Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 9 -- Thermodynamic Engines
The driving force in Mundus Subterraneus is the central fire, diffusing with igneous exhalations
heated water from hydrophylachia filled with water, fog or air converted to steam, which, in turn
rise to the highest mountains.
[The] Associates, and Agents of Nature [fire and water] sweetly conspire together in mutual
service, with an inviolable friendship and wedlock, for the good of the whole in their several and
distinct private-lodgings... [creating] minerals, juyces, marles, glebes, and other soyls, with
ebullitions, and bubblings up of fountains.
Kircher accused Aristotle of opposing scripture by denying that springs and rivers originate in the
sea, but remained Aristotelian in terms of causal structure.
The formal cause is fire.
The material cause is “Sulphur, Bitumen, Pit-Coals, and also Allom, Salt, Nitre, Coaly Earth,
and Calcanthum or Vitriol, and such kind of Metals.” in the dark recesses.
The instrumental cause is “the Cavernous nature of the place... oppressed with Sulphureous
Smoak and Soot.”
The efficient cause consists of “Winds and Blasts” from the cavernous interior.
Kircher's graphics catch the
flavor of the fiery
underground. Pyrophylacia
(fire caverns) connect with
the earth’s "central fire"
through a network of
chambers, underground
reservoirs, fountains and
twining passages through
which water and lava
escape to the surface.
DRAFT 1122//66//22001122
Uppddaatteess aatt hhttttpp::////www. .uunnm. .eedduu//~rrhheeggggeenn//UnnddeerrggrroouunnddRi ivveerrss. .hhttml l
87