Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1885 — Ancient Philosophers on Earthquakes. [ARTICLE]

Ancient Philosophers on Earthquakes.

Anaxagpras, the Rhodian, held that earthquakes are nothing but a sort of cosmic flatulence—winds which have strayed into caverns where they cannot. find an outlet. Aristotle ascribed them to vapors generated by the infiltration of water through the fissures of a rocky sea-bottom; and Pliny, to the pressure of air in deep caves, confined and reacting against the collapse of incumbent rock strata. But the most ingenious explanation was offered by St. Thomas of Aquinas, who suggested that earthqnakes may be caused by the struggles of defunct misbelievers trying to escape (by a simultaneous stampede, perhaps) from a pit of torment.