The Natural Philosophy of William Gilbert and His Predecessors Part 2

[33] _Ibid._, pt. 1, ch. 10. See also ch. 4.

[34] _Ibid._, pt. 1, ch. 10.

[35] However, he may not always have approved of him. See M:74; "Overinquisitive theologians, too, seek to light up G.o.d's mysteries and things beyond man's understanding by means of the loadstone and amber."

In the _Idiota de sapientia_ the Cardinal used the image of the magnet and the iron to provide a concrete instance of his "coincidentia oppositorum," to ill.u.s.trate how eternal wisdom, in the Neoplatonic sense, could, at the same time, be principle or cause of being, its complement and also its goal.[36]

Si igitur in omni desiderio vitae intellectualis attenderes, a quo est intellectus, per quod movetur et ad quod, in te comperires dulcedinem sapientiae aeternae illam esse, quae tibi facit desiderium tuum ita dulce et delectabile, ut in inerrabili affectu feraris ad eius comprehensionem tanquam ad immortalitatem vitae tue, quasi ad ferrum et magnetem attendas. Habet enim ferrum in magnete quoddam sui effluxus principium; et dum magnes per sui praesentiam excitat ferrum grave et ponderosum, ferrum mirabili desiderio fertur etiam supra motum naturae, quo secundum gravitatem deorsum tendere debet, et sursum movetur se in suo principio uniendo. Nisi enim in ferro esset quaedam praegustatio naturalis ipsius magnetis, non moveretur plus ad magnetem quam ad alium lapidem; et nisi in lapide esset major inclinatio ad ferrum quam cuprum, non esset illa attractio. Habet igitur spiritus noster intellectualis ab aeterna sapientia principium sic intellectualiter essendi, quod esse est conformius sapientae quam aliud non intellectuale. Hinc irraditio seu immissio in sanctam animam est motus desideriosus in excitatione.

By virtue of the principle that flows from the magnet to the iron--which principle is potentially in the iron, for the iron already has a foretaste for it--the excited iron could transcend its gravid nature and be preternaturally moved to unite with its principle.

Reciprocally, the loadstone has a greater attraction to the iron than to other things. Just as the power of attraction comes from the loadstone, so the Deity is the source of our life. Just as the principle implanted in the magnet moves the iron against its heavy nature, so the Deity raises us above our brutish nature so that we may fulfill our life. As the iron moves to the loadstone, so we move to the Deity as to the goal and end of our life.

In _De pace fidei_, Cusa[37] again used the iron and magnet as an example of motion contrary to and transcending nature. He explained this supernatural motion as being due to the similarity between the nature of the iron and the magnet, and this in turn is a.n.a.logous to the similarity between human spiritual nature and divine spiritual nature. As the iron can move upward to the loadstone because both have similar natures, so man can transcend his own nature and move towards G.o.d when his potential similitude to G.o.d is realized. Another image used by Cusa was the comparison of Christ to the magnetic needle that takes its power from the heavens and shows man his way.[38]

[36] Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusaneus), _Nicolaus von Cues, Texte seiner philosophischen Schriften_, ed. A.

Petzelt, Stuttgart, 1949, bk. 1, _Idiota de sapientia_, p.

306 (quoted in Gilbert, M:104). It is interesting that Cusa held that the loadstone has an inclination to iron, as well as the converse!

[37] Cusa, _Cusa Schriften_, vol. 8, _De pace fidei_, translated by L. Mohler, Leipzig, 1943, ch. 12, p. 127.

[38] Cusa, _Exercitationes_, ch. 7, 563 and 566, quoted in, F. A. Scharpff, _Des Cardinals und Bischofs Nicolaus Von Cusa Wichtigste Schriften in Deutscher Uebersetzung_, Freiburg, 1862, p. 435. See also Martin Billinger, _Das Philosophische in Den Excitationen Des Nicolaus Von Cues_, Heidelberg, 1938, and _Cusa Schriften_ (see footnote 37), vol. 8, p. 209, note 105. Gilbert (M: p. 223) called the compa.s.s "the finger of G.o.d."

