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SCIENTIFIC CLASSICS

FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF 1846 TREATISE The Ampère Angular Force And the Hoax by Laurence Hecht

he Internet posting by 21st Century , arose as an tion resulting from the widespread pro- TScience & Technology of the first attempt to establish the validity of a cru- motion of the Newton hoax must be English translation of Wilhelm Weber’s cial discovery of fundamental principle briefly addressed. Contrary to popular historic 1846 treatise on electrodynamics,1 by France’s André-Marie Ampère over myths regarding the history of science, all raises anew the crucial question which the period of 1820-26. To appreciate the competent fundamental investigation in could not be effectively addressed by any significance of Ampère’s breakthrough, modern science derives from the unique of the principal characters in a scientific and the subsequent of ’s resolution of the paradox of knowability battle that raged nearly two centuries ago. Carl Friedrich and Wilhelm Weber, developed by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa No true appreciation of the fundamental a certain deeply embedded misconcep- in his 1440 On Learned Ignorance, and laws which lie at the basis of our modern the associated reforms in social policy physical science can be had, without first embodied in the Council of Florence, as recognizing the manifold ways in which the case of Johannes Kepler’s revolution the imposition of the Anglo-Dutch finan- in astronomy sufficiently illustrates. cial institution’s hoax, known as Isaac Yet, today that proven method of sci- Newton, has infected modern science. entific advance has been virtually buried, Achieving clarity on this question is of except as it persists as an inchoate urgent importance. For example, the cur- impulse within the actually human spirit. rently fashionable package of environ- (The rapidly maturing work of the mental frauds, including Al Gore’s cli- LaRouche Youth Movement’s “basement” mate hoax, and the injection of statistical research teams is the happy exception methods into science generally, could which holds the promise of reversing that never have been taken seriously by any otherwise civilization-destroying trend.) scientist trained in classical methods. We owe this destruction of the scien- The importance of Weber’s work in tific method to the success of Fra Paolo electrodynamics was first brought to our Sarpi’s (1552-1623) New Venetian Party attention by Manhattan Project operation, in finding a way to permit a and physical chemist Dr. Robert J. Moon, limited progress in science, for reasons designer of the Chicago cyclotron and a of state, while virtually outlawing any crucial figure in the development of the examination of the philosophical-episte- first atomic pile and the first plutonium mological issues on which fundamental reactor at the Hanford reservation. The discovery in science rests. That method, implications of Weber’s work for the pres- which became the state policy of the ent include the discovery of far more effi- extended Anglo-Dutch financial empire Historical Collection of Göttingen University I. Physical Institute cient paths to nuclear fusion, utilizing from the late 17th Century onward, is least action pathways determined by the The electrodynamometer which conveniently identified as the Newton nuclear geometry. Hence the several-fold Wilhelm Weber used in the final deter- hoax, the immediate work product of importance of the appearance of this mination of the validity of Ampère's Venice’s Antonio Conti. translation at this time. electrodynamics. It consists of two By the time of the work in question, a The Weber, or more properly, Gauss- perpendicular electrical coils. The outer virtual cult of adulation, coil is suspended in such a way that its including salons and special “ladies’ edi- ______rotation, under the influence of the inner tions” of Newton’s philosophy, had 1. Wilhelm Weber, Determinations of Electrodynamic coil, can be precisely determined by overtaken France and was weighing Measure, Concerning a Universal Law of Electrical Action, issued at the founding of the observing the deflection of the mirror heavily upon the rest of Europe. Royal Scientific Society of Saxony on the day of image of a meter stick in a telescope, as The Ampère Revolution the 200th anniversary celebration of Leibniz’s birthday, published by the Prince Jablonowski So- in the Gauss-designed magnetometer. Ampère’s revolution in science was ciety, 1846. 146 pages in pdf format. Posted The inner coil can be removed and completed by 1825 and published in March 2007. www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/ placed at various distances. 