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Book discussed: Georgius Agricola. De Re Metallica (Of the Metallic Arts). Translated from the first Latin edition of 1556 by Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover in 1912. Published for the translators by The Mining Magazine, Salisbury House, London.
Read the Hoovers’ translation (complete with original illustrations, translated captions, and numerous notes) here.
Georgius Agricola, born #OnThisDay in 1494, a pioneering doctor, minerologist, and metallurgist, wrote the classic textbook on mining, De Re Metallica, translated from Latin in 1912 by future U.S. President Herbert Hoover and his wife. According to the translators, Agricola, not having any Latin terms to describe hundreds of the processes described in his book, invented a large number of Latin words, which made the book tough-going for any translator previous to them.
Hoover says that Agricola “was the first to found any of the natural sciences on research and observation,” and that he should be considered a much more important figure in the history of science than the quack-ish Paracelsus.
That Agricola occupied a very considerable place in the great awakening of learning will be disputed by none except by those who place the development of science in rank far below religion, politics, literature, and art. Of wider importance than the details of his achievements in the mere confines of the particular science to which he applied himself, is the fact that he was the first to found any of the natural sciences upon research and observation, as opposed to previous fruitless speculation. The wider interest of the members of the medical profession in the development of their science than that of geologists in theirs, has led to the aggrandizement of Paracelsus, a contemporary of Agricola, as the first in deductive science. Yet no comparative study of the unparalleled egotistical ravings of this half-genius, half-alchemist, with the modest sober logic and real research and observation of Agricola, can leave a moment’s doubt as to the incomparably greater position which should be attributed to the latter as the pioneer in building the foundation of science by deduction from observed phenomena. Science is the base upon which is reared the civilization of to-day, and while we give daily credit to all those who toil in the superstructure, let none forget those men who laid its first foundation stones. One of the greatest of these was Georgius Agricola.
I have to say, though, that the illustrations in this book are incredible. Of the creation and artist behind these amazing illustrations, we are given this information:
The publication was apparently long delayed by the preparation of the woodcuts; and, according to Mathesius, many sketches for them were prepared by Basilius Wefring. In the preface of De Re Metallica, Agricola does not mention who prepared the sketches, but does say: “I have hired illustrators to delineate their forms, lest descriptions which are conveyed by words should either not be understood by men of our own times, or should cause difficulty to posterity.”
If you want to see some mind-bending, M.C. Escher-esque pictures of early mining operations, check out this gallery of 40 images from the book (click to enter slideshow mode):
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