming in it too.

Again, even in the case of the water that is not being formed from day to day but exists as such, we must not suppose as some do that rivers have their source in definite subterranean lakes. On the contrary, just as above the earth small drops form and these join others, till finally the water descends in a body as rain, so too we must suppose that in the earth the water at first trickles together little by little, and that the sources of the rivers drip, as it were, out of the earth and then unite. This is proved by facts. When men construct an aqueduct they collect the water in pipes and trenches, as if the earth in the higher ground were sweating the water out. Hence, too, the head-waters of rivers are found to flow from mountains, and from the greatest mountains there flow the most numerous and greatest rivers. Again, most springs are in the neighbourhood of mountains and of high ground, whereas if we except rivers, water rarely appears in the plains. For mountains and high ground, suspended over the country like a saturated sponge, make the water ooze out and trickle together in minute quantities but in many places. They receive a great deal of water falling as rain (for it makes no difference whether a spongy receptacle is concave and turned up or convex and turned down: in either case it will contain the same volume of matter) and, they also cool the vapour that rises and condense it back into water.

Hence, as we said, we find that the greatest rivers flow from the greatest mountains. This can be seen by looking at itineraries: what is recorded in them consists either of things which the writer has seen himself or of such as he has compiled after inquiry from those who have seen them.

In Asia we find that the most numerous and greatest rivers flow from the mountain called Parnassus, admittedly the greatest of all mountains towards the south-east. When you have crossed it you see the outer ocean, the further limit of which is unknown to the dwellers in our world. Besides other rivers there flow from it the Bactrus, the Choaspes, the Araxes: from the last a branch separates off and flows into lake Maeotis as the Tanais. From it, too, flows the Indus, the volume of whose stream is greatest of all rivers. From the Caucasus flows the Phasis, and very many other great rivers besides. Now the Caucasus is the greatest of the mountains that lie to the northeast, both as regards its extent and its height. A proof of its height is the fact that it can be seen from the so-called 'deeps' and from the entrance to the lake. Again, the sun shines on its peaks for a third part of the night before sunrise and again after sunset. Its extent is proved by the fact that thought contains many inhabitable regions which are occupied by many nations and in which there are said to be great lakes, yet they say that all these regions are visible up to the last peak. From Pyrene (this is a mountain towards the west in Celtice) there flow the Istrus and the Tartessus. The latter flows outside the pillars, while the Istrus flows through all Europe into the Euxine. Most of the remaining rivers flow northwards from the Hercynian mountains, which are the greatest in height and extent about that region. In the extreme north, beyond furthest Scythia, are the mountains called Rhipae. The stories about their size are altogether too fabulous: however, they say that the most and (after the Istrus) the greatest rivers flow from them. So, too, in Libya there flow from the Aethiopian mountains the Aegon and the Nyses; and from the so-called Silver Mountain the two greatest of named rivers, the river called Chremetes that flows into the outer ocean, and the main source of the Nile. Of the rivers in the Greek world, the Achelous flows from Pindus, the Inachus from the same mountain; the Strymon, the Nestus, and the Hebrus all three from Scombrus; many rivers, too, flow from Rhodope.

All other rivers would be found to flow in the same way, but we have mentioned these as examples. Even where rivers flow from marshes, the marshes in almost every case are found to lie below mountains or gradually rising ground.

It is clear then that we must not suppose rivers to originate from definite reservoirs: for the whole earth, we might almost say, would not be sufficient (any more than the region of the clouds would be) if we were to suppose that they were fed by actually existing water only and it were not the case that as some water passed out of existence some more came into existence, but rivers always drew their stream from an existing store. Secondly, the fact that rivers rise at the foot of mountains proves that a place transmits the water it contains by gradual percolation of many drops, little by little, and that this is how the sources of rivers originate. However, there is nothing impossible about the existence of such places containing a quantity of water like lakes: only they cannot be big enough to produce the supposed effect. To think that they are is just as absurd as if one were to suppose that rivers drew all their water from the sources we see (for most rivers do flow from springs). So it is no more reasonable to suppose those lakes to contain the whole volume of water than these springs.

