Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
“. . . all its water owes its original to rain.” In addition, he specifically addresses Halley's
condensation theory. While he admits that Halley's condensation mechanisms may be partly
valid in “fervid regions,” he feels that they should be of little interest in the production of
springs in more temperate countries. The Alps, which are above the fountains of four of the
greatest rivers in Europe, are a case in point. Although the Alps are covered heavily with
snow for six months of the year, and therefore cannot have any access to vapor, the rivers
issuing from them continue to run, albeit low, all winter long without interruption; when the
snow melts in spring, some of these Alpine rivers overflow their banks, although no rains
fall; but later on after the snow has melted, the streams decay in spite of the vapors that
condense on them, and in summer the streams flood again only when it rains; this proves
that they are mainly fed by melted snow, as is also indicated by their “sea-green” color.
Ray's writings show that also in England, Halley's and Woodward's views notwithstand-
ing, the Common Opinion was a well-established theory at the time. However, their main
importance in the history of ideas stems from the fact that they are among the earliest and
more articulate in the renewal of the long tradition, in which use is made of the hydrologic
cycle as evidence for God's wisdom in the creation of the world. In this renewed form of the
tradition, or “physical theology,” which was to last nearly another 150 years, the hydrologic
cycle served as a unifying and ordering concept to explain the wisdom behind a number of
disparate phenomena on earth, such as mountains, floods and the size of the oceans, which
might otherwise have appeared chaotic and paradoxical, in light of, and in contrast to, the
obvious perfection of the new Newtonian mechanics. At the time, several others (see, for
example, Bentley, 1693, pp. 31-32) were writing on the same theme; but Ray was by far the
most popular and widely read author on the subject especially through his topic
The Wisdom
of God Manifested in the Works of Creation
. This topic, first published in 1691, went through
twelve editions (Ray, 1759) and continued to be issued until apparently as late as 1827. The
underlying idea, namely that the ceaseless circulation of water on Earth is proof of a divine
design, became almost a cliche and seems to have exerted a definite imprint on the thinking
of intellectuals in England well into the nineteenth century; evidence for this fascination
can be found (see Tuan, 1968) in the works of such well known intellectuals as, among
others, W. Derham (1657-1735), A. Cooper (3rd Lord Shaftesbury) (1671-1713), J. Hutton
(1726-1797), O. Goldsmith (1728-1774), J. Wesley (1703-1791), W. Paley (1743-1805),
W. Buckland (1784-1856), J. Kidd (1775-1851), W. Whewell (1794-1866) and even the
scientist John Dalton (1766-1844) (1793, p. 145). During the same period similar ideas in
physical theology were popular also on the continent with, for instance, such authors as
N.-A. Pluche (1688-1761), G. L. L. Buffon (1707-1788) in France, J. A. Fabricius (1668-
1736) in Germany (who used the term “Hydrotheology”), and C. Linnaeus (1707-1778) in
Sweden.
That the Common Opinion continued to deserve its name is also attested to in the
topics by the physicist Pieter Van Musschenbroek (1692-1761), the well-known inventor
of the
Leyden Jar
, who held successive professorships at the Universities of Duisburg in
Westphalia, and Utrecht and Leyden in Holland. In his description of water, Van Musschen-
broek (1739, p. 417) asserts the following.
As the rain, the snow, hail and all the vapors fall on the earth, they penetrate it, & flow through the
pores, the openings & the cracks, like through underground pipes to the lowest places. If these pipes
or conduits are open at the top at one of their ends, fountains are formed thereof, from which the water
gushes more or less high, depending on whether the opening in the earth is larger or narrower, or
depending on whether the water in the underground conduits presses higher above this opening. But if
