Description

Einband leicht berieben. - The intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century destroyed a complex of beliefs which now seem quite alien�or at best, quaint. The final rejection of geocentrism for heliocentrism reflected the fundamental change in man�s conception of the universe. The traditional meteorology was of course also considered obsolete, and soon was reinterpreted in the new spirit of empiricism. Rain falls on the New Atlantis for reasons quite different from those which explained why divine grace showered the City of God. In Elizabethan England, however, the study of atmospheric phenomena was a well-developed branch of knowledge as yet unthreatened by the iconoclasm of the seventeenth century. It was not a center of controversy, as were many of its sister sciences. For most atmospheric disturbances there were definite explanations which everyone accepted as obvious and indisputable, and references to them could be stated with a certainty that did not require elucidation or justification.