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References
“A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field”, The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, ed. W. D. Niven (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1890; combined vol., New York: Dover Publication, n.d.), I, 554–564. Faraday's law appears side by side with Ampère's for the first time in 1868, six years after Maxwell's form of Ampère's law was first published, and three years after it received its definitive form in the paper “A Note on the Electromagnetic Theory of Light”, Scientific Papers, II, 138–39. However, the equations reappear in the earlier form in A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (2 vols.; 3rd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press 1892; combined vol., Dover Publications, 1954), Article 619.
A. M. Bork deals with the symmetry theory of the genesis of the \(\dot D\) term in “Maxwell, Displacement Current and Symmetry”, American Journal of Physics, XXXI (Nov. 1963), 854–59. I owe to him the example of Norman Campbell's statement of the theory, in section 2. An especially insightful discussion of the symmetries to be found in the two forms in which Maxwell presents his equations is contained in C. W. F. Everitt's forthcoming book on Maxwell's life and scientific work.
See, for example, Leigh Page & Norman Isley Adams, Jr., Principles of Electricity (2nd. ed.; New York: Van Nostrand, 1949), 547–48.
Scientific Papers, I. 451–513.
Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893), vii.
Norman Campbell, What is Science? (New York: Dover Publications, 1952, reprinted from the 1921 ed.), 156.
Les théories électriques de J. Clerk Maxwell (Paris: A. Hermann, 1902), 62.
Ibid., 211–12.
More detail on the two directions of R is given in my forthcoming paper, “Maxwell's Electrostatics”.
Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity (3 vols., London: B. Quaritch, 1839–55), III, 451.
Origins of Clerk Maxwell's Electrical Ideas ed. Joseph Larmor (Cambridge: University Press, 1937), 35.
A. M. Bork, unpublished manuscript. (To be published as the Introduction to Foundations of Electromagnetic Theory: Maxwell, in the series, Sources of Science, ed., Harry Woolf (Johnson Reprint Corp.).)
“Maxwell's Concept of Electric Displacement” (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Department of the History of Science, University of Wisconsin).
For a discussion of Maxwell's use of physical hypothesis, mechanical models and analogies, see three articles by Joseph Turner; “Maxwell on the Method of Physical Analogy”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, VI, No. 23 (1955), 226–38; “Maxwell on the Logic of Dynamical Explanation”, Philosophy of Science, 23 (1956), 36–47; “A Note on Maxwell's Interpretation of Some Attempts at Dynamical Explanation”, Annals of Science, 11, No. 3 (1956), 238–45.
Lewis Campbell & William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1st. ed.; London: Macmillan, 1882), 330.
Memoir and Scientific Correspondence of the Late Sir George Gabriel Stokes, ed. Joseph Larmor (Cambridge: University Press, 1907), II, 26.
Scientific Papers, I, 155–229.
Origins of Clerk Maxwell's Electrical Ideas, 45.
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Communicated by S. G. Brush
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Bromberg, J. Maxwell's displacement current and his theory of light. Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 4, 218–234 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00412961
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00412961