Repository | Book | Chapter

Until far into the second half of the last century, many efforts were made to follow the Newtonian paradigm in taking account of electrodynamic phenomena. One wanted to reduce them to attractive and repulsive central forces of electric particles which were supposed to act directly at a distance, in analogy to gravitational force. In later years, this view was superseded by a theory of contiguous action, i.e., electromagnetic field theory as developed by Michael Faraday (1791–1867) and elaborated by James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879). According to this new view, the main role is not played by the carrier of the charges but by the medium which continuously transports the action from place to place. This transition to field theory is one of the major turning points in the history of physics. In the German speaking world, this change was brought under way and promoted mainly by Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), although in the end he could not free himself from the idea of action at a distance after all. The ultimate establishment of the new theory and the defeat of the action at a distance view is due to his student, Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894).

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8855-3_2

Full citation: