Weather Studies in Philosophy

Nathan Coppedge

Weather Studies in Philosophy

Nathan Coppedge

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An idea I picked up somewhere, and expanded on here.

WEATHER STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY There is more than one reason to place weather at the root of invisible cosmologies. Weather is one symbol for the eternal within the temporal. I have used it as the highest level of my psychological typology, a typology not of personalities, but of psychological realities. Weather inundates concepts of locale, and also personality. Weather is often the reference point in a story which directs the mood of the reader. However, in philosophy, weather is often overlooked. And clues to its meaning are not fast in coming. At first, upon study the weather appeared to be a mythological or quasi-religious significance, or else reduced to science and shades of the ordinary. I found this to be piquing in it’s lack of interest. Surely, there was some hidden detail, some concealed meaning or sense of order, beneath all the drudgery and assumptions about the weather. Surely I could not turn to children’s stories. And, as I learned, studying the deep patterns behind the weather, such a systems of nature, did no more than lead me on. Even so-called gestalt theories of meaning did not immediately hold the key to the meaning of the weather. Initially, I understood the weather as a broad swathe, a brush-stroked idealization. I could compound components of the weather much as the classicists did, comparing the wind to inspiration, and change to teleological causality. Disasters could be compared to major forces of change, such as politics, or the Copernican Revolution. However, I found this view also to be unsatisfying, for there was not much connecting the causes of the weather to any linguistic system. I found that many sentences on the weather were trailing off, leaving indefinite judgments, and requiring considerable epiphany for insight. The first hint I found of a typological meaning for the weather, what I took to be the first real clue about the meaning of the weather, was an insight about native climates and personality. Perhaps, according to one theory, I thought, people have a desperate aversion to cold climates when they live in warm ones, and the reverse as well. The same for wet and dry. Perhaps dry people are afraid of drowning, for instance. Or perhaps rainy people fear the dry bones of the desert. Yet there is not necessarily ‘pure’ choice in the matter. So there is still some ambiguity. The thought could be connected to concepts of wanderlust, the temperament of the climate, in the sense of how changeable the weather is. The most radical thesis would be if psychological personalities somehow controlled the world’s weather. At that point, it was as if I had reached for concepts of democracy and global politics. I had also pinpointed the quirks of drifters and vagrants. I had created a razor for hope and uncertainty. However, I thought there could be other interpretations. Aversion was only one of four objective squares of the weather and personality. Another was simply abiding and outlasting the weather---surviving. In this case, the bones of the desert represented the potential self, the challenge of life. The ocean, as symbol of the rain, represented sailing, which could represent epic civilization. A third interpretation was that the weather could represent education. It could be that the rain was a ‘whisperer’ of secrets, and the desert was an ‘unexplored wasteland’. Under this view, the weather was partly neurotic and partly inspirational. In a fourth view, the weather represented nothing other than changeability itself: the promise of something new. In this view, such as the view of farmers and fishermen, people were forever chasing the predictability of the weather, and attempting to fix patterns upon it. The weather was a form of divination to tell the secret---and altogether quotidian---message of reality. The weather was in this case a form of information. Now we can see that the four types of weather are roughly four philosophies of the weather. According to the aversion theory, climate is merely a presence or absence, a toning of culture and personality, a negative space to civilization. In the second---- survival ---view, the weather is merely part of the landscape. A hurdle to be crossed, a feature to examine. In the third view, favoring education, the weather is the personality of nature, and the unconscious of civilization. It is what we remember as the ’whisper’ of the rain, or the scant features of the desert. It communicates a message that is irrational and ancient. In the fourth view, of the changeable nature, the weather is instead a part of the cosmic computations, forever giving out hesitant messages through which we gain practical knowledge. The four views ultimately oppose each other. In this way, the method is coherent about nature. The ‘whispering rain’ is not the weather which we oppose, which takes us from one place to another. Instead, it calms us to sleep. The weather which gives us practical warnings is also not the same as the weather which stands immovable as a feature of brutal survival. Thus, the weather, like civilization, has more than one character. And as such, it appears to describe something which is potentially universal. It can be seen that the variable features of nature now apply to game theory, political organization, or behavioral typology, all through this metaphor of four personalities of the weather. Nathan Coppedge, SCSU 6/26/2014 p.

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