A qualitatively satisfactory explanation of the rainbow was given shortly before 1311 by Theodoric of Freiberg and Qutb al-dīn al-Shīrāzī, but this work had disappeared shortly before Gilbert was born. The quasi-Aristotelian theory which Gilbert espoused was akin to early medieval ideas according to which rays from the sun are tinged as they traverse a thin dewy vapor and then are reflected to the eye of an observer by a dark cloud or dense object. Gilbert had the happy thought that a spherical magnet might serve as a miniature earth, but he missed entirely the notion of a globe of water as a magnified raindrop. Unaware of the role of the spherical drops in the refraction of solar rays, the fuzzy speculations on the rainbow which Gilbert gave inDe Mundostand in marked contrast to the experimental philosophy which he advocated inDe Magnete.