Hypothesis non fingo, but he was also a bloody Alchemist, and obsessed with secrecy, which Gilberd hated with a passion. Gilberd was also very big on peer review and cooperation (I get the idea that he was, fundamentally, a very social person, a clubbable man, which was possibly why he rose to the top of the College of Surgeons).
Mostly, the evidence I've seen is negative rather than positive - the first third or so of De Magnete is essentially a literature survey, and contains quite a lot of pointing and laughing, at previous scholars' methods and assumptions rather than their knowledge. I know he corresponded with a number of eminent scholars (though I don't think Bacon was among them - they did overlap, but only during Bacon's spare-time phase) but haven't seen any of it.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-08-21 10:54 am (UTC)Mostly, the evidence I've seen is negative rather than positive - the first third or so of De Magnete is essentially a literature survey, and contains quite a lot of pointing and laughing, at previous scholars' methods and assumptions rather than their knowledge. I know he corresponded with a number of eminent scholars (though I don't think Bacon was among them - they did overlap, but only during Bacon's spare-time phase) but haven't seen any of it.