Animism, Aristotelianism, and the Legacy of William Gilbert’sDe Magnete

Abstract

William Gilbert’s 1600 book, De magnete, greatly influenced early modern natural philosophy. The book describes an impressive array of physical experiments, but it also advances a metaphysical view at odds with the soon to emerge mechanical philosophy. That view was animism. I distinguish two kinds of animism – Aristotelian and Platonic – and argue that Gilbert was an Aristotelian animist. Taking Robert Boyle as an example, I then show that early modern arguments against animism were often effective only against Platonic animism. In fact, unacknowledged traces of Aristotelian animism can be found in Boyle’s mechanical account of nature. This was Gilbert’s legacy.

Ingold, hermeneutics, and hylomorphic animism

“…To do this, I will focus on one of Ingold's key concepts, namely, animism. Elsewhere, I have argued that this concept-introduced by E. B. Tylor in 1871-has a European prehistory with two distinct streams: a mystical Neoplatonic one; and a naturalistic Aristotelian one (Kochan, 2021a(Kochan, , 2021b. I have also argued that Ingold's animism moves with the Neoplatonic stream, especially the scientificspiritualist-and deliberately antisociological-views of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Kochan, 2022).…”