The Natural Philosophy of William Gilbert and His Predecessors

The Natural Philosophy of William Gilbert and His Predecessors is by W. James King. The paper says that 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. The paper says that Gilbert's explanation of the loadstone and its powers is compared with explanations to be found in the Middle Ages and earlier. The paper says it appears from the comparison 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 paper says that, instead of new experimental information, Gilbert's major contribution to natural philosophy was that revealed in the title of his book, a new philosophy of nature, or physiology, as he called it, after the early Greeks. The paper says that Plato turned to a similar animistic explanation in his dialogue Ion, and that a mechanical explanation is also possible was shown by Plato in his Timaeus.