Author: Ãîíòàðü (195.201.41.---)
Date: 07-01-04 17:28
There are two inhabitable sections of the earth: one near our upper, or northern pole, the other near the other or southern pole; and their shape is like that of a tambourine.... Now since there must be a region bearing the same relation to the southern pole as the place we live in bears to our pole, it will clearly correspond in the ordering of its winds as well as in other things.
Aristotle, Meteorologica, Book II, 5.1
You will also observe with accuracy the Situation of such Islands as you may discover in the Course of your Voyage that have not hitherto been discover'd by any Europeans, and take possession for His Majesty and make Surveys and Draughts of such of them as may appear to be of Consequence, without Suffering yourself however to be thereby diverted from the Object which you are always to have in View, the Discovery of the Southern Continent so often Mentioned...
Additional Instructions for Lt. James Cook, Appointed to Command H.M. Bark the Endeavour1
Aristotle's notion suggesting that the symmetry of a sphere demanded the existence of a land mass on the southern hemisphere to balance the earth's inhabited northern regions has influenced politics and science until the age of Enlightenment. It was Ptolemy, who drew a map in 150 A.D. showing a large continent connecting Africa and Asia in the south naming it "Terra Australis Incognita". The search for this land mass and the possible wealth to be found there inspired numerous expeditions until the late eighteenth century. The secret order for James Cook, dated 1768, was one of the last attempts to reveal the mystery of the Southern Continent. One result of his expeditions was the insight that such a place - if existing - could hardly be a fertile, profitable one.
It is astonishing that even in our modern world Aristotle's idea seems to hold in a way. Taking his works literally, of course, he was wrong; in a figurative sense the idea of both hemispheres balancing each other is at least true in the field of ocean dynamics. Enormous amounts of heat are transported from the equator to the poles in both atmosphere
'Translated by E.W. Webster (ROSS, 1963). 2Citation after BEAGLEHOLE (1955).
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