Seneca's Natural Questions Questioned

"Scholars have debated whether the ethical lessons derived from science are the main motivation of the Natural Questions. The debate starts from the fact that, though the work is on meteorology, the majority of books contain prefaces, conclusions, or digressions on topics that ostensibly have nothing to do with meteorology. Some of these, as just mentioned, tackle human fear of unfamiliar phenomena (6.32; 2.59). Some tackle then fashionable forms of luxurious and decadent living that abuse the gifts provided by nature: the craze for cooling drinks with snow (4b.13); the use of winds for sea-travel not to increase knowledge but to wage war (5.18); the use of mirrors by a man whose sexual antics were notorious (1.16); and the contemporary insistence on watching fish die at the dinner table before eating them (3.18)."

from Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions, trans. Harry M. Hine (Chicago UP, 2010): 12.