The Elizabethan Englishman Robert Norman also turned to the Deity to explain the wonderful effects of the loadstone.[39]

Now therefore ... divers have whetted their wits, yea, and dulled them, as I have mine, and yet in the end have been constrained to fly to the cornerstone: I mean G.o.d: who ...

hath given Virtue and power to this Stone ... to show one certain point, by his own nature and appet.i.te ... and by the same vertue, the Needle is turned upon his own Center, I mean the Center of his Circular and invisible Vertue ... And surely I am of opinion, that if this would be found in a Sphericall form, extending round about the Stone in Great Compa.s.s, and the dead body Stone in the middle therof: Whose center is the center of his aforesaid Vertue. And this I have partly proved, and made visible to be seen in the same manner, and G.o.d sparing me life, I will herein make further Experience.

Again, one can infer that the heavens impart a guiding principle to the iron which acts under the influence of this Superior Cause.

One of the points made in St. Thomas' argument on motion due to the loadstone was that there is a limit to the "virtus" of the loadstone, but he did not specify the nature of it. Norman refined the Thomist concept of a bound by making it spherical in form, foreshadowing Gilbert's "orbis virtutis."

Gilbert's philosophy of nature does not move far from scholastic philosophy, except away from it in logical consistency. As the concern of Aristotle and of St. Thomas was to understand being and change by determining the nature of things, so Gilbert sought to write a logos of the physis, or nature, of the loadstone--a physiology.[40] This physiology was not formally arranged into definitions obtained by induction from experience, but nevertheless there was the same search for the quiddity of the loadstone. Once one knew this nature then all the properties of the loadstone could be understood.

[39] h.e.l.lmann, _op. cit._ (footnote 6), Norman, bk. 1, ch. 8.

[40] M: p. 14.

Gilbert described the nature of the loadstone in the terms of being that were current with his scholarly contemporaries. This was the same ontology that scholasticism had taught for centuries--the doctrine of form and matter that we have already found in St. Thomas and Nicholas of Cusa. Thus we find Richard Hooker[41] remarking that form gives being and that "form in other creatures is a thing proportionable unto the soul in living creatures." Francis Bacon,[42] in speaking of the relations between causes and the kinds of philosophy, said: "Physics is the science that deals with efficient and material causes while Metaphysics deals with formal and final causes." John Donne[43]

expressed the problem of scholastic philosophy succinctly:

This twilight of two yeares, not past or next, Some embleme is of me, ...

... of stuffe and forme perplext, Whose _what_ and _where_, in disputation is ...

As we shall see, Gilbert continued in the same tradition, but his interpretation of form and formal cause was much more anthropomorphic than that of his predecessors.

Gilbert began his _De magnete_ by expounding the natural history of that portion of the earth with which we are familiar.[44]

Having declared the origin and nature of the loadstone, we hold it needful first to give the history of iron also ...

before we come to the explication of difficulties connected with the loadstone ... we shall better understand what iron is when we shall have developed ... what are the causes and the matter of metals ...

His treatment of the origin of minerals and rocks agreed in the main with that of Aristotle,[45] but he departed somewhat from the peripatetic doctrine of the four elements of fire, air, water, and earth.[46] Instead, he replaced them by a pair of elements.[47] (If the rejection of the four Aristotelian elements were clearer, one might consider this a part of his rejection of the geocentric universe but he did not define his position sufficiently.)[48]

[41] Richard Hooker. _Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity_, bk. 1, ch. 3, sect. 4 (_Works_, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1865, vol. 1, p. 157)

[42] Francis Bacon, _De augmentis scientiarum_, bk. 3, ch. 4, in _Works_, ed. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, Boston, n.d. (1900?), vol. 2, p. 267.

