sci.physics.electromag

On Mar 7, 1:20 am, maxwell wrote:

> Come on, Fred, get real. There's a world of difference between the
> macroscopic experience of feeling the push/pull of human-scale magnets
> and the proposal that the space in between (and actually, everywhere,
> if you check out the DEFINITION of a 'field') is filled with real
> 'fields'. Maxwell's original EM theory was constructed on the concept
> of a real medium - the aether (go read his 1865 EM paper). The
> dispacements and twists of this medium were MAPPED to the mathematics
> of vector fields. The modern technique for describing Maxwell's
> theory drops all this aether stuff & let's space itself play this
> role, without calling it an aether (too old fashioned). Instead,
> classical EM resurrects Helmholtz's wrong electric fluid model in the
> disguise of 'electric charge density' (now doesn't that sound a lot
> more modern & scientific?) . Unfortunately, the experimentalists came
> along around 1900 and said, "sorry, it's not continuous, electricity
> EXISTS in the form of electrons, which have turned out to be like
> points - no size" (sorry, DesCartes, matter is NOT continuous and it
> does NOT need spatial extension). So, at best, Maxwell's Equations
> are a statistical summary (over a lot of electrons & a lot of
> interactions) that can be approximated by continuum mathematics, which
> can be summed (sorry, integrated) back to the human scale where all
> this began & voila, it fits our experience! If you liked that 'white
> rabbit' I heard there's a bridge in NY...
> Say it again, Fred. "Fields really exist." Come onnnn, let's get
> back to REALITY.

I agree with what Maxwell (above) said.

Benj