Meteorology and Physiology in Early Modern Culture by Totaro Rebecca

Author:Totaro, Rebecca.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

As a stone, the quality of hardness is dominant. This is a slight change from the use of adamant to describe a metal that can be forged into a ring and is at the same time strong. Here one form of strength over another has become dominant: hardness over internal resilience. This choice, as Shigehisa Kuriyama brilliantly demonstrates, is one of western might over eastern flexibility—about which I will say a bit more in a moment.17

Pliny’s knowledge of adamant is nevertheless complex in a new way, because by his time, this stone of which he writes has another associated quality: the powers of attraction and repulsion:

The “adamas” has so strong an aversion to the magnet that when it is placed close to the iron it prevents the iron from being attracted away from itself. Or again, if the magnet is moved towards the iron and seizes it, the “adamas” snatches the iron and takes it away. “Adamas” prevails also over poisons and renders them powerless, dispels attacks of wild distraction and drives groundless fears from the mind.

(211. 37.15.61)18

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.