Wind

Use in the book

The Aristotelian report explains wind through dry exhalation gathering and moving around the earth. Squalls involve a dense mass whose rapid discharge produces force. In the earthquake explanation, a similar moving material is confined underground. The shared material connects the accounts; the direction and confinement distinguish their effects.

Places to read

1. I.32.1Many exhalations gather into a current of wind.
2. I.32.2Density and speed distinguish a violent squall.
3. I.36.2.1Wind-like movement produces a different effect when confined underground.

Translation in this edition

“Wind” suits atmospheric movement; “current” and “breath” suit other uses of pneuma. These choices retain a physical connection without collapsing the settings.

Use in the book

The plant-growth fragment gives wind a shaking and penetrating action. The Aeolian harp responds when moving air strikes it, offering a comparison for organs performing thought. By contrast, attaching thought to passing events is building on the wind’s wing, a deliberately insecure foundation. The physical explanation of cold wind distinguishes motion of transport from intrinsic motion among parts; it is Joubert’s historical attempt to distinguish kinds of motion, not a modern thermal account.

Places to read

1. I, p. 177, entry 5, ¶1Wind is given an active role in vegetation.
2. II, p. 926, entry 4, ¶1Wind elicits sound from a receptive instrument.
3. I, p. 218, entry 2, ¶1Wind figures the instability of thoughts tied to passing events.
4. II, p. 575, entry 12, ¶1Cold wind illustrates transport as distinct from internal motion.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps the peculiar “wing of the winds” and the physical distinction between transported air and movement of parts. It does not silently correct the speculative account of cold.

Use in the book

Wind sets both the landscape and its watcher into motion. In the March forest it makes trees struggle and clouds race, opening momentary passages for the sun. The May storm drives rain in columns, carries birds away like straws, and appears to turn the whole wood upon its roots. This is an investigation of unequal strengths as well as a spectacle: the birds’ wings and the human will alike prove vulnerable to currents beyond their control.

The writer nevertheless distinguishes material effects from unknown relations among the elements. He speculates about their conversations without claiming to have explained them. By December, wind is a breath from an unknown mouth playing innumerable instruments through woods, valleys, and plains. Its voice is produced through the things it encounters.

Gentle wind is no less consequential. A breeze can carry a reader’s attention away from a book, bring perfume into an imagined refuge, or make a leaf and a tree crown speak. Exposure is therefore double: it permits inspiration and threatens mastery. The August 1834 hope that the faculties will grow in open wind gives risk a positive place in development.

Places to read

1. 19 March 1833 · ¶1The forest makes wind visible and audible through multiple moving surfaces
2. 1 May 1833 · ¶1Material disturbance and speculative elemental communication remain distinct
3. 8 December 1833 · ¶3The cliff-watchers feel the force that reduces them to leaves
4. 21 December 1833 · ¶2Wind becomes a player of the landscape’s many instruments
5. 20 August 1834 · ¶1Open exposure is made a condition of intellectual growth

Translation in this edition

The May passage’s vent fou becomes mad wind, preserving the personification. In December, haleines formidables becomes formidable breaths, while bouche inconnue stays unknown mouth; the English does not identify a speaker whom the French leaves unnamed.

Use in the book

Olympiodorus rejects an explanation attributed to Empedocles: earthy and fiery constituents moving in contrary directions produce the winds' slantwise movement. The commentator substitutes circularly moving air. The contrast securely identifies what he thinks the earlier explanation was, but it gives little detail about the original account. It does not state a mathematical composition of vectors or identify the forces with Love and Strife. The broader idea that an observed direction can result from opposed tendencies is an intelligible reading, provided it is not mistaken for words actually preserved from Empedocles. Elsewhere winds compress terrestrial moisture in the report mediated through Philo, showing another attributed role for moving air, but that separate account cannot supply the missing mechanism of oblique motion.

Places to read

1. A 64 (polemical)Olympiodorus, On Aristotle's Meteorology. Contrasts the Empedoclean explanation by contrary earthy and fiery movements with his preferred rotating air.
2. A 66 (testimony)2Philo, On Providence. In the mediated sea account, rival winds compress moisture into low-lying places.

Translation in this edition

The edition correctly identifies the lateness of Olympiodorus. Its generalization about two forces governing the whole cosmos extends beyond this bare attribution, especially if read as an identification with the cosmic powers.