[335]
[335] Until the seventeenth century this mode of thought
prevailed. One need only recall the dramatic treatment even of
mechanical questions by Aristotle, as, for example, his
explanation of the power of the lever to make a small weight
raise a larger one. This is due, according to Aristotle, to the
generally miraculous character of the circle and of all circular
movement. The circle is both convex and concave; it is made by a
fixed point and a moving line, which contradict each other; and
whatever moves in a circle moves in opposite directions.
Nevertheless, movement in a circle is the most "natural"
movement; and the long arm of the lever, moving, as it does, in
the larger circle, has the greater amount of this natural motion,
and consequently requires the lesser force. Or recall the
explanation by Herodotus of the position of the sun in winter:
It moves to the south because of the cold which drives it into
the warm parts of the heavens over Libya. Or listen to Saint
Augustine's speculations: "Who gave to chaff such power to
freeze that it preserves snow buried under it, and such power to
warm that it ripens green fruit? Who can explain the strange
properties of fire itself, which blackens all that it burns,
though itself bright, and which, though of the most beautiful
colors, discolors almost all that it touches and feeds upon, and
turns blazing fuel into grimy cinders? .
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