矿物作为现代隐喻与形而上学的完成

Minerals as a Modern Metaphor and the Completion of Metaphysics

16世纪的采矿业是现代工业文明的原型,芒福德这一观点在矿业史研究者中颇受争议。然而矿物作为隐喻在现代语言中被普遍使用,这一现象意味着芒福德的断言依然切中了现代性的某些根本特征,海德格尔的技术形而上学为理解其根本性提供了路径。16世纪学者阿格里科拉的矿物学作品表明,把握矿物存在本性的方式在16世纪发生了转变,规定矿物存在的实体形式被清除出认识领域,经验可感的偶然属性成为矿物的全部性质,矿物成为认识和摆置的对象。这一转变与近代以来形而上学的完成相契合,对矿物的认识方式因而楔入了现代的形而上学基础中。矿物由此成为对事物的表象的原型,最终作为隐喻在日常语言中浮现出来。

Lewis Mumford's view that the mining industry of the 16 century was the prototype of modern industrial civilization is controversial to research-ers of mining history.However,the frequent use of minerals as a metaphor in modern language suggests that Mumford's assertion hits on some of the fun-damental characteristics of modernity.Martin Heidegger's philosophy of technology provides an approach to understanding Mumford's peculiar view.Through a survey of the mineralogical works of Georgius Agricola,a 16th-century scholar known as the father of mineralogy,this paper shows that the way in which minerals were understood shifted in the 16th century.Forms of substances were cleared from the realm of knowledge,which was once consid-ered the essence of minerals.Empirically tangible accidental properties became the nature of minerals,and minerals thus become objects of knowledge.This shift coincides with the completion of metaphysics in early modern,and the way minerals are perceived is thus relevant to the metaphysical founda-tions of modernity.Minerals become archetypal representations of things and are eventually used as metaphors in daily language.