The part I read this morning is Agricola's own preface (as opposed to the translators'). He talks about his book in the context of other books about metals, and also talks about metallurgy in comparison to other human arts.
Farming, he says, is a lot better known and understood than mining, though he thinks mining is at least equal to farming in importance, and at least equally old: "No mortal man ever tilled a field without implements .... When an art is so poor that it lacks metals, it is not of much importance, for nothing is made without tools." Also, he says, you can get a lot richer in mining than in farming. (One might counter that you can't eat metal.) Agricola goes through a list of the ancient sources about the metal arts, which up to then were not very many or comprehensive. The art was presumably passed on in other ways.
Alchemy was popular in Agricola's time, and he lists a whole lot of people including Cleopatra who were searching for ways to transform one metal into another, or claimed to have actually done so. They may have been more or less sincere in this. Agricola states that many are fraudulent and prey on people without knowledge. One purpose of writing this book was to educate the general public about the actual processes used to extract and purify metals, and to separate one metal from another.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Hands on
The Hoovers comment in their preface that Agricola was following on the work of Aristotle on one hand, and the Alchemists on the other. According to them, Agricola departed from his predecessors in the value he placed on observation over speculation.
In my mind, speculation is something we do with our imagination - or it may be something we do when we allow someone else, an "expert", to interpret reality for us. The Alchemists engaged in speculation when they aimed to convert lead into gold, or create the elixir of life. Their expectations might have caused feelings of disappointment or failure, or even blinded them to valuable observations they were making. Even so, they learned a lot along the way.
Some of us at church watched a movie last night called The Man Without a Face. Part of this movie had to do with a grade-school boy struggling to pass an entrance exam for a selective private high school. He went to a tutor asking him for help with Latin exercises. The help he got was that the tutor ordered him to dig a hole three feet across and three feet deep. He dug a lot of these holes of different shapes, and only much later was asked to apply this experience to compute the volume of the holes. This teaching helped the boy pass the exam, where others had failed.
Agricola is writing and the Hoovers are translating from that kind of hands-on experience, and that is a good reason to respect them as writers, because they have dug a lot of holes before attempting to write about it.
In my mind, speculation is something we do with our imagination - or it may be something we do when we allow someone else, an "expert", to interpret reality for us. The Alchemists engaged in speculation when they aimed to convert lead into gold, or create the elixir of life. Their expectations might have caused feelings of disappointment or failure, or even blinded them to valuable observations they were making. Even so, they learned a lot along the way.
Some of us at church watched a movie last night called The Man Without a Face. Part of this movie had to do with a grade-school boy struggling to pass an entrance exam for a selective private high school. He went to a tutor asking him for help with Latin exercises. The help he got was that the tutor ordered him to dig a hole three feet across and three feet deep. He dug a lot of these holes of different shapes, and only much later was asked to apply this experience to compute the volume of the holes. This teaching helped the boy pass the exam, where others had failed.
Agricola is writing and the Hoovers are translating from that kind of hands-on experience, and that is a good reason to respect them as writers, because they have dug a lot of holes before attempting to write about it.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Life and Character
The Hoovers start their book with a sketch of Agricola's life and character. Agricola lived soon after the voyage of Columbus and the invention of the printing press. Martin Luther posted his 95 theses in 1517, when Agricola was in his twenties. His career shows a breadth and depth of interests, as well as a steadfast adherence to Catholicism while living right at the heart of the Reformation, in Saxony.
Agricola studied the arts at the University at Leipzig, and for a time was a schoolteacher and principal. Later he did further university studies in Italy, this time in science. He worked as a town physician, and later held various appointive positions in his community of Chemnitz.
He studied mining intensively, both by visiting and studying the mines firsthand, consulting with miners, reading everything he could find that the ancients wrote about mining. He was invested in a mine known as "God's Gift." He worked on De Re Metallica for about twenty years. In translating the work, Herbert Hoover also draws on study, experience and the literature.
The Hoovers say that Agricola remained a Catholic, this was probably quite difficult when the local church went Lutheran. Did he even have access to a faith community? He doesn't seem to have been ostracized in his community, but rather the opposite. He was appointed a Burgomeister, and sometimes served as an ambassador to Catholic Austria. Sadly, he was denied burial in his local church and had to be taken out of town.
