We're Not Stupid

What do you know and think about the mining profession? In the reading I did today (p. 1-3) Agricola feels the need to defend his profession from people who think miners are stupid, or at least lacking in knowledge: they think that mining is "an occupation of sordid toil, requiring not so much skill as labor." To counter this prevailing attitude of his day, Agricola gives some lists of the areas of knowledge miners of his day used.

They need to know earth science, not just so they can choose where to dig, but also the different kinds of substances they will find: "earths, juices, gems, stones, marbles, rocks, metals, and compounds." ("Juices" seems to refer to various substances that are found in a hardened state, but dissolve when moistened or when heated. For example, salt or soda. Miners knew how to extract juices from certain rocks like pyrites, and how to extract metal from some juices such as copper sulfate.)

There are different methods for assaying and preparing for smelting all the different metals that were known at the time. These were gold, silver, copper, quicksilver, iron, lead and tin--the seven metals known to the ancients-- and bismuth. Bismuth was known as a metal and also as "the roof of silver" since silver is often found together with it.

One more list. Miners have to have practical knowledge in some other areas, Philosophy, Medicine (the diseases specific to mining were already well known), Surveying, Arithmetic (for keeping the books), Architecture (for building underground works) and Drawing (for drawing the plans), and finally Law. Agricola also lists Astronomy; the stars were used in some fashion for identifying where or when to look for metals in the earth. He doesn't list reading and writing and it seems that skills were passed on in some other way. Miners were beginning to specialize, and so almost no one knew "the whole art." You need to go around and talk to different experts to find out what is really happening.

Interestingly the miners had a lot of practical knowledge of chemistry that was very sound. They understood that some substances are pure (every particle of pure gold, is gold), but others which may appear uniform are actually compounds and can be broken down. They knew a lot about distinguishing different compounds, and that the identical compound will behave consistently.