The construction of Electromagnetism

TL;DR

This paper explores the historical development and philosophical foundations of electromagnetism, analyzing its evolution through socio-political and epistemic disputes, and compares its current and alternative formulations.

Contribution

It offers a detailed historical and philosophical analysis of electromagnetism's construction, integrating socio-political context and epistemological debates with mathematical development.

Findings

Historical disputes influenced electromagnetism's development.

The ether was adopted due to socio-political factors.

Mathematical constructions reflect underlying epistemological views.

Abstract

We examine the construction of electromagnetism in its current form, and in an alternative form, from a point of view that combines a minimal realism with strict demands of reason that we first introduce. We follow the historical development as presented in the record of original publications, the underlying epistemology (often explained by the authors) and the mathematical constructions. The historical construction develops along socio-political disputes (mainly, the reunification of Germany and the second industrial revolution), epistemic disputes (at least two demarcations of science in conflict) and several theories of electromagnetism. Such disputes resulted in the militant adoption of the ether by some, a position that expanded in parallel with the expansion of Prussia, but was facilitated by the earlier adoption of a standpoint that required physical hypothesis in the form of analogies as condition for understanding, antithetic to Newton's "\emph{hypotheses non fingo}". ...