The Hoovers take a message from Agricola's life about bipartisanship. He must have had some special qualities that helped him succeed without needing to conform his religious views to others. "To deduce Georgius Agricola's character we need not search beyond the discovery of his steadfast adherence to the religion of his fathers amid the bitter storm of Protestantism around him, and need but to remember that for twenty-five years he was entrusted with elective positions of an increasingly important character in this same community. No man could have thus held the respect of his countrymen unless he were devoid of bigotry and possessed of the highest sense of integrity, justice, humanity, and patriotism."
Agricola studied the arts at the University at Leipzig, and for a time was a schoolteacher and principal. Later he did further university studies in Italy, this time in science. He worked as a town physician, and later held various appointive positions in his community of Chemnitz.
He studied mining intensively, both by visiting and studying the mines firsthand, consulting with miners, reading everything he could find that the ancients wrote about mining. He was invested in a mine known as "God's Gift." He worked on De Re Metallica for about twenty years. In translating the work, Herbert Hoover also draws on study, experience and the literature.
The Hoovers say that Agricola remained a Catholic, this was probably quite difficult when the local church went Lutheran. Did he even have access to a faith community? He doesn't seem to have been ostracized in his community, but rather the opposite. He was appointed a Burgomeister, and sometimes served as an ambassador to Catholic Austria. Sadly, he was denied burial in his local church and had to be taken out of town.
The Hoovers take a message from Agricola's life about bipartisanship. He must have had some special qualities that helped him succeed without needing to conform his religious views to others. "To deduce Georgius Agricola's character we need not search beyond the discovery of his steadfast adherence to the religion of his fathers amid the bitter storm of Protestantism around him, and need but to remember that for twenty-five years he was entrusted with elective positions of an increasingly important character in this same community. No man could have thus held the respect of his countrymen unless he were devoid of bigotry and possessed of the highest sense of integrity, justice, humanity, and patriotism."
Saturday, August 8, 2009
A Little Context
I have inherited this beautiful book from my mother. It's about three inches thick, a foot wide and a foot and a half high; bound in some ivory-toned leather-like stuff, with the kind of pages that you have to cut apart with a knife before you read it -- though the pages of our copy had already been cut by the time the book got to me. It has a mysterious title: "AGRICOLA/DE RE/METALLICA/HOOVER/1556/1912." Agricola (whose German name was Bauer) completed the original work in 1556. Hoover (both Herbert Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover) completed their English translation in 1912. The title means something like, "All About Metals."
I believe my grandfather actually read this book, and my mother may have read it also; but I have never seen it open. It was treated as an object of veneration - or, maybe as a fancy paperweight or doorstop. It rested flat on the bottom shelf of a certain table in our living room. Ask, and you would be treated to the story of how my mother as a high school student wrote a letter to then-former President Hoover, saying that her father, a mining engineer wanted a copy of his book, and asking where she could get one to surprise him. Mr. Hoover sent her the book.
Very recently, I looked inside, and I was surprised to find that I got quite a lot from reading the first few pages of the book. What is more, thinking about metals - what they are, how we use them, their social and environmental cost - is as important today as it was in Agricola's day. I no longer think this is a book only for mining engineers. I am going to read more and write about it in this blog. I welcome comments and discussion from anyone from any perspective that can help me understand it better.
I believe my grandfather actually read this book, and my mother may have read it also; but I have never seen it open. It was treated as an object of veneration - or, maybe as a fancy paperweight or doorstop. It rested flat on the bottom shelf of a certain table in our living room. Ask, and you would be treated to the story of how my mother as a high school student wrote a letter to then-former President Hoover, saying that her father, a mining engineer wanted a copy of his book, and asking where she could get one to surprise him. Mr. Hoover sent her the book.
Very recently, I looked inside, and I was surprised to find that I got quite a lot from reading the first few pages of the book. What is more, thinking about metals - what they are, how we use them, their social and environmental cost - is as important today as it was in Agricola's day. I no longer think this is a book only for mining engineers. I am going to read more and write about it in this blog. I welcome comments and discussion from anyone from any perspective that can help me understand it better.
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