Abstract
To say that scientists can think through their apparatus or their fingers is not just a metaphor. Peirce’s observation is apt, yet Tyndall’s comment shows that his advice is not easily followed. Those “best trained in ordinary theoretical conceptions” found Faraday’s new view of electrostatics most difficult. They were also slow to adopt the changes in mensurative practice it implied. The new concept of electrostatic induction emerged from the investigation of electrical phenomena between 1833 and 1836. By 1836 induction was an heuristic principle rather than a possibility, but by November of 1837 when he published his first molecular theory of induction it was the first principle of a theory which would unify electrostatics, electrochemistry, electrodynamics and ordinary magnetism as well. His arguments introduced a new meaning for the term ‘induction’ into the vocabulary of natural philosophy.
Of all men of the century Faraday had the greatest power of drawing ideas straight out of his experiments and making his physical apparatus do his thinking, so that experimentation and inference were not two proceedings, but one. To understand what this means, read his Researches on Electricity.
Peirce
The meaning of Faraday in these memoirs on Induction and Conduction is … by no means always clear; and the difficulty will be most felt by those who are best trained in ordinary theoretical conceptions. ... For instance, he speaks over and over again of the impossibility of charging a body with one electricity, though the impossibility is by no means evident.
Tyndall
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Notes
See the epigrams to chapter 6 from Ryle (1949) and Feyerabend (1987).
Gooding (1980a) and (1975).
On traditional electrostatics experimentation see Heilbron (1979), (1981) and Hackmann (1978, 1979).
Ross (1961), Williams (1965), chapter 6.
See the Diary (1932–36), v. 2, paras. 1758–1903 and letters between Faraday and Whewell during April and May 1834, in Williams et al., eds (1971), v. 1, pp. 264–72.
See series seven of the Researches, in Faraday (1839–55), v. 1.
Series 11 is reprinted in Faraday (1839–55), vol. 1. Hereafter references to paragraph numbers are set in round brackets in the text, to distinguish them from references to paragraph numbers in the Diary.
The changing modalities of Faraday’s language mark the development of possibilities, first into ‘probable’ facts which undermine accepted (i.e., common-sense) interpretations of phenomena and their translation into necessities. Similarly, queries about existing theory reappear as matters of doubt and finally as points to be tried by experiment. A more detailed study is needed to connect textual analysis of modalities to changing experimental practice.
The controversy over Andrew Crosse’s evidence for the electrical origins of life is described in Secord (1989); for Faraday’s involvement see p. 350 ff.
For the relationship between polarity, contiguity and action at a distance see Gooding (1978) and for curvature of the lines, Gooding (1985a). Faraday sought direct visual evidence for them early in 1836: see Faraday (1932–36), v. 2, paras. 29-4-16; 2991 ff.
The one pass fallacy and its consequences are described in Nickles (1988, 1989).
A detailed study of catalysis is reported in series 6, reprinted in Faraday (1839–55), v. 1.
See Gooding (1975), p. 90 ff.
See Faraday to C. Lernen, 25 April 1834, in Williams et al., eds (1971), v. 1, p. 267.
To explain the laws of electrolysis by an atomic theory the ‘association’ of the force with the particle must be preserved during the conversion of chemical affinities into the dynamical forces of the current and back again, as a process obeying conservation.
Faraday (1839–55), v. 1, p. 321.
References to the laboratory Diary are cited in square brackets in the text.
For this development see Maxwell’s second paper on electromagnetism, “On Physical Lines of Force”, reprinted in Maxwell (1890), v. 1, pp. 155–229. The introduction of the displacement current has been extensively duiscussed: see Chalmers (1986, 1973), Nersessian (1984) and Heimann (1970).
Whewell to Faraday, 29 December 1836, Williams et al., eds. (1971), v. 1, p. 307. By contiguous Faraday simply meant “next to”, by analogy to the contiguous plates of a chemical battery or (as Thomson understood him) to the nearest possible point, as in Fourier’s mathematical definition of the transmission of heat: see Gooding (1980b), pp. 98–99 and 108–110.
Faraday (1844, 1846c).
See Gooding (1978, 1980a). A similarly dialectical conception that makes polar relations more real than the states they relate can be found in the work of Wilhem Weber: see Wise (1981).
Faraday described his volta-electrometer in 1834, (1839–55), v. 1, p. 206 ff.
At [1687–90, 1814–18] he notes that slight conduction is possible below the intensity needed for dissociation [1689] and returns to this phenomenon at [1874 ff]. This brings him back to the idea of a graduated scale of intensities [1690], and to realize that such a scale could not be continuous with other types of forces [1780–84]. The problem of intensity and quantity reappeared in his work on electromagnetic induction, where self-induction appeared to enhance intensity without changing quantity [2089].
See, e.g. [1914–18]. The analogy of nature is the argument that the uniformity of nature justifies the universal applicability of explanatory laws; see McGuire (1970).
Cavendish demonstrated this in 1771. Inverse-square forces cancel out so that the resultant force any point within the sphere is zero. Coulomb’s torsion balance enabled experimental proof of the assumption that electrostatic attraction and repulsion obey an inverse-square force; see Gillmor (1971), pp. 175–94 and below, section 9.6.
See Thomson (1845, 1846), reprinted in Thomson (1872). Thomson pointed out that specific capacity is easily represented mathematically by the addition of a coefficient, thus avoiding the issue of how to interpret it physically.
See Hackmann (1978), p. 10, Heilbron (1979).
Gooding (1985a), p. 123.
For his discussion see Series 13 in Faraday (1839–55), v. 1, paras. 1594–1605 and plate VIII, figs. 138–41; cp. also ERE II, pp. 155–157.
See Faraday (1836) and his search for a magnetic analogue to specific capacity in non-magnetic materials in Researches, series 14.
Faraday had explained in a lecture to the City Philosophical Society in 1810 that the single-fluid theory supposed that electricity resides in matter, being undetectable or ‘latent’ whenever it is present in a quantity equal to the supposed natural capacity of the matter for electricity. Similarly, on the two-fluid theory a neutral or ‘latent’ state is produced when equal quantities of each fluid are present in or upon the matter — but neither fluid is detectable because the opposed forces (or perhaps the fluids themselves) are mutually annihialating (Institution of Electrical Engineers, Faraday MS). See also Priestley (1767).
Faraday argued their identity in Series 12 and 13; see Gooding (1975, 1980a).
See Holton (1973), chapter 7.
Einstein (1905), pp. 38–43.
Faraday (1843).
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Gooding, D. (1990). Empiricism in practice. In: Experiment and the Making of Meaning. Science and Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0707-2_9
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