The Ampère Angular Force and the Newton Hoax by Laurence Hecht
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SCIENTIFIC CLASSICS FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF WEBER 1846 TREATISE The Ampère Angular Force And the Newton Hoax by Laurence Hecht he Internet posting by 21st Century Weber electrodynamics, 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 work of Germany’s resolution of the paradox of knowability battle that raged nearly two centuries ago. Carl Friedrich Gauss 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 physicist 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 Isaac Newton 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, Leipzig 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 physics elements make with the line connecting from irrelevance respecting such matters, their centers (See Figure 1). was Carl Friedrich Gauss’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 Wilhelm Eduard Weber, 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 Michael Faraday) 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 magnetism 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 direct current, 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 Maxwell’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.