On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth; a New Physiology, Demonstrated with Many Arguments and Experiments. a Translation by P. Fleury Mottelay – William Gilbert

Overview

William Gilbert of Colchester, Physician of London, On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth: A New Physiology, Demonstrated with Many Arguments and Experiments is the first English-language translation of William Gilbert’s Latin treatise De Magnete (1600). The translation is by P. Fleury Mottelay and was published in London by B. Quaritch in 1893. The Wellcome Collection catalogue records the London edition as published by Bernard Quaritch in 1893, running to liv + 368 pages, with illustrations, a portrait and facsimiles. An edition was also issued in New York by John Wiley & Sons. The volume also contains Mottelay’s biographical memoir of Gilbert and an “Address” praising De Magnete by Edward Wright, a mathematician, cartographer and contemporary colleague of Gilbert.

The English title renders the full Latin title of the original. That title is De magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de magno magnete tellure; physiologia nova, plurimis & argumentis, & experimentis demonstrata. The words “a new physiology” are Gilbert’s own. The phrase “physiology” in the sense of natural philosophy signalled his claim to be replacing the inherited Aristotelian account of nature with one founded on experiment.

The Author and the Original Work

The author is William Gilbert (also spelled Gilberd) of Colchester, the English physician and natural philosopher. He should not be confused with other men of the same name. He lived from 1544 (the birth year is marked with a query) to 30 November 1603, and was an English physician, physicist and natural philosopher. Born in Colchester to a prosperous magistrate, he received a B.A. from Cambridge in 1561, an M.A. in 1564 and an M.D. in 1569. By the mid-1570s he was practising medicine in London, where he joined the Royal College of Physicians and was elected its president in 1600. He served as Elizabeth I’s own physician from 1601 until her death in 1603, and James VI and I renewed his appointment.

De Magnete was the only work Gilbert published during his lifetime. It came out of nearly two decades of research on magnetism and electricity, which Elizabeth encouraged with an annual pension. Written in Latin for an international readership, the title means “On the Magnet” or, more precisely, “On Loadstone”. Unlike contemporaries such as Francis Bacon, Galileo and Kepler, Gilbert’s fame rests entirely on this one book.

Content and Arguments

The treatise is in six books. The first surveys the history and properties of the loadstone. The later books treat magnetic attraction and its distinction from electrical attraction, the directive property of magnets, the variation of the compass, the dip of the needle, and the Earth itself. One summary describes it as a volume of 240 pages with many diagrams, divided into six books, the first dealing with ancient and modern accounts of the loadstone, its nature, where it is found and its properties. The sixth book is headed “On the Globe of the Earth, the Great Magnet”.

The book’s central thesis is that the Earth itself is a giant magnet. Gilbert made lathe-turned spherical lodestones, which he called terrellae (“little earths”), as laboratory models for studying terrestrial magnetism. From experiments with his model Earth he concluded that the planet acts like a bar magnet, which explains why compasses point north and why there are north and south poles.

Gilbert also introduced or popularised key terms and distinctions:

• He preferred “coition” to “attraction” for magnetic action, to stress that the action was mutual between two magnetic bodies, each within the orb of virtue of the other.
• He distinguished magnetism from electricity and coined the term “electric” for materials showing electric effects.
• Mottelay’s glossary, quoted in Wikiquote, defines Gilbert’s “verticity” as a directing virtue or innate turning vigor (virtus convertens), rather than rotation.

Gilbert’s rejection of scholastic authority is a recurring theme. He passionately rejected both Aristotelian philosophy and the Scholastic method of university teaching. His preface urges readers to look for knowledge not only in books but in things themselves, in a phrase Mottelay translated. The book emphasises empirical observation and describes a large number of distinct experiments.

The Mottelay Translation

Translator and Context

Paul Fleury Mottelay was an American author who also compiled a chronological history of electricity and magnetism. The Citizendium entry describes him as the author of “The Chronological …”, a reference to that work. His translation appeared in the early 1890s, at a time of growing historical interest in the origins of electrical science. The American Mottelay brought out his translation in 1893, ahead of the translation by Silvanus P. Thompson. Thompson’s translation was prepared with the Gilbert Club and published by the Chiswick Press in London in 1900, in a limited edition of 250 copies.

Reception

Nature noted the book among its books received in April 1893. Its notice said that among men of science there was no difference of opinion on the value of the original Latin work. It observed that Mottelay had added a short biographical memoir covering the leading facts of Gilbert’s career, and judged the volume well printed on good paper and very welcome to students of the history of scientific ideas.

Later scholarship has been more critical. The Lancaster University Gilbert website calls Thompson’s translation good, though arguably hampered by its attempt to recreate an Elizabethan English idiom. It calls Mottelay’s translation stilted and inferior, as are his notes and biographical essay, but concedes that it has the merit of being accessible, having been reprinted by Dover and put partly on Google Books. Because Mottelay’s essay was so widely read, it is held mainly responsible for perpetuating errors such as giving Gilbert’s birth year as 1540 rather than 1544. An EBSCO research guide likewise notes that the translator’s brief biographical memoir contains some inaccuracies.

Editions and Availability

The work was later reissued as a facsimile by Dover Publications of New York. This Dover edition (1958) is the form in which many modern readers have used Mottelay’s translation of the 1600 text. The 1893 edition is available online through the Wellcome Collection. The Lancaster University site also hosts a PDF of the Mottelay translation. The Wellcome copy came from the Royal College of Physicians, London, of which Gilbert had been president.

Significance

De Magnete is regarded as a foundational work in the study of magnetism and electricity and a milestone of the scientific revolution. It has been described as the first published work of experimental physics. Mottelay’s 1893 translation made the book available to English-speaking readers for the first time. It remained the standard English text until Thompson’s 1900 translation appeared, and the Dover reprint kept it in wide use afterwards. The translation and its memoir have been criticised, but they spread knowledge of Gilbert’s experiments and ideas. The memoir also spread some biographical errors.