That there exist such chasms and cavities in the earth we are taught by the rivers that are swallowed up. They are found in many parts of the earth: in the Peloponnesus, for instance, there are many such rivers in Arcadia. The reason is that Arcadia is mountainous and there are no channels from its valleys to the sea. So these places get full of water, and this, having no outlet, under the pressure of the water that is added above, finds a way out for itself underground. In Greece this kind of thing happens on quite a small scale, but the lake at the foot of the Caucasus, which the inhabitants of these parts call a sea, is considerable. Many great rivers fall into it and it has no visible outlet but issues below the earth off the land of the Coraxi about the so-called 'deeps of Pontus'. This is a place of unfathomable depth in the sea: at any rate no one has yet been able to find bottom there by sounding. At this spot, about three hundred stadia from land, there comes up sweet water over a large area, not all of it together but in three places. And in Liguria a river equal in size to the Rhodanus is swallowed up and appears again elsewhere: the Rhodanus being a navigable river.

From Meteorology, Book I
Translated by E. W. Webster
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/meteorology.1.i.html

Now, let us break this down a bit.

Let us explain the nature of winds, and all windy vapours, also of rivers and of the sea. But here, too, we must first discuss the difficulties involved: for, as in other matters, so in this no theory has been handed down to us that the most ordinary man could not have thought of.

OK, this means, in the status of a question, Aristotle is taking into account ALL theories traditional, including that of common men. Looks like sth scientists could learn from.

Some say that what is called air, when it is in motion and flows, is wind, and that this same air when it condenses again becomes cloud and water, implying that the nature of wind and water is the same. So they define wind as a motion of the air. Hence some, wishing to say a clever thing, assert that all the winds are one wind, because the air that moves is in fact all of it one and the same; they maintain that the winds appear to differ owing to the region from which the air may happen to flow on each occasion, but really do not differ at all. This is just like thinking that all rivers are one and the same river, and the ordinary unscientific view is better than a scientific theory like this. If all rivers flow from one source, and the same is true in the case of the winds, there might be some truth in this theory; but if it is no more true in the one case than in the other, this ingenious idea is plainly false. What requires investigation is this: the nature of wind and how it originates, its efficient cause and whence they derive their source; whether one ought to think of the wind as issuing from a sort of vessel and flowing until the vessel is empty, as if let out of a wineskin, or, as painters represent the winds, as drawing their source from themselves.

He gives us 5 things here:

• 1) Some think wind and water are the same thing (he is not disagreeing with that), air turning into water by condensation (literally thickening)
• 2) Some push this to all winds being one wind, and he disagrees with that : here a scientist or philosopher has tried to say a clever thing, but his view is less worthwhile than the ordinary one - this means, ordinary man is sometimes superior, if not to all specialists past or present, at least to some (and presumably it could in certain times be to all specialists then and there or here and now, on a certain matter, in case such a man trying to say a clever thing has swayed most specialist). The refutation of this view is very simple : "you could just as well say all rivers are the same river".
• 3) He gives an alternative : if all rivers / winds flow from same source, the clever thing is true, otherwise it is false. It looks as if he has clinched the case, but wait ...
• 4) We must check out where winds draw their air from. Presumably he has already mentioned the "all winds are one wind" theory, now he gives alternatives : do winds flow out of containers, like wineskins? do they draw the air from themselves?
• 5) As you see with imagery, he has no problem with preferring vivid images (wineskins, like the painters paint them) over dry and firm terminology.

We find analogous views about the origin of rivers. It is thought that the water is raised by the sun and descends in rain and gathers below the earth and so flows from a great reservoir, all the rivers from one, or each from a different one. No water at all is generated, but the volume of the rivers consists of the water that is gathered into such reservoirs in winter. Hence rivers are always fuller in winter than in summer, and some are perennial, others not. Rivers are perennial where the reservoir is large and so enough water has collected in it to last out and not be used up before the winter rain returns. Where the reservoirs are smaller there is less water in the rivers, and they are dried up and their vessel empty before the fresh rain comes on.

Let me highlight:

"It is thought that the water is raised by the sun and descends in rain and gathers below the earth and so flows from a great reservoir, all the rivers from one, or each from a different one. No water at all is generated, but the volume of the rivers consists of the water that is gathered ..."

In other words, the water cycle as now believed and as correctly described in the Bible is a common view in Aristotle's day.

