@InBook{,
ALTauthor = {Nancy J. Nersessian},
ALTeditor = {Nancy J. Nersessian},
title = {Maxwell's `Newtonian aether-field'},
chapter = {4},
publisher = {Kluwer},
year = {1994},
OPTaddress = {Dordrecht},
OPTpages = {68--93},
}
Claim
(p)
Evidence
Claim
(p72) Maxwell got the idea of a "physical analogy" from William Thompson.
Evidence
He at one point asked Thompson if he had "patented that notion with
all its applications? for I intend to borrow it for a season, without
mentioning anything about heat (except of course historically) but
applying it in a somewhat different way to a more general case to
which the laws of heat do not apply."
Claim
(p73) Maxwell used abstraction and simplification
Evidence
Maxwell says "The first process therefore in the study of the science
must be one of simplification and reduction of the results of previous
investigation to a form in which the mind can grasp them. The results
of this simplification may take the form of a purely mathematical
formula or of a physical hypothesis... We must therefore discover some
method of investigation, which allows the mind at every step to lay
hold of a clear physical conception, without being committed to any
theory founded on the physical science from which that conception is
borrowed, so that it is neither drawn aside from the subject in
pursuit of analytical subtleties, nor carried beyond the truth by a
favorite hypothesis."
Claim
Some of Maxwell's thinking was visual in nature
Evidence
(p73) Maxwell: "that partial similarity between the laws of one
science and those of another which makes each of them illustrate the other."
Claim
(p73) His physical analogies lead to physical hypotheses
Evidence
1. That there is a time delay in the transmission of electric and
magnetic actions and 2. that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon.
Claim
(p76) Maxwell's analogy was generative.
Evidence
There is evidence that he only wrote part 3 of his "On Faraday's Lines
of Force" paper after part 2 was in press-- the physical analogy led
him to further hypotheses. Also, [p82] there is one point in which
Maxwell gets the sign wrong in an equation he is using. Following the
logic of the analogy, it makes sense, and without the analogy, there
is no justification for the sign difference.
Claim
(p)
Evidence
(p)