Faraday and Maxwell

Consciousness, Physics, and the Holographic Paradigm

Essays by A.T. Williams

Part I: Sneaking Up On Einstein

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain,
and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
- Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Section 3

Chapter 4 Section 3: Faraday and Maxwell

Unforeseen events and unanticipated consequences that shape history may be produced by human beings who imperfectly understand the thoughts or intent of other human beings. Each individual construes a new concept according to his or her own experience, education, insight and understanding, thereby either intentionally or unintentionally modifying the fundamental concept the originator had in mind.

For example, as mathematically innovative as he was, Clerk Maxwell seriously altered Faraday's concept of natural forces when he interpreted Faraday's detailed experimental results in strict accordance with classical (Newtonian) mechanics. Maxwell then used classical mechanics as the foundation for his own dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field.

In her paper, Faraday's Field Concept, Nancy J. Nersessian succinctly describes Faraday's field concept and Maxwell's fateful modification:

The specific features of Faraday's field concept, in its 'favourite' and most complete form, are that force is a substance, that it is the only substance and that all forces are interconvertible through various motions of the lines of force. These features of Faraday's 'favourite notion' were not carried on. Maxwell, in his approach to the problem of finding a mathematical representation for the continuous transmission of electric and magnetic forces, considered these to be states of stress and strain in a mechanical aether. This was part of the quite different network of beliefs and problems with which Maxwell was working.16

To clarify Faraday's concept of "force is a substance," it should be noted that 19th century science recognized two different kinds of physical substance which, together, produced the entirety of material reality just-as-it-is. The two substances were defined as:

Ponderable matter: Material substance which has a nonzero physical mass, is capable of being weighed, and occupies space.
Imponderable matter: Material substance assumed to have a nonzero mass and occupy space, but which could not be weighed. For example:
- heat.
- light.
- electricity.
- magnetism.

The numerous imponderable fluids of the 18th century had given way to imponderable matter which was further subdivided into radiant energy and presumably weightless radiant matter. It turned out that radiant matter is, in fact, ponderable and the fourth state of matter is now called plasma.

The search for radiant matter led from chemistry through Faraday, Maxwell, Crookes, and Röntgen, to J.J. Thomson and his discovery of the electron (e^-) in 1897.
- The electron is a subatomic particle with a ponderable physical mass of 9.11 × 10^-31 kg.
- The electron has a negative electric charge of -1.
The search for radiant energy led from electricity and magnetism through Faraday, Maxwell, Helmholtz, and Hertz, to thermodynamics and Max Planck's discovery of the quantum of blackbody electromagnetic radiation in 1900.

Faraday was internationally famous in chemistry, electricity, and magnetism. His experiments, laboratory notes, and published papers make it clear that his concept of fundamental force as a substance can refer only to the imponderable matter (weightless substance) recognized by his scientific colleagues.

On the other hand, Maxwell was not only limited by his belief that all force must be mathematically described as classical Newtonian force, but also further limited by his belief that all energy, including the energy of the electromagnetic field, is mechanical energy:

In speaking of the Energy of the field, however, I wish to be understood literally. All energy is the same as mechanical energy, whether it exists in the form of motion or in that of elasticity, or in any other form. The energy in electromagnetic phenomena is mechanical energy. The only question is, Where does it reside?17

Indeed, Einstein concurred with and perpetuated Maxwell's assessment that electromagnetic energy is mechanical energy. Among the most serious unintentional consequences of this limited, Newtonian view is the fact that some important aspects of Faraday's contributions to science remain undeveloped and neglected up to, and including, the present time.

Einstein informs us in his Autobiographical Notes that before he entered the Federal Polytechnic Institute (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, ETH, or Poly) in Zurich, he "had the good fortune of getting to know the essential results and methods of the entire field of the natural sciences in an excellent popular exposition, which limited itself almost throughout to qualitative aspects (Bernstein's People's Books on Natural Science, a work of 5 or 6 volumes), a work which I read with breathless attention."18

With all due respect to Einstein's native genius, the essential concepts and results he garnered from Bernstein's books ultimately may have worked to his detriment by producing a preconceived view not only of science per se, but also of physical reality just-as-it-is.

