Palissy examines a specimen in his pottery workshop.

What Bernard Palissy looks for in damp ground

Bernard Palissy (c. 1510–1590), a French potter and naturalist, knew earth in quite different conditions. When wet it could be kneaded, when dry it could crack, and in a kiln it could become a firm vessel. His Discours admirables investigate another sort of change. How can bodies arise within the earth whose shape and solidity were previously nowhere to be seen? For him this question concerns minerals as well as things that grow.

A question from the workshop

[…] that this seed or generative water does not serve only for the generation of stones, but is also the substance and source of all things that are animate and grow […].

– Bernard Palissy, Discours admirables, 1844, p. 336.[1]

Palissy speaks of a water that carries something generative. The words seed and water convey different parts of his proposal. Water can move through soil and bring something to a place the eye cannot follow. A seed, on the other hand, offers a way of explaining why a particular shape should eventually appear there. Palissy brings the two ideas together. Something we later examine in its finished form has an earlier history in a material that is mobile and easy to overlook.

What water can carry

The discussion takes place in an enquiry into earths and marl. Someone who picks up only the finished specimen misses the question of what its surroundings might have contributed while it formed. Here the potter’s experience makes itself felt. A small change in moisture makes a considerable difference to what a lump of earth will allow a hand to do. Palissy takes that familiar encounter with material as the starting point for a much wider question about the origin of solid and growing bodies.