ABSTRACT
Through the centuries, the progress of science could be described as exorcising myths by exercising powers of observation and experiment. Thus, the mutual attraction of lode stones was at first given a mythological, or magical, explanation – as occurring in these strange stones by a psychological, or more specifically sexual, attraction. The darker, stronger lodestones were supposed male, the paler and weaker, female. Although this looks like magic when applied to stones, however strange, the notion of psychological attraction (and repulsion) is still applied to people. Just why should one kind of attraction be appropriate for lodestones, and steel magnets – the other only for living organisms, especially people?
