The science of meteorology is universally recognized for its many essential applications in studying the Earth’s atmosphere, encompassing the fluctuating weather and changing climate. It makes accessible an empirical understanding of our atmospheric phenomena, thus beneficially enabling the prediction of weather and weather patterns, and the analysis of these patterns, including their effects on the planet and its inhabitants. Contextually, it is a secular, contrasting, empirical science, rationally focusing on visible, worldly phenomena of Man’s experiential life rather than the widespread, contrasting belief in spiritual, non-worldly causation.
The referential utility of weather reports, relative to elective activities such as outdoor picnics and sailing, in addition to its pragmatic usefulness in the quotidian choice of clothing, is universally appreciated. Notwithstanding our accord with such positive observations, it is our extended view that the modern advent of the science of meteorology has served a significant role in the metaphysically overriding factor relative to the fundamentals of the rational and societal development of Man.
Ancient history reveals the universally primitive belief that the changing seasons and variations in daily weather are reflective of God, or Spirit-like declarations of approval or disapproval with Man’s choices of behavio The widespread believers in the “Sun God” fearfully witnessed his death every Autumn and his miraculous Springtime revival, the latter causally responsive to their indigenous ritual; conceivably, the advent of the extant religious dogma of “death and resurrection.” The Hopi Indian Rain Dance, before too long, indeed, led to the salutary presence of rain; the Biblical account of the tossing overboard of Jonah, perceived to be a sinner, quieted the roiling ocean, the temperament of the Norse God Thor was visibly expressed by lightning and thunderstorms, and so on, relative to the nuanced cultural ethnos of the diverse human societies. In some cultures, it seems, the horrors of ritual human sacrifice were prescribed as the panacea for undesirable weather, poor harvest, drought, or disease.
The beneficial development of the “Age of Enlightenment” ultimately led Man to the acceptance of the salubrious exercise and dependence on human reason and its thematic application to the mystery of the changing seasons and other observable meteorological phenomena. The brilliant, scholarly written views of the classic empiricists, such as Locke (“Man is born with a ‘tabula rasa’ [ a clean slate] and his knowledge is solely acquired by his empirical experience), Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton, Frances Bacon, Voltaire, Erasmus, and the multitude of other venerable thinkers, were, no doubt, solely accessible to highly literate scholars; the average man relegated to learning from his own personal experience, albeit, anecdotally hampered by his culturally inherited beliefs in the supernatural. dynamics of the natural phenomena
This atavistic mode of belief persists contemporaneously, despite the era’s substantial advancement in science and emphasis on rational thought. Atavistic beliefs still obdurately and fearfully endure in mankind, existentially hampering Man’s aspiration for the achievement of his evolved, natural potential to attain the ultimate goal of wisdom.
Notwithstanding the widespread persistence of “faith” as the questionable fount of knowledge, the thematic revelation of the scientific and experiential nature of meteorology has been existentially important to Man’s banishment of “evil spirits,” and belief in the existence of supernatural causation, at a minimum, regarding Seasons and the Weather. May the salubrious process of rational thought continue!
-p.
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