Aristotle thinks it is wrong - he thinks it is wrong on the precise point of denying that water is routinely "condensed from air" both on high and below, under influence of coolness, as we shall see.

But the fact that Aristotle saw this as a common view did not absolutely determine his rejecting it. He has other reasons, as we shall see.

But if any one will picture to himself a reservoir adequate to the water that is continuously flowing day by day, and consider the amount of the water, it is obvious that a receptacle that is to contain all the water that flows in the year would be larger than the earth, or, at any rate, not much smaller.

Here he has a problem. He has no apparatus for directly measuring either water flow in rivers or water flow by rainfall. He resorts to imagining as a "virtual" measuring.

The thing is, his conclusion is, if "all the water that flows" means in all rivers taken together over earth, nearly correct, as we now understand things. The receptacle is not some limited reservoir cut off from the rest of the land. It is, instead, all of the land within each river's area of contributaries, between the ...

"A drainage divide, water divide, divide, ridgeline,[1] watershed, water parting, is the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_divide
[Too many wikipedia articles cited to give a link to each subsequent to his one. It would look cluttered and take extra time.]

And obviously, since the actual land is corrugated, the "reservoir" is indeed bigger, if not than Earth's actual surface as such (it cannot be bigger than itself), at least than the area on a flat map or a round globe, which does not take this "corrugation" into account.

Hence, the fault in Aristotle's imagined comparison.

Though it is evident that many reservoirs of this kind do exist in many parts of the earth, yet it is unreasonable for any one to refuse to admit that air becomes water in the earth for the same reason as it does above it. If the cold causes the vaporous air to condense into water above the earth we must suppose the cold in the earth to produce this same effect, and recognize that there not only exists in it and flows out of it actually formed water, but that water is continually forming in it too.

Ah, in other words, he is not contradicting the water cycle's known parts, he is just saying they don't suffice. Water must be "forming from air". He attributes rainfall to this. He probably has demonstrated it to his satisfaction in previous 12 parts of book one, or in some book on physics. He believes in a cycle of elements.

Again, even in the case of the water that is not being formed from day to day but exists as such, we must not suppose as some do that rivers have their source in definite subterranean lakes. On the contrary, just as above the earth small drops form and these join others, till finally the water descends in a body as rain, so too we must suppose that in the earth the water at first trickles together little by little, and that the sources of the rivers drip, as it were, out of the earth and then unite. This is proved by facts. When men construct an aqueduct they collect the water in pipes and trenches, as if the earth in the higher ground were sweating the water out. Hence, too, the head-waters of rivers are found to flow from mountains, and from the greatest mountains there flow the most numerous and greatest rivers. Again, most springs are in the neighbourhood of mountains and of high ground, whereas if we except rivers, water rarely appears in the plains. For mountains and high ground, suspended over the country like a saturated sponge, make the water ooze out and trickle together in minute quantities but in many places. They receive a great deal of water falling as rain (for it makes no difference whether a spongy receptacle is concave and turned up or convex and turned down: in either case it will contain the same volume of matter) and, they also cool the vapour that rises and condense it back into water.

Here, no modern would contradict his observation. Except, of course on the two points that water usually originates from air, and that this process also takes place in subterranean manner : while air containing water vapour would probably condensate in caves, this would, on the modern view, be a minute part of the rain fall, evaporating and condensating again.

Construction of aquaeducts was disused at beginning of Middle Ages, but I did not know it has originated so long before the greatness of Rome.

The reason for their disuse was, they were manned by slaves, and in the day of Clovis and Belisarius these proved unreliable. As the Early Middle Ages came on as a time of more and more war, aquaeducts were therefore quickly seen as a security hazard, and probably disused rather quickly.

A medieval reading this just had to take Aristotle's word for what usually happened in constructions of aquaeducts.

Hence, as we said, we find that the greatest rivers flow from the greatest mountains. This can be seen by looking at itineraries: what is recorded in them consists either of things which the writer has seen himself or of such as he has compiled after inquiry from those who have seen them.

This is one point in Aristotle, where modern scholars would frown : he is content to compile from itineraries, knowing they are themselves compilations.

But while frowning, they often do so without telling us.

