İlimlerin Boşluğu: Tanrıların Suretlerini Konuşturan Sanat

Whatever consists of weight, water, air, or nerves and cords, such as clocks that move by weight, organs that sound by the impulse of the wind, and also all hydraulic and pneumatic instruments, and those which were fashioned from these for nothing but pleasure and wonder, such as balls that jump on their own, lamps that trim their own wicks, and siphons or vessels that blow fire on their own, and the sort of animal that Politian narrates, which drinks while it is being carved on a table, and represents the movements and voices of a living thing. By such a craft, perhaps, Mercurius Trismegistus tells that the Egyptians fashioned images of the gods so that they could utter articulate voices and walk about. That Archytas of Tarentum also constructed a wooden dove according to geometric principles so that it would rise into the air and fly. Now, moreover, Archimedes is read to have been the first to fabricate a bronze heaven with such great artifice that in it the motions of all the planets could be most plainly discerned, together with the rotations of each individual celestial sphere; a device of which kind we have seen fashioned in these very recent days.