1826 as his Memoire sur la théorie math- Articles%202007/Weber_1846.pdf SCIENTIFIC CLASSICS 21st CENTURY Science & Technology Spring/Summer 2007 53 presumed self-evident existent, it turns eliminated in the totality, when the vector a′′′d′′′ out that the laws of interaction must be sum of all the elements within the circuit modified to take into consideration the are taken. By such means, all subtleties angular direction of the current flow. may be removed from Nature and Life— Thus, the simple inverse square law the “bottom line” for all thus becomes the ′′ ′′ a d gives way to a term embodying the sine proverbial “six-feet under.” and cosine of the angles which each Gauss’s Intervention member of a pair of infinitesimal current What rescued 19th Century elements make with the line connecting from irrelevance respecting such matters, their centers (See Figure 1). was ’s recognition of ad a′d′ While Ampère’s discovery might the extraordinary significance of appear today as a merely mathematical Ampère’s discovery. Even more than artifact, it must be understood that Ampère, Gauss suffered the oppression of THE FORCE BETWEEN Ampère had presented his discovery the Sarpi-Newton cult, a condition which CURRENT ELEMENTS within the prevailing formalism of “laws was exacerbated by his dependency Early experiments with two paral- of force” with the obvious intention of since childhood upon the charity of the lel wires showed that the wires challenging the Newtonian orthodoxy. Duke of Brunswick and Hanoverian attracted each other when the cur- The Newtonians of his day were not mis- nobility. Gauss nonetheless resolved, by rent flowed through them in the taken in their visceral dislike for Ampère’s no later than 1828, to make the experi- same direction, and repelled in innovation. While Jean-Baptiste Biot and mental proof of the Ampère angular force the opposite case. From this most of the physics establishment in a central point of concentration. Ampère could conclude that any France rejected the work, as a member of At the Assembly of the Society of two parallel, small sections of the the Academy, Ampère was nonetheless German Scientists and Physicians, wire (current elements) would officially honored for his discovery. Yet, which took place in the Fall of 1828 in behave accordingly. This is the within several years, under the reign of Berlin, Gauss was introduced to the relationship of element ad to a’d’ Louis Philippe, demotion and assignment young physicist , in the diagram. But what if the to a strenuous position as inspector of a disciple of Ernst Chaldni who had second element is in another posi- schools, under conditions of ill health, already distinguished himself through tion, such as that of a”d” or a’’’d’’’? hastened his early death at the age of 62. highly original studies in wave behavior Direct observation could not Elsewhere, Ampère’s work was also and acoustics. Weber was awarded a decide these more general cases. under attack. Even before his 1826 pub- professorship at Göttingen University in lication, an anomymous pamphlet (later 1831, where an intense experimental attributed to England’s ) collaboration with Gauss began. ématique des phénomenes électrody- had circulated at a Paris physics confer- As Weber reports the work in the 1846 namiques uniquement déduite de l’ex- ence, attacking the Ampère-Fresnel con- treatise, in order to prove Ampère’s hypo- périence 2 (Memoir on the Mathematical ception of the magnetic molecule. This thesis, it was first necessary to find a means Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena was the hypothesis, widely accepted of positively measuring the effect of one Uniquely Deduced from Experiment). today, that is the result of the current-carrying conductor upon another. Ampère showed therein that the restate- motion of microscopic electrical cur- All of Ampère’s deductions derived from ment of Kepler’s discovery of the princi- rents within the particles of matter. experiments in which no force was pro- ple of universal gravitation, as associated In Germany, Hermann Grassmann duced, sometimes called equilibrium, or with the name of Newton, could not pos- argued the impossibility of so “compli- null experiments. As Weber noted, it were sibly apply as a universal law, once the cated” a phenomenon as the angular possible that subtle forces were acting, newly discovered phenomena of galvan- force. Hermann Helmholtz found it which were masked by frictional or other ic currents (persisting , as offensive that anyone should propose effects within the apparatus. opposed to the static discharge investigat- that nature might work on the basis of However, in order to positively measure ed by Franklin) were taken into account. anything more complex than attraction the sometimes small external forces exert- Specifically, Ampère showed that the and repulsion of elementary particles ed by the conductors, it was first necessary attempt to reduce the laws of nature to according to the inverse square law. to discount the effects of the constantly an interaction of self-evident particles In James Clerk ’s revision of varying magnetism of the Earth. A means obeying an inverse square law of attrac- electrodynamics, which was codified in of determining the absolute measure of the tion could not hold in respect to electri- an 1873 textbook, which is widely Earth’s magnetic strength was thus cal currents. In that case, taking the accepted today as the classic work on the required. Hence, the first collaboration, infinitesimal element of current as the subject, the Ampère angular force had dis- which bore fruit in less than two years, was ______appeared. Maxwell accepts the argument directed to the design and construction of 2. In A.M. Ampère, Electrodynamiques, uniquement that, as electrical currents only appear in the bifilar magnetometer, an instrument déduite de l’expérience (Paris: A. Hermann, 1883). A complete circuits, any dependence of the which could resolve the ambiguities left by partial English translation appears in R.A.R. Tricker, Early Electrodynamics: The First Law of Circulation force exerted by the individual current the previous measuring techniques. (New York: Pergamon, 1965), pp. 155-200. element upon the angular direction is The paper reporting on this achieve-

