Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 10 -- Geophysical, Pnuematic and Electromagnetic Engines
Kircher wasn't alone in the idea of sloshing seas. The working
title for Galileo Galilei's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems (1632) was Dialogue on the Tides in which he
attributed tidal action to water sloshing due to the Earth's
movement around the sun.
Galileo's interest was of, course, far above the earth sciences,
but where an observation related to the latter might bolster the
case for heliocentrism, Galileo found hydrology to be a useful
science..
The Earth's Compressibility
Springs
Ocean
Terrestrial pressure squeezing upward might explain underground rivers, but Da Vinci, to his
credit, saw a problem.
If you should say that the earth’s action is like that of a sponge
which when part of it is placed in water sucks up the water so
that it passes up to the top of the sponge, it cannot then pour
away any part of itself down from this top, unless it is squeezed
by something else, whereas with the summits of the mountains
one sees it is just the opposite, for there the water always flows
away of its own accord without being squeezed by anything.
Because his works were read extensively, Jerome Cardan (1501-1576) was influential during the
latter 1500s. Although Cardanus plagiarized da Vinci, he seems to have preferred Aristotle
regarding the origin of springs. The earth, like a sponge, is full of water always being squeezed
free. As the proportion of land greatly exceeded that of water, water remains on the surface only
because there is not enough room for it within.
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