Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 8 -- Transmuational and Biologic Engines
Da Vinci seems to be preparing to argue for something transmutational, but instead he turns to
metaphor.
So that we might say
That the earth has a spirit of growth;
That its flesh is the soil,
Its bones are the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are
composed,
Its cartilage is the porous rock,
And its blood is the springs of water.
The pool of blood which lies round the heart is the ocean,
And its breathing, and the increase and decrease of the blood in the pulses, is represented in
the earth by the flow and ebb of the tide.
Da Vinci recognized, however, the analogical difficulty. While both the globe and the human body
consist of earth, water, air and fire, the correspondence of macrocosm to microcosm can only
work if the globe possesses a mechanism comparable to the heart. Da Vinci came close
discovering the circulation of blood, but in the end, could not break free from Galen.
Just as the natural heat of the blood in the veins keeps
it in the head of man, and when the man is dead the
sinks to the lower parts, and as when the sun warms
the man's head the amount of blood there increases
and grows so much with other humors, that by
pressure in the veins it frequently causes pains in the
head; in the same way with the springs which ramify
through the body of the earth and, by the natural heat
which is spread through all the -- containing body, the
water stays in the springs at the high summits of the
mountains.
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) considered geographical features
not as accumulations of inert matter, but as spirits of life
corresponding to the bones, intestines, veins, arteries, flesh
and nerves of the earth. As explained in De l'infinito Universo
et Mondi (1584), fog, rain, lightning, thunderstorms and
earthquakes are terrestrial diseases. Without underground
rivers, the world would perish for lack of blood. Bruno was
burned at the stake for errors in theology.
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