Abstract

Here the usual historical account on the completionItaly of electromagnetic theory is contested; electromagnetic theory has to be considered a completed theory not before a symmetric explanation of electromagnetic inductionElectromagnetic induction between moving bodies was fulfilled. The notion of incommensurabilityIncommensurability between different approaches explains why this case-study constitutes a hard subject for the historians of physics and hence why in the past they contented themselves to consider as the decisive event of this history a partial achievementAchievements, i.e. the birth of Maxwell’s equationsMaxwell’s equations. After the introduction of Lorentz’s group into theoretical physicsPhysics, some scholars assumed on the foundations of electromagnetism a retrospective theoretical view, which suggested new formulations of this theory. Among such new formulations. I recognize a recent formulation, which is alternative to Maxwell’s in the following sense. I interpreted the foundations of theoretical physics as constituted by two basic dichotomiesDichotomies: one about two kinds of mathematics, and another about two kinds of logic. Every theory relies on a couple of choicesChoice on the two dichotomiesDichotomies. I characterize the couple of choices of Maxwell-Hertz-Lorentz’ formulation as that of Newton’sNewton mechanics; the alternative electromagnetic theory is based upon the couple of opposite choicesChoice. By improving this theory in a formal way according to the couple of alternative choices I obtained the extreme polarities of all possible formulations of electromagnetism. An overview of the history of EM according to the new foundational viewpoint constitutes the conclusion.