Catching a Cloud

This chapter addresses the tension between human agency and the brute forces of nature by exploring past and present attempts to control the weather. It begins by focusing on the various religious and cultural rituals that people have invoked in attempts to modify the weather. The objective of recounting these cultural practices is to extract from them observations about the underlying assumptions that guide such thinking: For instance, the idea that weather is an intentional force, steered by gods who may be listening; or, alternatively, the idea that nature is a mechanistic system that can, like a complicated thermostat, be adjusted to produce the right temperature. Bearing this in mind, the chapter shifts to a series of intuition pumps, all aimed to suggest that the forces of weather are always outside and alien, heteronomous, and that this heteronomy is encapsulated in the very idea of weather.