¶ Gravity
Index Entry
Gravity:
"The hammer men have learned that they can gather the metal together, that is hammer it thicker. Anybody can conceive of hammering metals thinner. Few would think spontaneously of hammering it thicker. The hammer men do, however, hammer it in such a way as to bulk it. They can start with a flat sheet of metal and hammer it thicker as you would knead dough together after it had been rolled out thin with a rolling pin. But you push the dough together horizontally with your hands. You do not pummel it vertically from above. The skilled sheet metal hammerers can do just that with metal, which amateurs would spontaneously assume to be illogical if not impossible.
(1) We can conceive of heating metal until it becomes liquid and flows together. Thus the blacksmith’s heating of his horseshoes to a bright red, to a condition just short of melted, makes it easy for us to think of the cherry-red metal as being in a plastic or semimolten condition which permits the smith to smite it into any preferred shapes-- thicker or thinner. But the Polish hammer men hammer cold, hard sheet metal into any shape.
(2) What the Polish hammer men do intuitively without sensing it realistically is to hit the indestructible atoms"
