Abstract

The term ›catastrophe‹ is nowadays applied to a great variety of scientific aswell as public discourses, but its historical roots have rarely been investigated.While its meaning in ancient Greek literature is not unanimous, it became a key word in late Roman poetics where it refers to the happy endings of comedies.In our article we intend to unfold that the popularity of the term ›catastrophe‹ is due to its use in these poetics and their reception during the age of enlightenment. Its special application to natural events is a relatively late phenomenon and can be dated not before sporadic references in the writings ofHelisaeus Roeslin and Johannes Kepler. Early English geological theories of the seventeenth century, which introduced and established the term in scientificdebates, were also infl uenced by the Old Testament, where parts of its positive meaning had been preserved. It remains to be shown in the last section of thearticle, how ›catastrop