Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
damtp.cam.ac.uk
Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
1–10 of 250 posts
Re: Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
#2[flagged]
Re: Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
#3Maxwell's theory is not hard to understand--once you have the proper tools.
The problem is that because of trying to cram a degree into 4 years, you wind up having a class on electromagnetics without any understanding of vector fields.
Electrical engineering is particularly bad about this. You never get exposed to the Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics, and you never get exposed to vector analysis. Consequently, you are stuck with the Heaviside-Hertz pedagogy with silly things like "displacement current" and stupid, weird-ass integration contours (which don't work in motors, LOL)--and the attendant difficulty in understanding Maxwell's theory.
However, if you have vector analysis and fields, then you can understand formulations like Carver Mead's "Collective Electrodynamics": https://www.amazon.com/Collective-Electrodynamics-Quantum-Fo...
Suddenly, emag is a whole lot more straightforward to understand. It's not EASY as it's very math heavy, but it has a lot fewer weird things that are just "we say it works."
Re: Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
#4i wonder if further progress in physics will require abandoning the maxwellian paradigm in the same way that maxwell had to abandon the newtonian paradigm? presumably for something even further removed from everyday experience. dyson must have thought about that possibility, but evidently at least at the time of this paper he rejected it. i'd like to read his reasoning
unrelatedly, i feel like i kind of understand maxwell's theory in terms of vector analysis, but the clifford algebra formulation is still beyond me. it sure looks a lot simpler
Re: Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
#5> The moral of this story is that modesty is not always a virtue. Maxwell and Mendel were
both excessively modest. Mendel's modesty setback the progress of biology by fifty years.
Maxwell's modesty setback the progress of physics by twenty years. It is better for the
progress of science if people who make great discoveries are not too modest to blow their
own trumpets. If Maxwell had had an ego like Galileo or Newton, he would have made sure
that his work was not ignored. Maxwell was as great a scientist as Newton and a far more
agreeable character. But it was unfortunate that he did not begin the presidential address in
Liverpool with words like those that Newton used to introduce the third volume of his
Principia Mathematica, “It remains that, from the same principles, I now demonstrate the
frame of the system of the world”. Newton did not refer to his law of universal gravitation as
“another theory of gravitation which I prefer”
It's a good thing Maxwell is not alive and that he did not follow Dyson's advice, lest Hacker News accuses him of attempting to abuse the attention economy and promote his research like a salesman.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33043945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22297855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39144845
Re: Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
#6One thing I would like to understand is why in our universe we can have two things that combine to nothing. But we can't have 3 things that combine to nothing. Can someone smarter give an explanation.
Re: Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
#7Excellent essay. The thing I do not agree with is how they mention that one has to abandon natural language to understand quantum mechanics. The only reason why we made the jump from Newton to Einstein through Maxwell's theory is Einstein's intuition of the physics behind electrodynamics
Re: Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
#8One thing I would like to understand is why in our universe we can have two things that combine to nothing. But we can't have 3 things that combine to nothing. Can someone smarter give an explanation.
Which are the two things that combine to nothing?
Re: Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
#9One thing I would like to understand is why in our universe we can have two things that combine to nothing. But we can't have 3 things that combine to nothing. Can someone smarter give an explanation.
In Quantum Chromodynamics we have 3 things that combine to nothng though.
Re: Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? (2007) [pdf]
#10One thing I would like to understand is why in our universe we can have two things that combine to nothing. But we can't have 3 things that combine to nothing. Can someone smarter give an explanation.
Which are the two things that combine to nothing?
Particles and antiparticles.
But I think he's trying to make a slightly more general point: why are "parities" (2-fold symmetries) so common in nature and mathematics? Why not more 3-fold symmetries?