54 Spring/Summer 2007 21st CENTURY Science & Technology SCIENTIFIC CLASSICS by Ampère as an angular term now appeared as a diminution in the force of attraction or repulsion due to relative motion. Taking into account the laws of induction, unknown to Ampère in 1826, Weber developed a universal expression for the electrical action, in which the static elec- tric () forces were merely the degenerate case in which the relative motion has gone to zero. E. Scott Barr Collection, American Institute Courtesy of the Museum of Lithograph by Siegfried Bendixen, cour- of Physics Emilio Segrè Visual Archives at Polymieux tesy of Historical Collection of the Weber’s results meant that Göttingen University I. Physical Institute there was some relative veloc- Wilhelm Eduard Weber André-Marie Ampère Carl Friedrich Gauss ity at which the force of replu- (1804-1891) (1775-1836) (1777-1855) sion between oppositely charged electrical particles ment is one of the landmarks in the histo- of the bifilar magnetometer, employing would fall to zero. Mathematically, this ry of experimental physics, which two electrical coils in place of two bar took the form of a constant within his includes among its achievements, the first . Both apparatuses employed the expression for the force, and for the statement of a universal system of physical precision angle-measuring technique, potential, between the particle pairs. That units known as the Gaussian system, and conceived by Gauss, in which angular value was known throughout most of the a preliminary formulation of what was to deflection is observed by noting the 19th Century as the Weber constant. become known as Dirichlet’s Principle.3 image of a meter stick, placed atop a ter- In a remarkable series of experiments In 1837, a crisis was provoked at restrial telescope, which has been which he carried out in 1855 upon his Göttingen by the accession of Queen reflected through a small mirror attached return to Göttingen University, the value Victoria to the British throne, and the to the rotatable part of the apparatus. of the Weber constant was found to be appointment, under Salic Law, of a male Owing to his dislocation and reap- the product of the velocity of times ruler of the Hanover territory formerly pointment to a professorship at Leipzig, the square root of 2. The experiments, at under direct British rule. Wilhelm Weber it was not until 1845 that Weber was which Riemann was an observer and was among a group of professors known able to undertake a written presentation sometime assistant, were conducted as the Göttingen Seven who were dis- of the extended experimental collabora- with . missed for their principled refusal to sign tion with Gauss. As the preserved corre- That determination of a universal a loyalty oath to the new King Ernst spondence establishes, Weber was first “speed limit,” usually associated with Augustus. The famed philologists Jacob inclined to give way to the prevailing Einstein’s 1905 formulation of Special and Wilhelm Grimm, and Gauss’s son- academic climate and omit discussion Relativity, was already implicit in entries in-law, the orientalist , of the angular force. A letter of reply in Gauss’s notebooks dating to 1833, were also in the group. from Gauss caused him to return to the where Gauss had proposed the relativis- Weber was able to continue his collab- original intention of their collaboration.5 tic formulation of the electrodynamic oration with Gauss from off campus for As with Ampère, Weber chose to pres- law. Einstein’s later formulation derived several years, by the help of an aid socie- ent the results in the mathematical format from his unique conception of the rela- ty established for the dismissed professors. of a force law, in this case as the force tivity of simultaneity, but unfortunately By that time, the experimental work estab- between pairs of electrical particles. On was formulated as an attempt to save the lishing the validity of the Ampère angular the suggestion of Gustav Fechner, the appearances of the Maxwellian formula- force had been largely completed.4 epistemological psychologist and student tion. Maxwell’s rejection of the Ampère- Weber’s Results of the Zend Avesta who was later to influ- Gauss-Weber work had by then become The chief apparatus, known as the ence Bernhard Riemann, Weber chose to codified within the teaching of physics in electrodynamometer, was an adaptation represent current flow in a wire as the Germany, thanks largely to the under- ______motion in opposite directions of oppo- mining efforts of Helmholtz. 3. Carl Friedrich Gauss, “The Intensity of the Earth’s sitely charged electrical particles. The replacement of the Ampère- Magnetic Force Reduced to Absolute Mea- By analysis of their relative velocities Gauss-Weber electrodynamics by the surement,” translated from German by Susan and accelerations, the anomaly expressed Maxwell formulations, is usually justified Parmacek Johnson, July 1995, www.21stcentury sciencetech.com/Translations/gaussMagnetic.pdf ______on the ground that it permitted the unifi- 4. Laurence Hecht, “The Atomic Science Textbooks 5. “Text of the Gauss-Weber Correspondence,” cation of electrical with optical phenom- Don’t Teach: The Significance of the 1845 Gauss- translated by Susan Parmacek Johnson, 21st ena, under the concept of electromag- Weber Correspondence,” 21st Century Science Century Science & Technology, Fall 1996, & Technology, Fall 1996, www.21stcentury www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Atomic_ netic waves. However, an examination sciencetech.com/articles/Atomic_Science.pdf Science.pdf, pp. 22-24 of pdf file. Continued on page 71

