Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 8 -- Transmuational and Biologic Engines
the depths of the earth and from there rise through subterranean channels to their fountain
heads.
Schott evokes a grab-bag of underground flow mechanisms: up from the sea, except for that
which derives from rain, snow or subterranean air. The era's "conjecturing" was indeed "almost
interminable," but if we step back from the specifics, we find an engaged intellectual community
sorting through the possibilities.
In this chapter we will sort through the first of many propositions easily dismissed in light of what's
now text-book science, but mechanisms seemingly possible to intellectuals newly enamored with
the concept of "mechanism." We'll consider a mechanism attractive to the Platonists, one of
transmutation, and an alternative more attractive to the Aristotelians, a turn to biology.
In the two chapters to follow, we'll introduce explanations somewhat more mechanical, ones
employing heat, force, electricity, topics today we classify as "physics." As Renaissance thinking
didn't preclude wandering rationale, we will encounter da Vinci throughout.
As noted in the introduction, the difference between science and superstition can be slight.
Transmutation
Perhaps ocean water becomes another element, rises through subterranean conduits to
springheads and then reconverts to water. Pythagoras' speech in Ovid's Metamorphoses
proclaims that although the elements have their natural seats, all likewise transmute.
Of these are made, to these again they fall.
Received earth to water rarifies;
To air extenuated waters rise;
To air, when it itself again refines,
To elemental fire extracted shines.
They in like order back again repair;
The grosser fire condenseth into air;
Air into water; water, thickening, then
Grows solid and converts to earth again.
None holds his own: for nature ever joys
In change and with new forms supplies.
Springs
Ocean
A 15th-century representation of the four
elements: fire, air, water and earth
When burned, a substance -- wood, for example -- resolves into its elements. The fire is seen by
its own light. Its smoke becomes air. From the ends of wood, water boils off. Ashes are the
nature of earth.
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