CABEO, Niccolò

by Niccolò Cabeo

£6,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

.A very good, clean copy of the first edition of this ground-breaking work on magnets and electricity, with the earliest illustration of the appearance of new poles in a broken magnet (Taylor, 586). Niccolò Cabeo, S.J. (1586-1650) trained at the Jesuit collegium in Parma, and the universities of Padua and Piacenza, and became professor of philosophy and mathematics at Parma and Genoa. Philosophia magnetica is a study of the Earth s magnetic properties, as well as a discussion and frequent confutation of the first study on the subject: William Gilbert s De magnete (1600). Cabeo disagreed with Gilbert on an important premise, believing instead that the Earth was immobile (hence its movement not the source of magnetic fields). But he also perfected some of Gilbert s original observations and discoveries, e.g., the electroscope, whilst engaging with the ideas of ancient (Aristotle), medieval (Petrus Peregrinus) and contemporary (G.B. della Porta, Leonardo Garzoni) scholars. Philosophia became the first book in which account was taken of electric repulsion, and in which was the suggestion for mapping the magnetic field by the use of iron filings (Jordan-Smith, 35). The first part is an introduction to magnetic attraction which discusses, for instance, the properties of magnets, why their two sides repel one another, the causes of the movements of magnetic field and their reference points, how longitude can be gathered through magnetism, magnetic directions in relation to the

• Binding: Hardcover

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