Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 544-5):
When the processes and properties turn into nouns, the verbs do not disappear from the scene. Scientific discourse is still written in clauses, and these clauses still have verbs in them. Let us return briefly to the examples from Newton's "Opticks":
those Colours argue a diverging and separation of the heterogeneous Rays from one another by means of their unequal Refractionsthe variety of Colours depends upon the Composition of Lightthe cause of Reflexion is not the impinging of Light on the solid, impervious parts of Bodies
We might suggest a more congruent form of the first and second examples here:
colours vary because light is composed [in this way];
because those colours (appear] we know the heterogeneous rays diverge and separate from one another....
The verbs depend upon and argue both express a logical-semantic relation between the two nominalised processes: either an external cause, 'a happens; so x happens', or an internal cause, 'b happens, so we know y happens'. This is another grammatical metaphor; the congruent form of representation of a logical relation is a conjunction. The two types of metaphor work together, to construe the two processes as one: 'happening a causes happening x', 'happening b proves happening y'.
It is not the case, of course, that this type of construction had never occurred in English before; it had. But it was rare; whereas from the time of Newton onwards it gradually took over, becoming the most favoured clause type of scientific language — as indeed we find it today.