TITLE:
An Overview of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’ Theories of Light, Ether, and Electromagnetic Waves
AUTHORS:
Salvo D’Agostino
KEYWORDS:
Einstein, Maxwell, Helmholtz, Hertz, Lorentz, Velocity of Light
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Historical Studies,
Vol.5 No.1,
February
16,
2016
ABSTRACT: Johannes Kepler, the seventeenth century celebrated astronomer, considered vision as the effect
of its alleged cause—the Lumen. Since many centuries, scientists and philosophers of Light were
especially interested in theories and experiments on the cause-effect relationship between our vision
and its alleged cause. But the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’ contributions of Helmholtz,
Maxwell, Hertz, and Lorentz, proved that Light was an electromagnetic wavelike phenomenon,
which propagated trough space or ether by an exceptionally high velocity. In my paper I analyze
some of the reasons that might justify the controversies among the major experts in Physics and
Electrodynamics. In 1905 Albert Einstein found that abolishing Ether would remarkably improve
his new Special Relativity theory, and Maxwell’s and Hertz’s Electrodynamics. His theory was accepted
by a large majority of physicists, Max Planck included, but he also found a ten-year silence
on the side of Poincaré, and moderate oppositions from Lorentz, the great expert in classical Electrodynamics.