Premodern thinkers believed metals grew underground like living plants from seeds

Evidence

The ancient Greek philosophers Anaxagoras (500–428 B.C.), Theophrastus (370–278 B.C.), and Dionysius of Periegetes (fl. A.D. 86–96) believed that metals were plants growing beneath the earth’s surface and that veins of gold were like the roots and branches of trees. Metals were believed merely to be a lower form of life than vegetables and animals, reproducing themselves through small metallic seeds. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 165

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s known interest in how premodern observation of the living earth grounded restraint ethics across the polyad’s eco-justice strand. — connects to: The womb analogy was the dominant metaphor for earth’s mineral generation — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 143; Mines were believed to regrow their ores, sustaining regenerative-earth imagery into the 1700s — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 168; Premodern naturalists could not separate living from nonliving things on shared structures — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 157

Broader Connections

• Premodern naturalists could not separate living from nonliving things on shared structures #exemplifies (0.85) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 157