- Articles & preprints
- Submission
- Policies
- Peer review
- Editorial board
- About
- EGU publications
- Manuscript tracking
12 Jan 2021
12 Jan 2021
Abstract. Whilst hydrology is a Greek term, it has not been in use in the Classical literature but much later, during the Renaissance, in its Latin version, hydrologia. On the other hand, Greek natural philosophers created robust knowledge in related scientific areas, to which they gave names such as meteorology, climate and hydraulics. These terms are now in common use internationally. Within these areas, Greek natural philosophers laid the foundation of hydrological concepts and the hydrological cycle in its entirety. Knowledge development was brought about by search for technological solutions to practical problems, as well as by scientific curiosity to explain natural phenomena. While initial explanations belong to the sphere of mythology, the rise of philosophy was accompanied by attempts to provide scientific descriptions of the phenomena. It appears that the first geophysical problem formulated in scientific terms was the explanation of the flood regime of the Nile, then regarded as a paradox because of the spectacular difference from the river flow regime in Greece and other Mediterranean regions, i.e., the fact that the Nile flooding occurs in summer when in most of the Mediterranean the rainfall is very low. While some of the early attempts to explain it were influenced by Homer’s mythical view (archaic period), eventually, Aristotle was able to formulate a correct hypothesis, which he tested through what it appears to be the first in history scientific expedition, in the turn from the Classical to Hellenistic period. This confirms the fact that the hydrological cycle was well understood during the Classical period yet it poses the question why Aristotle’s correct explanation had not been accepted and, instead, ancient and modern mythical views had been preferred up to the 18th century.
Demetris Koutsoyiannis and Nikos Mamassis
Status: open (until 09 Mar 2021)
Although this appears to be an interesting and comprehensive contribution, it seems clearly outside the scope of HESS. I suggest submission to any one of a dozen or so journals on the history of science, where it will almost certainly find a wider audience.
Very interesting comment by Dr. Curry, which shows a particular view of the scope of HESS, hydrology and science in general (particularly, when he uses the unit “dozen” to count scientific journals).
The commenter may be interested to see that HESS hosts several Special Issues (https://www.hydrology-and-earth-system-sciences.net/articles_and_preprints/scheduled_sis.html ). One (jointly hosted with HGSS -- https://www.history-of-geo-and-space-sciences.net/ ) is entitled History of Hydrology. By visiting its site, https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/special_issue1018.html , he can verify that the paper was submitted for this Special Issue.
Thus, his objection is not for this particular paper but a more general one, i.e. a claim that the history of hydrology is not part of hydrology. Therefore, he should address his objection to the HESS editors.
Despite this, we thank him for reading our contribution and ranking it as interesting and comprehensive.
Demetris Koutsoyiannis
The contribution of Demetris Koutsoyiannis and Nikos Mamassis was solicited. They started to contribute on this topic in a Special Session about the History of Hydrology at EGU in 2018 (how was different the world at that time!). This Special Issue is focused on the History of Hydrology so I don't see any problem to host this paper about the start of the conceptualisation of the hydrological cycle in the western civilisation for the discussion. Also other Editors did agree on this. The paper can also shed light on the reasons why the correct description of the hydrological cycle took so much time to be understood. Anonymous referees were solicited and the discussion is open.
Kind regards
Roberto Ranzi
Handling Editor
http://roberto-ranzi.unibs.it
Thanks for providing the context for this paper and its relation to HESS: I was not aware of the special issue. I wish the authors the best of luck with the review of their manuscript.
Sincerely,
Charles Curry
We found several oversights in the manuscript, among which most serious is the mentor’s name in line 739; the correct name is Luzin, not Egorov. (Egorov’s story is also fascinating and is contained in the book by Graham and Kantor, 2009, too).
In the opening Chinese quotation in line 26, the English translation given corresponds to merely the first four-Chinese-character group. (The second four-character group is translated as “but to pursue appearances is to miss the source”; https://terebess.hu/english/hsin1.html ). We are grateful to John Ding for spotting this and writing to us, and to Lei Ye for his further explanations.
Other corrections:
lines 105-106: “as clearly seen in the above excerpt” should be deleted to avoid repetition.
lines 227 and 417: Cesar → Caesar
line 306: effective interpretation → effective interpretation of quantum physics
line 394: later authors → other authors
line 420: one → one is
lines 583-684: “that determine the long-term changes of the climate” should be placed in the end of the next sentence.
line 989: but they not → but they do not
footnote on p. 27: there is original sign → there is no original sign
Demetris Koutsoyiannis and Nikos Mamassis
Demetris Koutsoyiannis and Nikos Mamassis
HTML | XML | Total | BibTeX | EndNote | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
287 | 185 | 13 | 485 | 1 | 1 |
Country | # | Views | % |
---|
Total: | 0 |
HTML: | 0 |
PDF: | 0 |
XML: | 0 |
An interactive open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union