Meteorology as a Methodological and Aesthetic Device around 1800: towards an Integrative and Open Understanding of “Science”

Abstract

The period around 1800 is a key moment for our understanding of the notion of “science” and its cognates and for establishing a (philosophical) foundation for our thinking about scientific disciplines. This also holds for our understanding of “meteorology”. This chapter investigates some of the ways how philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic discourses and practices from this period dealt with meteorology and with meteorological phenomena. Meteorological phenomena are ubiquitous, have a strong impact upon our mental state, and are highly complex in the sense of requiring input from many different fields and disciplines (chemistry, physics, physiology, geography). They also are dealt with in the artistic practices of this time, in particular in landscape paintings, and they enter into characteristic poetic-plus-everyday language structures. In referring to Romanticist landscape paintings (Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Gustav Carus), to the philosophy of nature of this period, to the semantics of some poetic and everyday terms, and to Goethe’s and Luke Howard’s discourse on the clouds, this chapter unfolds a discussion in which relational structures, the intangible ubiquity of influence spheres, and the epistemic problem of getting hold of uncertain states of affairs are shown to be of key importance not only for our understanding of meteorology but also for our understanding of science more generally.