Bibliographical history of electricity & magnetism, chronologically arranged
History
Bibliographical history of electricity & magnetism, chronologically arranged
Electricity -- History; Electricity -- History -- Bibliography; Magnetism -- History; Magnetism -- History -- Bibliography; Science, Medieval
In the “Opus Tertium,” the last of the series of three which, it is
said, were all completed in about eighteen months, he speaks more than
once of A.D. 1267 as being the then current year. This happens
to be but two years prior to the date of the epistle of Pierre Pélerin
de Maricourt, the great experimentalist (Petrus Peregrinus), whom he
commends (p. lxxv) in the following words: “For there are only two
perfect mathematicians, Master John of London[16] and Master Peter of
Maricourt, the Picard ... who is worth more than any of them ... of
whom I have fully written in my ‘Opus Minus’ and of whom I shall write
more in its proper place.” Of this Master Peter, whom he calls one
of his most illustrious pupils, he further says that, being “struck
with the genius that dawned in his countenance,” he took him under his
protection from his fifteenth year and instructed him so carefully
that he outstripped all of his contemporaries both at Oxford and at
Paris. “There is no one,” adds he, “who knows so much of the root of
Philosophy ...” and one who, “through experiment, gains such knowledge
of things natural, medical, chemical; indeed, of everything in the
heavens or earth.”
Gilbert states (“De Magnete,” Book I. chap. i.) that many believe the
work of Peter Peregrinus on the magnet owes its origin to the opinions
of Roger Bacon. And in the Appendix I to Brewer’s work--p. 537, chap.
vi. “De Experimentis Mirabilibus”--will be found Bacon’s views fully
exposed on the operations of the magnet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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