From the article by Josep Maria Puig de la Bellacasa Brugada (Barcelona, 1946-2024) to The Vanguard (19-III-1994) commemorating the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Saxon geologist Georgius Agricola (Glauchau, 1494-Chemnitz, 1555). Own translation. Puig de la Bellacasa, polyglot, graduated in 1973 from the School of Journalism of the Church in Barcelona and a member of the Democratic Group of Journalists, stood out for his integrity and a solid humanist culture. He died last December 26.
Georgius Agricola arrived in the world at the dawn of the Renaissance, a time when experience did not yet dialogue with reason as it would in the 17th century. (…) For Agricola, as for Leonardo, technique is not an anti-nature. But university teachers are hostile to experimental science. They reserve the term “science” for the knowledge of being, of eternal things, they profess the idea that the phenomenon, the appearance, are only a matter of opinion. Science is therefore contemplation and vision of realities beyond the sensible world. Agricola, like many students of his time, visited the Italian universities of Bologna, Venice and Padua, where he studied medicine, philosophy and natural sciences. Meet Erasmus, publisher in Basel at Froben’s printing house. In 1527 he was elected doctor of the town of Joachimsthal, in Bohemia (a town on the eastern side of the Erzgebirge, in the middle of the most industrious mining town in Central Europe). He professes Catholicism, not Lutheranism (…) Classical training, medical studies, trips and fieldwork, contact with the people, underpin the theoretical-practical edifice of his magnum opus. The explanation – based on observation – of the aspects of mining, prospecting, the opening of wells, the calculations of the underground geometry, the test furnaces and foundries, aspects that Agricola covers in his works, they have been for centuries a fundamental reference and guide in the history of mining. (…) Agricola’s influence was so extraordinary that his principles are still remembered today, despite the time that has passed. According to him, it is about having an overall view of our planet’s geological resources, on which both geologists and mining engineers work. The continued increase in energy that the world’s population needs seems to have found in Agricola a mind awake and aware of the problem, embodied in his tireless work aimed at unraveling the secrets of the useful riches that the Earth contains: the metals. (…) Agricola describes but also instructs, teaches, orients the spirit of the miners, whom he tries to lift and heal their affections and afflictions. This seed of instruction will never stop. In 1544 he began publishing his studies. They appear On the origin and causes of subterranean things, on the nature of fossils and others, such as his main work, De re metallicawhich he gave to the press in 1553. He also finds time to work on the medical work From over. His systematic treatment of the composition of minerals is a task not surpassed until two centuries later with Schlüter. At the time of Agricola, the development of mineralogy supported the practice of this activity in Central Europe: from simple extraction, technical and methodical criteria were applied to get the most out of it. Agricola is a pioneer in making the deposits, their content and exploitation profitable.
Source: www.ara.cat