While J. P. Holding would tell me "wikipedia is for idiots", presumably some of the experts (on another matter, NT scholarship) he prefers to them will at one point or another have compiled rather than make own observations (as in reading relevant texts), whether wikipedia or other (some of which are less reliable, since liable to depend on some scholars abusing their position to "try to say a clever thing", while a wikipedian article can receive corrections from outside such charmed circles).

Aristotle relies on compilations, and he gives them due credit.

In Asia we find that the most numerous and greatest rivers flow from the mountain called Parnassus, admittedly the greatest of all mountains towards the south-east.

Checking English wiki:

"Parnassus is one of the largest mountainous regions of Mainland Greece and one of the highest Greek mountains. It spreads over three municipalities, namely of Boeotia, Phthiotis and Phocis, where its largest part lies."

Was Aristotle counting Balkan as Asia? Or is some word, like "West of..." missing?

Or did he mean another very great mountain in Asia, which a copyist exchanged for Parnassus as highest in Greece?

I don't know, I don't even find ... wait ...

When you have crossed it you see the outer ocean, the further limit of which is unknown to the dwellers in our world.

I get a hunch, Himalaya could have been called Parnassus, by the Greeks, unless it is Ural or Afghanistan, or something. Let's check following instances:

Besides other rivers there flow from it the Bactrus, the Choaspes, the Araxes: from the last a branch separates off and flows into lake Maeotis as the Tanais. From it, too, flows the Indus, the volume of whose stream is greatest of all rivers.

• the Bactrus, [we don't know what river it is, whether it is one in Bactria [which includes Afghanistan] or one only named after same person as Bactria is named for - or if some uf us do, at least I don't] the Choaspes, we have two alternatives:
  
  
• • The Karkheh or Karkhen (perhaps the river known as the Gihon[citation needed]—one of the four rivers of Eden/Paradise to the Bible and as the Choaspes[1] in ancient times; also called Eulæus; Hebrew: אולי Ulai[2]) is a river in Khūzestān Province Andimeshk city, Iran (ancient Susiana) that rises in the Zagros Mountains, and passes west of Shush (ancient Susa), eventually falling in ancient times into the Tigris just below its confluence with the Euphrates very near to the Iran-Iraq border.
  • The Choaspes (also called Zuastus and Guræus) is a river that rises in the ancient Paropamise range (now the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan), eventually falling into the Indus river near its confluence with the Cophes river (which is usually identified with the Kabul river). Strabo's Geography, Book XV, Chapter 1, § 26 incorrectly states that the Choaspes empties directly into the Cophes. The river should not be confused with the river of the same name which flows into the Tigris.

I think we have nailed it. Parnassus, the greatest mountain in Asia, is Hindukush.

Parnassus is a copyists error (before or after Aristotle, in or after his text) for Paropamise.

I am not sure the Indian Ocean (mistaken by Aristotle for the outer one) can be seen from Hindukush, but there could be a further error in confusing it with Himalaya?

Parapomise is also called, keep the ... wait. Parapomise is called Caucasus Indicus, but Araxes is from another range called "Caucasus", namely, the Lesser Caucaus:

"The Aras or Araxes is a river flowing through Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. It drains the south side of the Lesser Caucasus Mountains and joins the Kura River which drains the north side of Lesser Caucasus Mountains. Its total length is 1,072 kilometres (666 mi), covering an area of 102,000 square kilometres (39,000 sq mi). The Aras River is one of the largest rivers in the Caucasus."

As mentioned, it flows to the "southeast" or more properly, to the east somewhat south.

Don is here identified with a branch of Araxes, which is wrong. And yes, we are dealing with Don:

"The Don rises in the town of Novomoskovsk 60 kilometres (37 mi) southeast of Tula (120 km south of Moscow), and flows for a distance of about 1,870 kilometres to the Sea of Azov. From its source, the river first flows southeast to Voronezh, then southwest to its mouth. The main city on the river is Rostov on Don. Its main tributary is the Seversky Donets."

No, Aristotle, Araxes and Donets are not the same river...

Here we see Aristotle at his worst. His geographic information has become garbled, before it reached him, gathered by people of less reliability and methodology than himself and this makes it possible to understand why an age of goegraphic discovery would be an age looking down on Aristotle unduly. If you can go to the places (including with wikipedia) you can see this is not so.

