Magnetism

Use in the book

The compact fragment calls loving only by habit a magnet without magnetism. The object remains while the force that makes it characteristic is missing. A neighboring but separately bounded note pictures “its magnetism” as a cloud one might have dephlogisticated. The referent of the possessive is not settled by the fragment. Neither comparison should be made into an assertion of a medical or psychological theory of magnetic influence.

Places to read

1. II, p. 507, entry 2, ¶1Habitual loving is pictured as a magnet deprived of its force.
2. II, p. 506, entry 7, ¶2Magnetism receives an unresolved cloud comparison.

Translation in this edition

The French noun is printed aiman without final t. Verbal aimant means loving and must not be counted as the noun magnet. The English translation leaves the opening participle without a supplied person and does not join the fragment to a preceding dated block.

Use in the book

Alexander of Aphrodisias reports an explanation using emissions from both stone and iron. The stone's effluences displace the air capping the iron's pores. Once that obstruction is removed, iron's effluences flow out together, and the iron follows them toward the stone. Its movement is further explained by the correspondence between those effluences and the stone's passages: they are commensurate and fit.

The criticism tests four links rather than merely rejecting attraction as mysterious. First, reciprocal emission seems insufficient to privilege the motion of iron rather than stone. Second, iron's own massed outflow should sometimes move it even without the stone. Third, the account does not explain why only the stone's effluences can remove the obstructing air. Fourth, if many bodies possess pores commensurate with others' emissions, why do they not exhibit the same attraction? The final appeal to an abbreviated “water …” quotation brings the broader fit theory into the challenge.

This account shows a sustained effort, as reported, to explain an unusual interaction through mechanisms shared with mixture and perception. It does not establish that Empedocles denied every idea of sympathy, nor that his explanation already possessed later scientific concepts. Alexander's objections identify insufficiencies and symmetry problems within the report; they should not be celebrated through unverified claims about what remained unanswered for two thousand years.

Places to read

1. A 89 (testimony)2Alexander of Aphrodisias, Questions, first excerpt. Reports reciprocal effluences, removal of capping air, and iron following its emission into matching stone passages.
2. A 89 (polemical)2Alexander of Aphrodisias, Questions, second excerpt. Challenges asymmetry, independent movement, selective air removal, and the absence of comparable attraction elsewhere.

Translation in this edition

The first objection has awkward printed Greek: κινείται δὲ πρὸς τὸν σίδηρον does not straightforwardly match the English assignment of iron’s movement toward stone. The paragraph supports the high-level asymmetry challenge, but the isolated clause should not be quoted as textually transparent.