• DOI:10.1086/286445
• Corpus ID: 121067746

The Lodestone and the Understanding of Matter in Seventeenth Century England

@article{Chalmers1937TheLA,
  title={The Lodestone and the Understanding of Matter in Seventeenth Century England},
  author={Gordon Keith Chalmers},
  journal={Philosophy of Science},
  year={1937},
  volume={4},
  pages={75 - 95}
}

• G. Chalmers
• Published 1 January 1937
• History
• Philosophy of Science

OLUMBUS and Galileo are usually considered the prime revolutionaries whose discoveries in the physical world brought on the spiritual revo\ lution in modern life, but during the first full century of the modern world another discoverer was so regarded by Sir Thomas Browne. In the "experiments, grounds, and causes," of the compass needle, he said, Dr. William Gilbert "discovered more in it than Columbus or Americus ever did by it." Like Columbus, Gilbert made his discovery unwittingly. The navigator had been in search of Asia when he found a new continent; the doctor in seeking a reason for magnetic action led men's attention to reasoning on a new theory of Matter. Through his magnetical researches, the old logical conception of a continuous, soul-animated matter held by the conservative doctors and alchemists was discredited. The discoveries of all three, Columbus, Galileo, and Gilbert, were in many ways interrelated, and of course no single m'ind released the curiosities of the modern world unaided. What the scientists had to find out in their own laboratories and their own reasoning was persuasive evidence that matter is divorced from spirit, and for a