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Climate as a Scientific Paradigm—Early History of Climatology to 1800

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The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History

Abstract

This chapter explores the emergence of climate as a scientific paradigm by the early nineteenth century in Europe. Past research in this field has tended to absorb the early history of climatology into the framework of meteorology. However, in Europe and the Middle East, from ancient to early modern times “climate” was less a meteorological concept than a geographical and cartographical one. The modern conception of climate emerged from the decline of astrometerology and changing approaches to weather observation, as well as a gradual shift in the vernacular use of “climate” to refer to environmental conditions of a place. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, a paradigm shift occurred, as climate came to signify the sum of all factors influencing temperature in a given location. This shift opened the way for new discussions of climate change and climate history.

This chapter is based on original research on the early history of climatology, which I began in spring 2012. A fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich) in 2014 gave me the opportunity to intensify my research and present first results at various occasions. Parts of this chapter are based on a German publication, see Mauelshagen, 2016.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, Feldman, 1983, Section III: Climatology. Feldman was nevertheless right in pointing to the danger of anachronism in applying the term “climatology” within the meteorological context prior to 1800, as “it and its cognates are not to be found in the eighteenth century but made their appearance in the first years of the nineteenth.” See Feldman, 1990, 145.

  2. 2.

    This framework has been set by a number of important studies. I am only giving a short list of some of the most relevant books and edited books here: Frisinger, 1977; Feldman, 1983; Fleming, 1990, 1996. Several relatively recent monographs have focused on eighteenth-century Britain: Golinski, 2007; Janković, 2001.

  3. 3.

    Fleming and Janković, 2011, 2.

  4. 4.

    Neither the Greek texts of Hippocrates, Aër (Greek text and translation in Hippocrates, 1923–31, vol. 1), nor Aristotle’s Meteorology nor his Politics (i.e., VII, 7; 1327b) refer to climate, while modern translations do most of the time. Tracing the origins of climatology back to Hippocrates and Aristotle is a tradition invented in the nineteenth century that continues today. For instance, Herder, 2002 (first published 1784–91), vol. 1, 241, considered Hippocrates to be “the main author on climate” (“Für mich der Hauptschriftsteller über das Klima”). Hellmann, 1922 provided a history and bibliography of “climatological textbooks” so focused on the Hippocratic tradition that it ignored the geographic tradition entirely.

  5. 5.

    The work of these, as well as many other, founding fathers of Greek geography has only survived in fragments. Honigmann, 1929 argued in favor of Eratosthenes, while Dicks, 1955 made a strong point for Hipparchus. He extended his argument by a reading of Strabo II. (Cf. Dicks, 1956.) For a critical discussion of Honigmann see also Gisinger, 1933, who provides valuable references reflecting the early use of the word κλίμα. Roller, 2010 adds little to the debate.

  6. 6.

    See Abel, 1974, 994. Only Aristarchus of Samos proposed a heliocentric conception of the cosmos.

  7. 7.

    See Honigmann, 1929 and the critique by Dicks, 1955.

  8. 8.

    Sanderson, 1999 is a typical example for this confusion, but there are many more. Just look at the Wikipedia article on “Climate,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clime (last accessed July 15, 2016).

  9. 9.

    Ptolemaios, 2006, vol. 2, 774–907.

  10. 10.

    Merula, 1636, 353–60 (Caput XXIII: De Climatibus); Keckermann, 1611; Clüver, 1667, 18–24 (Caput VI: De Parallelis & Climatibus). For Christiani and Varenius see the following footnotes. I am not referring to first editions of these works, since those were not accessible to me.

  11. 11.

    Christiani, 1645, 338–58 (Caput XXV: De Climatibus in Terrae). The term climatum doctrina (341) is as close as it gets to “climatology” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  12. 12.

    See Warntz, 1989. Newton’s translation laid the foundations for Varenius’ broad reception in England and North America. See also Warntz, 1981. For the stemma of the early editions of Varenius’ Geographia Generalis see Schuchard, 2007, xviii. On the (constantly extended) English editions of 1733, 1736, 1743, and 1765 see the chapters written by Schuchard (227–37) and Mayhew (239–57) in the same book. Humboldt credited Varenius for his “excellent work” and for having given “a physical description of the earth” “in the true sense of the words.” See Humboldt, 1901, 48–49 (original German edition: Humboldt, 1845).

  13. 13.

    Varenius, 1734, vol. II, 559.

  14. 14.

    Varenius, 1734, 2–3. Soon after the first Latin edition had come out, the Geographia Universalis was translated into English, Dutch, French, and Russian.

  15. 15.

    See Shirley, 1987, No. 10 and No. 32. On de Agostini’s map see also Kish, 1965, 13–15.

  16. 16.

    See the introduction in Blaeu, 2005.

  17. 17.

    Shirley, 1987, 264.

  18. 18.

    Blaeu and Blaeu, 1645, vol. 1 (no page numbers).

  19. 19.

    Schmid, 2010.

  20. 20.

    See Blaeu and Blaeu, 1641, vol. 1.

  21. 21.

    Buy de Mornas, 1761 and Clouet, 1787.

  22. 22.

    See Humboldt, 1817, 1831, and Bernhardt, 2003.

  23. 23.

    Some of the important changes in geographical and meteorological knowledge were related to subjects such as the habitability of the tropics and the surprisingly harsh weather in North American colonies. See also White, 2015, for more references.

  24. 24.

    Halley, 1693.

  25. 25.