SCIENTIFIC CLASSICS 21st CENTURY Science & Technology Spring/Summer 2007 55 farmers everywhere have been consis- Ampère been buried by the promoters of the tently underpaid for their output for Newton hoax. These were to erupt again decades, by the cartels dominating “free” Continued from page 55 as the crises in physics around the para- (rigged) trade. Even the much publicized of the 1845 Gauss-Weber correspon- dox of wave versus particle, the imposi- 2007 run-up in the futures price of U.S. dence shows that Gauss had already tion of an acausal, statistical interpretation corn to $4 per bushel, double the price entertained the idea of electrical waves of atomic phenomena, and its extension of 18 months ago, doesn’t cover the in the ether, but rejected it only on the into the nuclear and subnuclear domain. farmer’s cost of production, for which a grounds that a “constructible representa- The solution to such problems lies outside parity price of $7-8 is required. tion” of the phenomena was lacking. the realm of mathematical physics per se, Yet, for the family farmer who pro- Riemann recognized the deep signifi- at least as so narrowly conceived today. duces livestock, and gets underpaid for cance of the 1855 Weber-Kohlrausch A rebirth of the spirit of Nicholas of his meat, $4 a bushel feed-corn is a experiments, and in an 1858 paper, “A Cusa, Johannes Kepler, and Gottfried killer. This typifies the interconnected- Contribution to Electrodynamics,”6 Leibniz, the founders of all modern sci- ness throughout the farm/food situation, whose publication was suppressed by ence, accompanied by a conscious, joy- which has been undermined by years of , Riemann formulated a ful, and determined overturning of the policies serving low-cost globalization, relativistic wave theory, based on a con- Sarpi-Newton hoax will accomplish that not the interests of national food securi- cept of retarded propagation of potential. task. ty. “Ag-flation” is not the cause of rising Whoever should suppose that The treatise, which now appears for prices for food and other costs-of-living. Maxwell’s cleverness of physical-geomet- the first time in English, was first pub- Today’s hyperinflation is across the ric insight surpassed Gauss and Riemann lished in Leipzig in 1846 on the 200th board, associated with the blowout of in this respect would surely be unserious. anniversary celebration of the birth of the financial system. The problem lay not in formulating a geo- Gottfried Leibniz. The translation is the If the biofoolery policies are allowed metric picture of wave propagation, but in result of an 1996-97 collaboration of the to continue, the swindles, the science resolving the underlying epistemological late Susan P. Johnson and Laurence hoaxes, and the physical economic and ontological paradoxes, which had Hecht. Prof. Andre Koch Torres de Assis effects add up to a policy of famine. ______of the State University of Campinas in ______6. Bernhard Riemann, Collected Papers, translated Brazil recently completed the work of Marcia Merry Baker is economics edi- from the 1892 edition by R. Baker, C. Christenson, equation editing and reviewing the and H. Orde (Heber City, Utah: Kendrick Press, tor of Executive Intelligence Review. 2004), pp. 273-278. entire manuscript.

ARTICLES ON 21st CENTURY RADIATION SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY and HORMESIS • Jerry M. Cuttler, “The Significant Low-level Radiation,” Fall 1997 Radiation Hormesis,” Fall 1996 Health Benefits of Nuclear Radiation experts argue that A comprehensive review of the Radiation,” Fall 2001 current U.S. policy of a “linear no- evidence of the beneficial effects on threshold” approach to radiation health of low-dose radiation. • James Muckerheide, “It’s Time to damage has no science behind it and Tell the Truth about the Health • Zbigniew Jaworowski, “Hormesis: is wasting billions of government Benefits of Low-Dose Radiation,” The Beneficial Effects of Radiation,” dollars in clean-up that could be Summer 2000 Fall 1994 spent on real health benefits. In 1994, the United Nations • Dr. Theodore Rockwell, • Sadao Hattori (interview), “Using Scientific Committee on the Effects “Radiation Protection Policy: A Low-dose Radiation for Cancer of Atomic Radiation, after 12 years Primer,” Summer 1999 Suppression and Revitalization,” of deliberation, published a report • Zbigniew Jaworowski, “A Realistic Summer 1997 on radiation hormesis, dispelling the Assessment of Chernobyl’s Health A discussion of Japan’s wide- notion that even the smallest dose of Effects,” Spring 1998 ranging program of research into the radiation is harmful. • Jim Muckerheide and Ted Rockwell, health effects of low-dose radiation. “The Hazards of U.S. Policy on • T.D. Luckey, “The Evidence for

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