Skip to content

Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:21:Francis Bacon, Galileo, Descartes…(Alan Sinder)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

This is a page on a light Enoch missed — William Gilbert

Stephensonia

While Bacon, Galileo and Descartes are RIGHTLY seen as light bringers — ala the Cryptonomicon's Galvanick Lucipher in Enoch Root's world view — William Gilbert appears to be passed over. (Wonder if I missed his mention anywhere?)

Authored entries

William Gilbert

Mostly from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.GilbertMW.jpg
Dr. William Gilbert

William Gilbert (or William Gylberde) May 24, 1544, Colchester, England - December 10, 1603, London, English physician to Elizabeth I and James I and scientific researcher into magnetism and electricity. He died of the plague on November 30, 1603. William Gilbert was born into a fairly wealthy family in Colchester, Essex. He was educated at Cambridge University, where he received a BA, MA and MD, after which he became a senior fellow. His scientific status was further recognised when he became President of the Royal College of Physicians in 1600, having practised as a doctor in London and its environs for some years. Though by profession a physician his fame rests upon his treatise, De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (The Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on That Great Magnet the Earth) published in 1600, for which he charged seven shillings and sixpence.

The World is a Magnet

While one might view this as analogous to “When you only have a hammer — your solution is to nail all your problems” Gilbert fixiated on magnets. The magnet - as part of a compass - was to prove invaluable to sailors on treacherous journeys across the world's oceans; ships' navigators could now chart their course with much greater accuracy. Little was known about the workings of the lodestone (magnetic iron ore) or magnetized iron. This comprehensive review of magnetism was the first of its kind.

From Gilbert to Galileo

In his work The Magnet he describes many of his experiments with his model earth called the terrella. Galileo declared that he received a copy from a philosopher who feared that if he kept it on his bookshelf it would contaminate the other books with its new ideas. Many of the letters that Galileo exchanged with Fra' Paolo Sarpi and with G. F. Sagredo reveal the great interest that the scientific community had for the book of William Gilbert at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Galileo frequently underlined the striking combination of genuinely novel experimental results with credulousness in the writings of Gilbert.

Gilbert's findings suggested that magnetism was the soul of the Earth, and that a perfectly spherical lodestone, when aligned with the Earth's poles, would spin on its axis, just as the Earth spins on its axis over a period of 24 hours. He debunked the traditional cosmologists' belief that the Earth was fixed at the centre of the universe and it was the sphere of the fixed stars, carrying the other heavens with it, that rotated in 24 hours. Gilbert did not, however, express an opinion as to whether this rotating Earth was at the center of the universe or in orbit around the Sun. He explained the inclination of the magnetic needle by his conception of the earth as a magnet with two poles; he defended the Copernican theory; and, in his discussion of the attraction of bodies, there is a suggestion of the doctrine of universal gravitation. Knowing the Copernican cosmology needed a new physics to undergird it, Copernicans such as Johannes Kepler and Galileo were very interested in Gilbert's magnetic researches. Gilbert had also reached a correct view of the atmosphere as extending only a few miles from the surface of the earth, with nothing but empty space beyond.

Galileo's efforts to make a truly powerful armed lodestone for his patrons probably date from his reading of Gilbert's book. He was also the founder of the theory of magnetism and electricity; and he gave the latter its name, vis electrica. Gilbert's research provided food for thought for Galileo, who eventually came up with the proposition that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Birth of the Scientific Method

Bacon — unfortunately — was so little appreciative of Gilbert’s book, as a careful analysis of the method actually employed in it might have guarded him from some errors - such as catching pneumonia while trying to freeze food. Gilbert has been called “the first real physicist and the first trustworthy methodical experimenter.”Demagnete.jpg
**Frontispage: De Magnete

De Magnete, Magneticisque
Corporibus, et de Magno
Magnete Tellure**

The Work

De Magnete — a comprehensive review of what was known about the nature of magnetism — became the standard work throughout Europe on electrical and magnetic phenomena. Gilbert added much knowledge through his own experiments. Gilbert added other examples such as sulphur and was describing what would later be known as 'static electricity' to distinguish it from the more noble magnetic force which he saw as part of a philosophy to destroy forever the prevailing Aristotlean view of matter. Gilbert expressed himself as decidedly as did Bacon afterwards on the futility of expecting to arrive at knowledge of nature by mere speculation or by a few vague experiments. He had, indeed, no theory of induction; but he was conscious that he was introducing a “new style of philosophising.” Gilbert tested many folk tales. Does garlic destroy the magnetic effect of the compass needle? More importantly, he made the first clear distinction between magnetic and the amber effect (static electricity, as we call it).

More importantly, he tells others how to replicate his work. This spells the slow death of the peripatetic era of science. His work contains a series of carefully graduated experiments, each one of which is devised so as to answer a particular question, while the simpler and more obvious facts set forth and their investigation led by orderly stages to that of the more complex and subtle.

The Gilbert

A unit of magnetomotive force, also known as magnetic potential, is named the gilbert in his honor.

Other Work

Several of Gilbert's unpublished and unfinished works were published in 1651 by his younger half brother under the title De Mundo Nostro Sublunari Philosophia Nova ("New Philosophy about our Sublunary World"). This work had little impact.