    See, for example, Metzler, 2009, 381; also Tooley, 1953; Gates, 1967; Wands, 1986; Altmann, 2005 and many others. All these authors either failed to recognize the difference between the climate(s) and Aristotelian meteorological zones, or they did not note the specific meaning attributed to “climates” in some versions of astrology. The latter is precisely the reason why, for example, Shakespeare (in Julius Caesar) “associates the idea of climate with the ebbing and flowing of personal fates and fortunes, rather than with natural and inanimate meteorological forces,” as Hulme, 2016 noticed correctly but without explaining the astrological context. Ignoring historical context explains why Hulme’s account of climate “as an ordering concept” in Shakespeare’s England is largely based on a projection of the modern understanding of climate back into the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

  26. 26.

    Shackleton, 1955, 1961, 302–10. Some researchers belonging to the circle of editors of the Oeuvres Complètes have spared no effort to tear apart Shackleton’s genesis of climate theory in Montesquieu’s intellectual biography; see Montesquieu, 1998, vol. 4, 902–16, and Casabianca, 2013.

  27. 27.

    However, according to Shackleton, Espiard had already used the word “in its modern meteorological sense” and had therefore beaten Montesquieu to it. Shackleton speaks of a “neological coincidence.” Shackleton, 1961, 309.

  28. 28.

    “Comme on distingue les climats par les degrés de latitude, on pourrait, pour ainsi dire, les distinguer par les degrés de sensibilité.” Montesquieu, 1998, vol. 4, 357. The identical sentence appears in the unpublished manuscript Essai sur les causes qui peuvent affecter les esprits et les caractères, edited in Montesquieu, 1998, vol. 9. The commentators correctly remark that this is the old geographical understanding of “climate.”

  29. 29.

    Espiard de la Borde, 1743.

  30. 30.

    Quoted from the English translation: Espiard, 1753, 4; for the French original see d’Espiard, 1752, vol. 1, 5: “Le climat est la cause physique, la plus universelle, la plus intime. Sans s’arrêter à recueillir les autorités des grands hommes, comme Theophraste, Ciceron, Hippocrate & Galen, sur cet article, on entrera d’abord en matière, en définissant le Climat, un espace de terre renfermé entre deux cercles parallèles à l’Equateur, et tellement éloignés l’un de l’autre, qu’il y ait une différence de demi-heure dans la durée de leur grand jour d’Eté. La Terre est divisée en vingt-quatre Climats.” There was no definition at all in the Essais of 1743. The fact that Espiard changed this in the 1752 edition may have been a reaction to criticism.

  31. 31.

    There is an excellent new edition of the Latin text of the Methodus with an Italian translation and exquisite comments by Sara Miglietti, see Bodin, 2013.

  32. 32.

    The Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française can be accessed comfortably and searched electronically through the webpage of the ARTFL project under “Dictionnaire d’autrefois” (here search for “climat”), http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/dicos/pubdico1look.pl?strippedhw=climat (last accessed September 29, 2015).

  33. 33.

    “Région, Pays, principalement eu égard à la temperature de l’air.” Régnier, 1718, vol. 1, 275; see also Montesquieu, 1998, vol. 4, 909.

  34. 34.

    Diderot and d’Alembert, 1751–1765, vol. 3, 532.

  35. 35.

    Diderot and d’Alembert, 1751–1765, vol. 3, 534: “Climat, (Med.) Les Medecins ne considerent les climats que par la température ou le degré de chaleur qui leur est propre : climat, dans ce sens, est même exactement synonyme à température ; ce mot est pris par conséquent dans un sens beaucoup moins vaste que celui de région, pays, ou contrée, par lequel les Medecins expriment la somme de toutes les causes physiques générales ou communes, qui peuvent agir sur la santé des habitans de chaque pays ; savoir la nature de l’air, celle de l’eau, du sol, des alimens, &c.”

  36. 36.

    Zimmermann, 1778, vol. 1, 11–12 (translation by the author).

  37. 37.

    Vogel, 2011.

  38. 38.

    Gerbi, 1973; Glacken, 1967; Fleming, 1998; Fressoz and Locher, 2015.

  39. 39.

    Williamson, 1769; among others, Thomas Jefferson believed he was a witness of anthropogenic climate change in Virginia, see Jefferson, 1832, 85, 175.

  40. 40.

    That is precisely what the expression “change of climate” (or in French: “changement du climat”) meant in the rare cases where it was used prior to Williamson. Just check the entry climat in the 1694 first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française: “changer de climat. passer dans un autre climat.” http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/contextualize.pl?p.2.dicofullpublic.1804014 (last accessed July 22, 2016).

  41. 41.

    Letter of Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Mather, London, July 7, 1773. The text of this letter can be accessed and read on the Founders Online webpage, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-20-02-0156 (last accessed July 22, 2016).

  42. 42.

    Cranz, 1765.

  43. 43.

    For example, Büntgen et al., 2011.

  44. 44.

    Gibbon, 1813, 346.

  45. 45.

    Gibbon, 1813, 346.

  46. 46.

    Buffon, 1778, 240. Here quoted from the English translation: Buffon, 1812, 336.

  47. 47.

    Steffen et al., 2011, 741. The “Anthropocene” was first proposed by Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000. For more references see Sect. 5 in Chap. 6. Buffon has been discussed as a precursor, e.g., in Mauelshagen, 2017 and Heringman, 2016. Hamilton and Grinevald, 2015 rejected any anticipation prior to the invention of Earth system science.

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  1. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Franz Mauelshagen

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    Sam White

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

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    Franz Mauelshagen

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Mauelshagen, F. (2018). Climate as a Scientific Paradigm—Early History of Climatology to 1800. In: White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_36

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