The Storm: or, a Collection of the most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters which Happen'd in the Late Dreadful Tempest, both by Sea and LandDefoe, Daniel
History
The Storm: or, a Collection of the most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters which Happen'd in the Late Dreadful Tempest, both by Sea and Land
Defoe, Daniel
Storms -- Early works to 1800
And it seems a just Authority for our Search, that some things are so
plac'd in Nature by a Chain of Causes and Effects, that upon a diligent
Search we may find out what we look for: To search after what God has in
his Sovereignty thought fit to conceal, may be criminal, and doubtless
is so; and the Fruitlesness of the Enquiry is generally Part of the
Punishment to a vain Curiosity: but to search after what our Maker has
not hid, only cover'd with a thin Veil of Natural Obscurity, and which
upon our Search is plain to be read, seems to be justified by the very
Nature of the thing, and the Possibility of the Demonstration is an
Argument to prove the Lawfulness of the Enquiry.
The Design of this Digression, is, in short, That as where Nature is
plain to be search'd into, and Demonstration easy, the Philosopher is
allow'd to seek for it; so where God has, as it were, laid his Hand upon
any Place, and Nature presents us with an universal Blank, we are
therein led as naturally to recognize the Infinite Wisdom and Power of
the God of Nature, as _David_ was in the Texts before quoted.
And this is the Case here; the Winds are some of those Inscrutables of
Nature, in which humane Search has not yet been able to arrive at any
Demonstration.
'The Winds,' _says the Learned Mr._ Bohun, 'are generated in the
Intermediate Space between the Earth and the Clouds, either by
Rarefaction or Repletion, and sometimes haply by pressure of Clouds,
Elastical Virtue of the Air, &c. from the Earth or Seas, as by Submarine
or Subterraneal Eruption or Descension or Resilition from the middle
Region.'
All this, though no Man is more capable of the Enquiry than this
Gentleman, yet to the Demonstration of the thing, amounts to no more
than what we had before, and still leaves it as Abstruse and Cloudy to
our Understanding as ever.
Not but that I think my self bound in Duty to Science in General, to pay
a just Debt to the Excellency of Philosophical Study, in which I am a
meer Junior, and hardly any more than an Admirer; and therefore I cannot
but allow that the Demonstrations made of Rarefaction and Dilatation are
extraordinary; and that by Fire and Water Wind may be rais'd in a close
Room, as the Lord _Verulam_ made Experiment in the Case of his Feathers.
But that therefore all the Causes of Wind are from the Influences of the
Sun upon vaporous Matter first Exhal'd, which being Dilated are oblig'd
to possess themselves of more Space than before, and consequently make
the Particles fly before them; this does not seem to be a sufficient
Demonstration of Wind: for this, to my weak Apprehension, would rather
make a Blow like Gun-Powder than a rushing forward; at best this is
indeed a probable Conjecture, but admits not of Demonstration equal to
other Phænomena in Nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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