[43] _The poems of John Donne_, ed. H. J. C. Grierson, London, Oxford University Press, 1933, p. 175 ("To the Countesse of Bedford, On New Yeares Day").

[44] M: pp. 33, 34.

[45] M: pp. 34, 35. Aristotle, _Works_, ed. W. D. Ross, Oxford, 1908--1952, vol. 2, _De generatione et corruptione_, translated by H. H. Joachim, 1930, vol. 3, _Meteorologica_, translated by E. W. Webster, 1931.

[46] M: pp. 34, 35, 64, 65, 69, 81. Dr. H. Guerlac has kindly brought to my attention the similarity between the explanation given in Gilbert and that given in the _Meteorologica_, bk. 3, ch. 6. p. 378.

[47] M: p. 83.

[48] A statement of the relation between Aristotle's four elements and place can be found in Maier, _op. cit._ (footnote 17), pp. 143-182.

According to Gilbert the primary source of matter is the interior of the earth, where exhalations and "spiritus" arise from the bowels of the earth and condense in the earth's veins.[49] If the condensations, or humors, are h.o.m.ogeneous, they const.i.tute the "materia prima" of metals.[50] From this "materia prima," various metals may be produced,[51] according to the particular humor and the specificating nature of the place of condensation.[52] The purest condensation is iron: "In iron is earth in its true and genuine nature."[53] In other metals, we have instead of earth, "condensed and fixed salts, which are efflorescences of the earth."[54] If the condensed exhalation is mixed in the vein with foreign earths already present, it forms ores that must be smelted to free the original metal from dross by fire.[55] If these exhalations should happen to pa.s.s into the open air, instead of being condensed in the earth, they may return to the earth in a (meteoric) shower of iron.[56]

[49] M: pp. 21, 34, 35, 36, 45.

[50] M: pp. 35, 36, 38, 69; see, however, pp. 42-43: "Iron ore, therefore, as also manufactured iron, is a metal slightly different from the h.o.m.ogenic telluric body because of the metallic humor it has imbibed ..."

[51] M: pp. 19, 34, 36, 37, 42, 69.

[52] M: pp. 35, 36, 37, 38.

[53] M: pp. 38, 63, 69, 84; on p. 34 he says that iron is "more truly the child of the earth than any other metal"; it is the hardest because of "the strong concretion of the more earthy substance."

[54] M: pp. 21, 35, 37, 38.

[55] M: pp. 35, 63.

[56] M: pp. 45, 46.

Gilbert was indeed writing a new physiology, both in the ancient sense of the word and the modern. The process of the formation of metals had many biological overtones, for it was a kind of metallic epigenesis.[57] "Within the globe are hidden the principles of metals and stones, as at the earth's surface are hidden the principles of herbs and plants."[58] In all cases, the "spiritus" acts as s.e.m.e.n and blood that inform and feed the proper womb in the generation of animals.[59] "The brother uterine of iron,"[60] the loadstone, is formed in this manner. As the embryo of a certain species is the result of the specificating nature of the womb in which the generic seed has been placed, so the kind of metal is the result of a certain humor condensing in a particular vein in the body of the earth.

[57] Gilbert's terminology strongly suggests that he was familiar with alchemical literature, as well as that of medical chemistry. He has been credited as being highly skilled in chemistry. See Sir Walter Langdon-Brown, "William Gilbert: his place in the medical world," _Nature_, vol. 154, pp. 136-139, 1944.

[58] _Ibid._, p. 37.

[59] M: pp. 35, 36, 53, 59. See also Galen, _op. cit._ (footnote 15) bk. 2, ch. 3.

[60] M: pp. 16, 59.

Gilbert developed this biological a.n.a.logy further by ascribing to metals a process of decay after reaching maturity. Once these solid materials have been formed, they will degenerate unless protected, forming earths of various kinds as a result.[61] The "rind of the earth"[62] is produced by this process of growth and decay. If these earths are soaked with humors, transparent materials are formed.[63]