From the Caucasus flows the Phasis, and very many other great rivers besides.

Which Caucasus is he talking about now ... Phasis? Wow, it seems it is the one we call Caucasus, despite the fact an ancient source is using the word!:

"The Rioni or Rion River (Georgian: რიონი Rioni, Greek: Φᾶσις Phasis) is the main river of western Georgia. It originates in the Caucasus Mountains, in the region of Racha and flows west to the Black Sea, entering it north of the city of Poti (near ancient Phasis). The city of Kutaisi, once the ancient city of Colchis, lies on its banks. It drains the western Transcaucasus into the Black Sea while its sister, the Kura River, drains the eastern Transcaucasus into the Caspian Sea."

Now the Caucasus is the greatest of the mountains that lie to the northeast, both as regards its extent and its height. A proof of its height is the fact that it can be seen from the so-called 'deeps' and from the entrance to the lake.

He is speaking of Lake Maeotis, i e Sea of Azov. Now, Greater Caucasus continues NW along Black Sea coast a bit beyond Sochi.

How far is Sochi from Sea of Azov?

"The air travel (bird fly) shortest distance between Crimea and Sochi is 473 km= 294 miles."

Problem is, that line is traced from a point on Crimea, namely Simpheropol, well further away from Sochi than Sea of Azov need be. Kertch, Slaviansk, would be more like it.

Kertch-Sochi, 324.66 km, 201.73 miles.
Slaviansk-Sochi, 222.47 km, 138.24 miles

So, if you can see Greater Caucasus from Kertch or Slaviansk, how high does that prove Caucasus to be?

And are you seeing Sochi region, or are you seeing sth further away but also higher up?

I don't know.

Again, the sun shines on its peaks for a third part of the night before sunrise and again after sunset.

I am not sure whether this is diffraction or summer nights being longer further North:

Sochi
Coordinates: 43°35′07″N 39°43′13″E

Stagira (where Aristotle was born)
Coordinates: 40°31′49″N 23°45′09″E

Hmmm, just three degrees further North ...

Its extent is proved by the fact that thought contains many inhabitable regions which are occupied by many nations and in which there are said to be great lakes, yet they say that all these regions are visible up to the last peak.

Wonder what peak of Greater Caucasus he is speaking about? Or have his sources garbled it with some other mointain range further North?

From Pyrene (this is a mountain towards the west in Celtice) there flow the Istrus and the Tartessus. The latter flows outside the pillars, while the Istrus flows through all Europe into the Euxine.

It seems he has confused Alps and Pyrenees. Tartessus is basically Guadalquivir, Ister (which very certainly rises in the Alps, in post-Flood times, however this was a sea shore in pre-Flood times) is of course the Danube.

And any Romanian will agree that Ister flows into the Euxine, since it means the Danube flows into the Black Sea.

Most of the remaining rivers flow northwards from the Hercynian mountains, which are the greatest in height and extent about that region.

Hercynian forest is Schwarzwald, and it is not the highest or most extensive mountain range.

However, Alps, West of it, are highest, and Carpathians, East of it, are very extensive.

"The Mittelgebirge seem to correspond more or less to a stretch of the Hercynian mountains."

As said, Mittelgebirge, like Black Forest, are lower than Alps, less extensive than Carpathians. (Bonus, here is another modern writer scratching his head about Aristotle's geographic information).

In the extreme north, beyond furthest Scythia, are the mountains called Rhipae.

That would be Ural?

The stories about their size are altogether too fabulous: however, they say that the most and (after the Istrus) the greatest rivers flow from them.

Let's check. Istrus or Danube is greatest in Europe?

"The Danube Delta ... is the second largest river delta in Europe, after the Volga Delta"

Kama, one contributary to Volga, starts in Ural, Oka has a tributary called Ugra ... no ...

Checked against better geographic data than those available to Aristotle, his scheme seems to be too schematic.

He is far better a bit higher up, where he said:

"On the contrary, just as above the earth small drops form and these join others, till finally the water descends in a body as rain, so too we must suppose that in the earth the water at first trickles together little by little, and that the sources of the rivers drip, as it were, out of the earth and then unite."