Einstein was something less than an ideal student. Speaking from a mature perspective more than five decades later, he wrote that upon entering the ETH as a student at age 17:

There I had excellent teachers (for example, Hurwitz, Minkowski), so that I really could have gotten a sound mathematical education. However, I worked most of the time in the physical laboratory, fascinated by the direct contact with experience. The balance of the time I used in the main in order to study at home the works of Kirchhoff, Helmholtz, Hertz, etc.19

What made the greatest impression upon the student, however, was less the technical construction of mechanics or the solution of complicated problems than the achievements of mechanics in areas which apparently had nothing to do with mechanics: the mechanical theory of light, which conceived of light as the wave-motion of a quasi-rigid elastic ether, and above all the kinetic theory of gases: the independence of the specific heat of monatomic gases of the atomic weight, the derivation of the equation of state of a gas and its relation to the specific heat, the kinetic theory of the dissociation of gases, and above all the quantitative connection of viscosity, heat-conduction and diffusion of gases, which also furnished the absolute magnitude of the atom. These results supported at the same time mechanics as the foundation of physics and of the atomic hypothesis, which latter was already firmly anchored in chemistry. However, in chemistry only the ratios of the atomic masses played any rôle, not their absolute magnitudes, so that atomic theory could be viewed more as a visualizing symbol than as knowledge concerning the factual construction of matter. Apart from this it was also of profound interest that the statistical theory of classical mechanics was able to deduce the basic laws of thermodynamics, something which was in essence already accomplished by Boltzmann.20

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906), who was living in Vienna when Einstein published his famous 1905 papers, Rudolf Clausius (1822-1888), and Clerk Maxwell were 19th century contemporaries who shared mathematical and scientific interests that laid the foundations Einstein would revise and employ in his own 20th century theoretical physics.

Clausius published his famous paper on heat, "Über die bewegende Kraft der Wärme," in 1850, and from 1855 to 1867 held dual appointments not only as professor at the University of Zurich, but also to the Chair of Mathematical Physics at the Poly (ETH) in Zurich. Boltzmann derived the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law (equipartition of energy) for a classical gas in 1871.

During almost any critical study of Maxwell, one is led directly to the kinetic theory of gases from which Maxwell and Boltzmann developed the fundamental principles of statistical mechanics, and to Clausius, whose mechanical theory of heat established the foundation of classical thermodynamics.

The mature Einstein further acknowledges:

The most fascinating subject at the time that I was a student was Maxwell's theory. What made this theory appear revolutionary was the transition from forces at a distance to fields as fundamental variables. The incorporation of optics into the theory of electromagnetism, with its relation of the speed of light to the electric and magnetic absolute system of units as well as the relation of the refraction coëfficient and the metallic conductivity of the body—it was like a revelation. Aside from the transition to field-theory, i.e., the expression of the elementary laws through differential equations, Maxwell needed only one single hypothetical step—the introduction of the electrical displacement current in the vacuum and in the dielectrica and its magnetic effect, an innovation which was almost prescribed by the formal properties of the differential equations. In this connection I cannot suppress the remark that the pair Faraday-Maxwell has a most remarkable inner similarity with the pair Galileo-Newton – the former of each pair grasping the relations intuitively, and the second one formulating those relations exactly and applying them quantitatively.21

The relationship expressed in Einstein's comment above may be accurate with respect to the Galileo-Newton pair. Nonetheless, the analogy breaks down when applied to the Faraday-Maxwell pair.

Continued in Section 4: Faraday versus Maxwell

Reference Notes (Click on the Note number to return to the text):

16 Nersessian, Nancy J. "Faraday's Field Concept," Faraday Rediscovered, p. 183. Gooding, David, and James, Frank A.J.L., editors. Stockton Press, New York, NY, 1985. ISBN 0-333-39320-1

17 Maxwell, James Clerk. The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell [1890], vol. 1, p. 564. W. D. Niven, editor. Two volumes bound as one, Dover Publications, New York (no date).
A modern commemorative reprint of A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field with prefatory and introductory comments by Thomas Torrance, editor, and an appreciation of Maxwell's influence by Albert Einstein was published by Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 1982. ISBN 1-57910-015-5

18 Schilpp, Paul Arthur, editor. Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, p. 15. Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, [1951] 1970. ISBN 0-87548-286-4

19 Ibid. (ref. 18, p.15)

20 Ref. 18, pp. 19, 21.

21 Ref. 18, pp. 33, 35.

Back to Chapter 4, Section 2: Faraday, Thomson, and Maxwell

Index: Consciousness, Physics, and the Holographic Paradigm

Last Edit: March 5, 2005.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

This paper is a work in progress.
Please check for the latest update before quoting in other venues the concepts and hypotheses presented here.
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