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A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism — Wikipedia (en)

Source: Wikipedia (en)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_Electricity_and_Magnetism
License (as archived): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived: 2026-11-07T04:10:47.339Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: 68d7b72955ff43ae801daa932c1079a7931e0c708ce811d9824b767bc2d8c01a
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_cdffe08cf264

How to cite

A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_Electricity_and_Magnetism (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_cdffe08cf264 (Metraipolis archive dc_cdffe08cf264, sha256 68d7b72955ff43ae801daa932c1079a7931e0c708ce811d9824b767bc2d8c01a)

BibTeX

@misc{dccdffe08cf264,
  title = {A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_Electricity_and_Magnetism},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_cdffe08cf264; sha256 68d7b72955ff43ae801daa932c1079a7931e0c708ce811d9824b767bc2d8c01a},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_Electricity_and_Magnetism. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism is a two-volume treatise on electromagnetism written by James Clerk Maxwell in 1873. The work is described as both "celebrated" and "rambling and difficult", while admired as a pioneering mathematical source to understand electromagnetic theory. The four famous Maxwell's Equations were derived from its content in the next decade. Maxwell was revising the Treatise for a second edition when he died in 1879. The revision was completed by William Davidson Niven for publication in 1881. A third edition was prepared by J. J. Thomson for publication in 1892. The treatise is said to be notoriously hard to read, containing plenty of ideas but lacking both the clear focus and orderliness that may have allowed it catch on more easily. It was noted by one historian of science that Maxwell's attempt at a comprehensive treatise on all of electrical science tended to bury the important results of his work under "long accounts of miscellaneous phenomena discussed from several points of view". He goes on to say that, outside the treatment of the Faraday effect, Maxwell failed to expound on his earlier work, especially the generation of electromagnetic waves and the derivation of the laws governing reflection and refraction. Maxwell introduced the use of vector fields, and his labels have been perpetuated: A (vector potential), B (magnetic induction), C (electric current), D (displacement), E (electric field – Maxwell's electromotive intensity), F (mechanical force), H (magnetic field – Maxwell's magnetic force). Maxwell's work is considered an exemplar of rhetoric of science: Lagrange's equations appear in the Treatise as the culmination of a long series of rhetorical moves, including (among others) Green's theorem, Gauss's potential theory and Faraday's lines of force – all of which have prepared the reader for the Lagrangian vision of a natural world that is whole and connected: a veritable sea change from Newton's vision.

Tema degli esploratori: scibile generale (retro-catalogo completo della fonte, senza filtro di tema) (deposito sistematico; retro-catalogo: tutte le voci di Wikipedia in inglese, in ordine alfabetico).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_Electricity_and_Magnetism
Wikidata Q4660281: «written work by James Clerk Maxwell» (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4660281
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_Electricity_and_Magnetism?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1382505101, consultata il 2026-11-07T04:02:57.414Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: 4ca13adfe2193319e9c165b732e5997afa57a4b5470d6655587fc42027552930