Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 8 -- Transmuational and Biologic Engines
German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) called the moving cause of planets an “anima
motrix” (moving soul) in his Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596). Although in the second edition
he replaced “anima” by “vis” (force), his Harmonices Mundi (1619) persisted with the metaphor.
The globe contains a circulating vital fluid... Every
particle of it is alive. It possesses instinct and volition
and even the most elementary of its molecules, which
attract and repel each other according to sympathies
and antipathies. Each kind of mineral substance is
capable of converting immense masses of mater into its
own peculiar nature, as we convert our aliment into flesh
and blood. The mountains are the respiratory organs of
the globe, and the schists its organ or secretion.
Kepler's metabolic model was well suited for the passage
of subterranean waters.
The Earth forever drinks in water from the sea... and
that groundwater and springs are the end products of
the Earth's metabolism.
As urine from the bladder, rivers flow from the
mountains.
Kepler is best remembered for his heliocentric laws of planetary motion, not his insight regarding
geohydrology.
The Earth's Sap
Springs
Ocean
While the early mechanists were more likely to envision the earth as an animal, not a vegetative
organism, the vine metaphor was sometimes employed to describe underground streams.
Da Vinci suggested that spring water “rises from the low roots of the vine to its lofty head, falls
through the cut branches upon the roots and mounts anew to the place whence it fell.” His
evidence was as follows.
The same cause which stirs the humors in every species of animal body and by which every
injury is repaired, also moves the waters from the utmost depth of the sea to the greatest
heights and just as the water [sap] rises from the inferior parts of the vine to the cuts higher up.
Likewise the water that rises from the low roots of the vine to its lofty head falls through the cut
branches upon the roots and mounts anew to the place whence it fell.
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