He did just not know how right he was.

So, too, in Libya there flow from the Aethiopian mountains the Aegon and the Nyses; and from the so-called Silver Mountain the two greatest of named rivers, the river called Chremetes that flows into the outer ocean, and the main source of the Nile.

And yes, the Blue Nile does arise in Ethiopia.

Of the rivers in the Greek world, the Achelous flows from Pindus, the Inachus from the same mountain; the Strymon, the Nestus, and the Hebrus all three from Scombrus; many rivers, too, flow from Rhodope.

Pindus, Scombrus, Rhodope.

Those would be the examples best known to him.

Rhodope is, btw, in Bulgaria, it is where Orpheus was from. He was a Thracian, not a Greek.

All other rivers would be found to flow in the same way, but we have mentioned these as examples. Even where rivers flow from marshes, the marshes in almost every case are found to lie below mountains or gradually rising ground.

I suppose this may have been confirmed after his time?

It is clear then that we must not suppose rivers to originate from definite reservoirs: for the whole earth, we might almost say, would not be sufficient (any more than the region of the clouds would be) if we were to suppose that they were fed by actually existing water only and it were not the case that as some water passed out of existence some more came into existence, but rivers always drew their stream from an existing store. Secondly, the fact that rivers rise at the foot of mountains proves that a place transmits the water it contains by gradual percolation of many drops, little by little, and that this is how the sources of rivers originate. However, there is nothing impossible about the existence of such places containing a quantity of water like lakes: only they cannot be big enough to produce the supposed effect. To think that they are is just as absurd as if one were to suppose that rivers drew all their water from the sources we see (for most rivers do flow from springs). So it is no more reasonable to suppose those lakes to contain the whole volume of water than these springs.

I put this down to a flaw in the geometrical imagination. The whole earth, between watersheds, is sufficient, if you take into account that it is never just flat but always "gradually rising" this or that way, and sometimes less gradually too.

That there exist such chasms and cavities in the earth we are taught by the rivers that are swallowed up. They are found in many parts of the earth: in the Peloponnesus, for instance, there are many such rivers in Arcadia. The reason is that Arcadia is mountainous and there are no channels from its valleys to the sea. So these places get full of water, and this, having no outlet, under the pressure of the water that is added above, finds a way out for itself underground. In Greece this kind of thing happens on quite a small scale, but the lake at the foot of the Caucasus, which the inhabitants of these parts call a sea, is considerable. Many great rivers fall into it and it has no visible outlet but issues below the earth off the land of the Coraxi about the so-called 'deeps of Pontus'. This is a place of unfathomable depth in the sea: at any rate no one has yet been able to find bottom there by sounding. At this spot, about three hundred stadia from land, there comes up sweet water over a large area, not all of it together but in three places. And in Liguria a river equal in size to the Rhodanus is swallowed up and appears again elsewhere: the Rhodanus being a navigable river.

And Rhodanus being navigable is very true, it is Rhône. I have been to Marseilles. I have made a boat hiking from Avignon to Lyons.

B U T whereever he gets it from that Rhodanus is first swallowed up and then reemerges as Rhodanus ...

As said, he was not a first hand explorer, for most of his geographical lore (he was of course when it came to accompanying Alexander), he relied too much on indirect ones.

Hard facts, so to speak atomic ones, survive several sources taking from each other from a first one much better than complex and therefore gliding scale accurate facts, like features of landscapes or animals.

Whether the real unicorn was a Rhinocerus or a Triceratops, the Unicorns found on heraldics are far removed from either source. So is the map we can contemplate in Aristotle.

But this is no way any problem in his method, he was just unable to properly apply it.

Now, the real inventor of the water cycle, as in detail:

"Pierre Perrault (Paris circa 1608– Paris 1680) was a Receiver General of Finances for Paris and later a scientist who developed the concept of the hydrological cycle. He and Edme Mariotte were primarily responsible for making hydrology an experimental science."

He was a Catholic. His brother Nicolas Perrault was a theology doctor of Sorbonne, which in Ancien Régime was certainly only Catholic theology. He was a Jansenist and as such excluded from Sorbonne - after having been there.

No Perrault is on the 1948 version of Index Librorum. Not Pierre Perrault, obviously, since hydrology is accepted and since Galileo was even taken off the index, decades earlier.

