Faraday’s Field Concept

Abstract

‘When did Faraday have his field concept?’ is a controversial issue in the Faraday literature, and one which is usually seen as an historical issue. However, before one can hope to answer the question of when, one must determine what his field concept was, and such a determination is a philosophical issue as well as an historical one. When I first set out to formulate what others say his concept was, I was surprised to find how difficult this is to do, especially as the protagonists are fairly explicit about when he had it. My contention is that this difficulty arises because there are actually three related questions involved in the problem of what Faraday’s field concept was:

• 1. What was Faraday’s conception?

• 2. What is required for a concept to be a‘field’ concept?

• 3. What does it mean to say that someone ‘has’ a concept, i.e. what general form does the representation of a concept take?