Consequently, in spite of an explanation of electricity and magnetism that one would be amused to find in a textbook today, we can still read his _De magnete_ with interest and profit. But more important than his scientific speculations, is the insight he can give us into a Renaissance philosophy of nature and its relation to medieval thought. One does not find in _De magnete_ a prototype of modern physical science in the same sense one can in the writings of Galileo and Kepler. Instead one finds here a full-fledged example of an earlier kind of science, and this is Gilbert's main value to the historian today.