In existographies, Niccolo Cabeo (1585-1650) (IQ:#|#) (CR:3), aka "Cabeus" (Sanford, 1921) was an Italian philosopher, engineer, mathematician, and theologian, noted for []
Overview
Cabeo is classified as a “Jesuit naturalist”, along with Athanasius Kircher and Gaspar Schott, who attempted to tackle the problem of occult or insensible causation in the seventeenth century. [2]
In 1629, Cabeo, in his Magnetic Philosophy, a book that attempted to refute the theories of William Gilbert (1600), from the Aristotelian view, made an important observation of electrical repulsion, reporting his observations that an electrically charged body can attract non-electrified objects, also that two charged objects repelled each other. [1]
Quotes | By
The following are quotes by Cabeo:
“If you seek to be able to know, from the school of the philosophers, why fire should induce heat, so that you do not seek refuge in an occult force or faculty, likewise, from this book you should be able to understand no less clearly why the magnet attracts iron, and why it turns itself to the pole, without another occult quality being thrust upon you.”
— Niccolo Cabeo (1629), Magnetic Philosophy [2]
“It is plain from the above quotation, that Cabeus did not recognize repulsion as a true property of electrification. Nor was it so recognized by others until the publication by Otto von Guericke of his paper ‘De Virtutibus Mundanis’ in 1672. Von Guericke recognized what he regarded as a true repulsion of his electrified sulphur globe for light bodies in its vicinity, but his explanation of the phenomenon was rather metaphysical than physical.”
— Fernando Sanford (1921), “Some Early Theories Regarding Electrical Forces” [3]
References
1. (a) Cabeo, Niccolo. (1629). Magnetic Philosophy (Philosop[hia Magnetica). Succius.
(b) Kirby, Richard. (1956). Engineering in History (co-authors: Sidney Withington, Arthur Darling, Frederick Kilgour) (pg. 329). Courier, 1990.
2. Waddell, Mark A. (2016). Jesuit Science and the End of Nature’s Secrets (pg. #). Routledge.
3. Sanford, Fernando. (1921). “Some Early Theories Regarding Electrical Forces: the Electrical Emanation Theory” (pg. 546), The Scientific Monthly, 12:544-.
External links
● Niccolo Cabeo – Wikipedia.
