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It was 1600 England when the first real science book was published, in a Latin that was probably the first attempt at a Scientific Latin.
The book was William Gilbert's 'De magnete, magneticisque corporibus et de magno magnete Tellure, physiologia nova, plurimis et argumentis et experimentis demonstrata' - or 'The magnet and magnetic bodies and the great magnet the Earth, a new natural science with many proofs and experimental demonstrations.'
De Magnete detailed Gilbert's many new experiments on magnetism and static electricity and their results. It also included in brief a misunderstood physics theory that he believed his experiments proved and which basically involved robot-atoms attracting and repelling eachother by emitting signals that he termed 'effluvia' to which they responded by moving themselves automatically.
Gilbert's physics seemed to not require a God, and involved no inert atoms or inanimate matter. Most later physicists tried to allow God some place and took all matter as inert, so Gilbert's physics is certainly somewhat unique.
His physics being based on robots and signal response long before the computer age, was a physics theory way before its time. It was largely not understood and was generally dismissed as being magic based. But one physicist who take Gilbert's Attraction Theory seriously was Isaac Newton, probably the most astute physicist ever.
William Gilbert briefly described his general physics in his postumously published De Mundo basically saying,
"The force which emanates from the moon reaches to the earth, and, in like manner, the 'magnetical virtue' of the earth pervades the region of the moon: both correspond and conspire by the joint action of both, according to a proportion and conformity of motions, but the earth has more effect in consequence of its superior mass ; the earth attracts and repels the moon, and the
moon, within certain limits, the earth ; NOT so as to make the bodies come together as magnetic bodies do, but so that they may go on in a continuous course.". PS. Inspiration for these Attraction Physics ideas are fully credited to Vincent Wilmot and his website at http://www.new-science-theory.com/ and of course to the originator of attraction theory William Gilbert and to Isaac Newton - also see Steve Pumfrey (Lancaster University
science historian) in 'Cambridge Scientific Minds' CUP 2002. |