Not Charles Perrault, despite some modern day Jansenists (or likeminded in morals) who consider reading Tolkien falls under Trentine ban on books of magic. No, if that had been meant, Charles Perrault would be on the index too. Trent meant things like certain works falsely attributed to St Albert.

And, not even Nicolas Perrault and his denunciation of Jesuits.

Pascal's provincials are there, presumably because containing calumny.

Pascal's Pensées are there, but only in the 1789 edition, with notes by Voltaire. So, presumably it is the notes by Voltaire, not Pensées as such which is banned.

If Pascal's "Les provinciales ou les lettres écrites à un provincial de ses amis et aux rr. pp. jésuites sur le sujet de la morale et de la politique de ces pères." (Edition of 1657) had been just disagreeing with Jesuits, and not strawmanning them, presumably, like Nicolas Perrault, it would not have been banned. Or is Nicolas Perrault's work simply nowhere in print?

Nope, that's not it. "Il a notamment écrit la Morale des jésuites extraite fidèlement de leurs livres, etc (1667), ouvrage qui a fait en son temps beaucoup de bruit"

I cannot guarantee it is not bad and strawmanning, it could also be censors overlooked it.

Now, what about Catholic Aristotelians, have they been generally misled by Aristotle in matters where this man could not access accuracy?

No, since it has been very clear that they have tried to attain higher accuracy, on point after point, and this being the origins of science - from St Albert dissecting the bee to Steno inventing geology (and, on top of that, it was a Flood geology he invented, not a Sickar Point one ...) Pierre Perrault was obviously part of this, and owed nothing to Bacon of Verulam, since his work had not been read in France.

"Baco, Franciscus De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum libri IX. Donec corrig. 1668"

Donec corrigatur means the ban is "until it be corrected" - one is open to a reedition incorporating Catholic and presumably Scholastic corrections. The 1668 edition was presumably the earliest available to Catholic censors.

Also, I don't think the Aristotelian view actually contradicts the Bible.

One of the oldest books of the Bible, that of Job, provides a clear description of many aspects of the water cycle. These include evaporation, condensation and precipitation (Job 36:27–28), and the formation of clouds (Job 26:8). Other books provide additional insights, including verses about evaporation (Psalm 135:7), precipitation (Psalm 104:13), infiltration (Isaiah 55:10), the release of groundwater through springs (Genesis 16:7; Psalm 104:10), dew and rainwater (Deuteronomy 32:2), floods in desert streams (Isaiah 44:3–4), as well as cloud movement and the ongoing nature of such (Ecclesiastes 1:6–7).

But the Bible goes well beyond a list of the components of the water cycle. In addition to these concepts, the Bible notes that they are linked by laws and that the process is cyclic. These are two concepts that were not well understood by early scholars.

The fact is, none of the Bible verses, except Ps 104, directly or even obliquely contradicts Aristotle.

Nor does the concept of cyclicity bound by laws : he had his own somewhat different cycle between the elements.

But what is more, it is even better consistent (esp Ps 104) with a view that Aristotle mentioned, though he disagreed with it. While it is correct that the Bible is correct on the water cycle, this correctness in itself is not miraculous. Cumulative correctness is, if Young Earth, Young Universe, and Geocentrism (Joshua 10!) can be shown not to break this cumulation of correctness.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Albert the Great
15.XI.2017

Coloniae Agrippinae sancti Alberti Episcopi et Confessoris, ex Ordine Praedicatorum, cognomento Magni, sanctitate et doctrina celebris, quem Pius Papa Undecimus Doctorem universalis Ecclesiae declaravit, et Pius Duodecimus cultorum scientiarum naturalium caelestem apud Deum Patronum constituit.

Colonia Agrippina is not a disputable location, except at Carnival. It is Cologne in Germany.

Acknowledgements:

Apart two quotes from CMI and one from Aristotle, all other quotes are from wikipedia, except the distances to Sochi, which are from https://www.distancefromto.net/

Oh, the citations about index librorum are from this site, incorporating the 1948 version:

http://www.cvm.qc.ca/gconti/905/BABEL/Index%20Librorum%20Prohibitorum-1948.htm