Maxwell did not admit the existence of
open currents. To his mind, therefore, an electrical vibration could
not produce condensations of electricity. It was, in consequence,
necessarily transverse, and thus coincided with the vibration of
Fresnel; while the corresponding magnetic vibration was perpendicular
to it, and would coincide with the luminous vibration of Neumann.
Maxwell's theory thus establishes a close correlation between the
phenomena of the luminous and those of the electromagnetic waves, or,
we might even say, the complete identity of the two. But it does not
follow from this that we ought to regard the variation of an electric
field produced at some one point as necessarily consisting of a real
displacement of the ether round that point. The idea of thus bringing
electrical phenomena back to the mechanics of the ether is not, then,
forced upon us, and the contrary idea even seems more probable. It is
not the optics of Fresnel which absorbs the science of electricity, it
is rather the optics which is swallowed up by a more general theory.
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