The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Natural Philosophy of William Gilbert
and His Predecessors, by W. James King
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Title: The Natural Philosophy of William Gilbert and His Predecessors
Author: W. James King
Release Date: April 15, 2010 [EBook #31999]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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CONTRIBUTIONS FROM
THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY:
PAPER 8
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF
WILLIAM GILBERT AND HIS PREDECESSORS
_W. James King_
By W. James King
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF
WILLIAM GILBERT
AND HIS PREDECESSORS
Until several decades ago, the physical sciences were
considered to have had their origins in the 17th
century--mechanics beginning with men like Galileo Galilei
and magnetism with men like the Elizabethan physician and
scientist William Gilbert.
Historians of science, however, have traced many of the 17th
century's concepts of mechanics back into the Middle Ages.
Here, Gilbert's explanation of the loadstone and its powers
is compared with explanations to be found in the Middle Ages
and earlier.
From this comparison it appears that Gilbert can best be
understood by considering him not so much a herald of the new
science as a modifier of the old.
THE AUTHOR: W. James King is curator of electricity, Museum
of History and Technology, in the Smithsonian Institution's
United States National Museum.
The year 1600 saw the publication by an English physician, William
Gilbert, of a book on the loadstone. Entitled _De magnete_,[1] it has
tradition
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