Читать книгу Weather For Dummies - John D. Cox - Страница 18

When you think about it, meteorology is a funny word for weather science, isn’t it? A meteor is an object from space, usually a tiny bit of comet dust, that leaves a flash as it burns up in Earth’s upper atmosphere. What exactly does that have to do with weather? The answer is, exactly nothing!

But Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, didn’t know all of this at the time he first used the word meteorology back around 350 B.C. Everything that happened above the Earth was considered astronomy in those days, and Aristotle was trying to define a new science. Astronomy was the study of all the stuff that goes on in the distant heavens, he figured, and meteorology was the study of the stuff that happens closer to Earth.

The Greek word meteoron means something that falls from the sky. (Hence, the phrase: “Don’t be such a meteoron.”) Anyway, what Aristotle had in mind, mostly, was weather, the study of rain and snow and hail. But he also threw in such things as comets and earthquakes. Go figure… .

Later, of course, comets were given back to astronomers, and earthquakes became part of the science of geology.