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William Gilbert - De Magnete

Homepage . Albert Einstein . Isaac Newton . Rene Descartes . William Gilbert .......... De Magnete + ......... General Image Theory

The two available English translations of William Gilbert's 'De Magnete' are poor science translations - but below are some extracts from the Mottelay translation and you can read more selected extracts here. Machine translations, such as offered for convenience on this website, can also give poor science translation. You can read the full original Latin 1600 De Magnete, through the excellent Google Books - Google De Magnete. Or you can download it and see more about using Google Books at the bottom of our History of Science section.

We hopefully await the publishing by Dr Stephen Pumfrey and Dr Ian Stewart of a good English translation of Gilbert's other Latin work published postumously in 1651 as "De Mundo Nostro Sublunari Philosophia Nova" (A New Philosophy of our Sublunar World, or A New Science Theory of Everything Under the Moon, or A New TOE ?) - and to quote Steve Pumfrey (Lancaster University science historian) ; "Gilbert's uniqueness in both natural philosophy and cosmology stems from his conviction that he had empirical proof of his theory of active matter." in 'Cambridge Scientific Minds' CUP 2002.

William Gilbert's 'De Magnete' translated by P.Fleury Mottelay.

From 'De Magnete' Book 1, Chapter III :�

"But inasmuch as the spherical form, which, too, is the most perfect, agrees best with the earth, which is a globe, and also is the form best suited for experimental uses, therefore we purpose to give our principal demonstrations with the aid of a globe-shaped loadstone, as being the best and the most fitting.� Take then a strong loadstone, solid, of convenient size, uniform, hard, without flaw; on a lathe, such as is used in turning crystals and some precious stones, or on any like instrument (as the nature and toughness of the stone may require, for often it is worked only with difficulty), give the loadstone the form of a ball.� The stone thus prepared is a true homogenous off-spring of the earth and is of the same shape, having got from art the orbicular form that nature in the beginning gave to the earth, the common mother; and it is a natural little body endowed with a multitude of properties whereby many abstruse and unheeded truths of philosophy, hid in deplorable darkness, may be more readily brought to the knowledge of mankind.� To this round stone we give the name microge, or Terrella (earthkin, little earth)."

and,

"The terrella sends its force abroad in all directions, according to its energy and its quality.� But whenever iron or other magnetic body of suitable size happens within its sphere of influence it is attracted; yet the nearer it is to the loadstone the greater the force with which it is borne toward it."

Of course Gilbert does discuss his theory ideas in various parts of his works often using different terms capable of different interpretation and translation - physics did not yet have an accepted technical jargon then, so that eg Gilbert himself had to invent some terms like 'electricity'. In another bit of latin innovation, he coined a term for mutually-attracting bodies coming together - 'coition' - but unlike his electricity that term did not catch-on in physics.

The latin term 'effluvia', meaning approximately 'emissions', was used by many before and after Gilbert but often in quite different and in some cases unscientific theories. Hence atomists used 'effluvia' as proposed emissions of particles said to push bodies about - including an early theory of magnetism in which magnetic particle effluvia from magnets were supposed to push away the air between a magnet and a piece of iron so that the resulting vacuum sucked iron to magnets. Descartes' physics also involved particle effluvia. Others have used 'effluvia' with a different sense, as either emissions of energy or of 'soul' that left one body and if entering another body energised, enlivened or motivated it.

In all of these uses, proposed 'effluvia' directly caused actions in bodies. Gilbert's theory was quite different in involving a variety of effluvia some of which he reasoned were probably particles and some not - and his effluvia signal emissions did not directly cause any actions but acted as signals to bodies receiving them and bodies themselves responded automatically as information response robots. Gilbert maybe should have invented a new term for his effluvia, but a term that covered a thing being both an automatic emission and acting as a received automatic signal did not exist in latin (and in English now might need something like 'emission signal quanta' ?) - making the understanding and translating of Gilbert physics with its robot-matter difficult. Uniquely his physics theory's ultimate particles are basically nanorobots as the basis of all physics - including electricity, magnetism and gravity.

NOTE. Gilbert's effluvia signal emission explains gravitational and electric charge attraction decreasing as the square of the distance from a body, as his effluvia signal emissions spread and dilute evenly and the surface of spheres increases as the square of their radius. Inverse square force necessarily follows from any theory involving emissions of particles or of waves, excepting possibly when travelling through a medium ( eg gas, liquid or solid ) when losses might be expected to involve actual attenuation being somewhat greater than the square of the distance. Hence such forces, like light, following the inverse square law over astronomical distances would seem to involve either 0% interaction, 100% propagation and/or no medium ? (magnetism is a somewhat more complex effect that does not simply follow the inverse square rule anyway).

Non-emission physics theories, like Maxwell's field theory and Einstein's continuum theory, include inverse square action perhaps non-necessarily and even arbitrarily ? Also in a Gilbert type theory a constant signal-response time, a signal saturation level and/or a maximum response level might replace Einstein's perhaps anomalous constant velocity of light ?

Collision push-theories of forces like gravity are assumed to work something like 'billiards averaged' - where the typical collision is glancing-collision where a ball from one direction collides causing another ball to move away at some angle, but the average being exactly head-on causing the other ball to move away in the same direction though happening much less often. However, signal response systems may always respond precisely to the directionality of incoming signals - as some plants and animals respond to a light source, moving directly towards or directly away or eg spiralling towards like moths. Of course individual 'force events' may perhaps never be detectable, only average responses ?

When a beam of light hits a sheet of glass, a wave theory or a particle theory may seem to require that the light be entirely reflected or entirely refracted - but in fact at least normally some of BOTH happens. While either light theory can be elaborated to explain such double-happening, it seems maybe simpler to take it as not being down to either form of mechanical contact but as down to marginal attraction/repulsion responses Gilbert-Newton theory fashion ? Of course Gilbert, Descartes, Newton and Einstein all supported determinist theories where if you know the full details then any event will involve single determinate outcomes though a multi-event event might have multiple single determinate outcomes. They all rejected probabilistic or indeterminate events in physics as being 'uninformed' or 'inadequately experimented' events only. Yet for some kinds of 'probabilistic' events mathematical laws have been produced that some see as giving an alternative type of. or elaboration of, physics theory.

'De Magnete' page 155 :- - Click image to enlarge, or to get click-enlargable image.

Gilbert's 'De Mundo....' :-

Gilbert was rightly afraid to publish his ideas on astronomy and gravity in his lifetime, and it was nearly 50 years after his death that they were published in his De Mundo.

That work showed that Gilbert concluded that there must be some force natural to planetary bodies, which was proportional to their size, mutually attractive and decreased with distance. An attractive force that was emitted from the sun making planets orbit it, that was emitted from the Earth making the moon orbit it, and that was emitted from the moon making Earth tides. Basically just what astronomy needed. He did not specifically link that either with magnetism or with earths gravity, though saying that objects weight consist only them responding to attractions from another body like the earth.

Kepler did learn of these astronomy ideas of Gilbert, as least in general, long before their postumous publishing, and he did acknowledge Gilbert but developed an unworkable mechanical-field vortex modification as his own theory (akin to the later Descartes fluid-ether vortex theory) which he wrongly thought better than Gilbert's theory and Newton later disproved it.

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