The Various and Ingenious Machines

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PREFACE.

...eyes to the dark owls original: "nottole" — here Ramelli uses a common Renaissance metaphor derived from Aristotle, suggesting that the human intellect is as blinded by the "brilliance" of natural truths as an owl's eyes are by the sun.. But if something is confirmed with reason by Mathematicians in Geometry or Arithmetic, we deem it as infallible and certain as if it were spoken by the Oracle of Apollo. Whereby it is seen that, just as the Mathematical sciences are of the greatest importance—both in administering public and private affairs as well as in perfecting our intellect—so one cannot imagine anything more honorable, more useful, nor more necessary to the human race than the mathematical disciplines. For while other sciences revealed their uses through a long progress of time after the creation of the world, this Mechanical art Mechanical art: In the 16th century, 'mechanics' was considered a branch of applied mathematics used to solve physical problems and create labor-saving devices. was so necessary at the very beginnings of the world that if it had been taken away, it would have seemed as if the light of the Sun had been extinguished from the earth. And to begin with the first father of the human race, Adam: every method and every way he used and held to protect his life from earthly necessities—by building small huts covered with straw and raising humble dwellings to defend himself from the inclemency of the heavens, from the intemperance of the air, from the injuries of the seasons, and from the many harms of the earth; or covering his body with various lowly garments to ward off the humid rains, the impetuosity of the winds, the burning heat of the Sun, and the bitterness of the cold—all of this proceeded from the Mechanical art. To this art, that which usually happens to the winds does not occur; for the winds, issuing most vehemently from the hollow centers A reference to the classical belief, notably in Virgil's Aeneid, that winds were imprisoned in the hollow caves of King Aeolus. where they are born, and with their forced fury splitting mountains, opening the earth, breaking thick walls, toppling high towers, and submerging pitch-coated ships original: "spalmati legni" — literally "smeared woods," referring to the practice of coating wooden hulls with pitch or resin for waterproofing. in the vast sea, gradually weakened, lose their momentum, and then vanish. But instead, it is like what is often seen in the effects of great rivers; which, being small at their birth, yet continually growing through the many winding streams they receive into their bosom, the further they travel from their sources, the more they discharge their liquid burdens into the sea with greater breadth and abundance of water. Thus, and not otherwise, it has happened with the art...