Gemeinschaftspraxistraum

As the leaden rain spattered mournfully on the windowglass, the two gentlemen sat in the study, a glass of amber, a glass of burgundy in the hand, fire stoked against the winter's chill.

"I am in the occasional habit of corresponding with a telegrapher, Watson - a fellow of a most keen and inquiring mind.  Late in Denmark, but originally of Camden, he came up with some most cunning inventions in telegraphy.  Heaviside is his name.  Have you heard a bit about him?"

"Yes, a reclusive gent, I hear.  Nephew of Wheatstone, is he not?"

"Indeed, a bit eccentric fellow indeed.  He became intrigued with some writings of James Maxwell about the conductance of electricity, and seemed to become a bit unglued with it, Watson.  At first, in conversation, I could not be certain whether his postulates were adherent in some way to reality, or merely the wanderings of an overly-brilliant mind into whimsy. 

As I understand his meaning, he offers four postulates of Maxwell's thought, as firmly enraptured by them as any new convert to a religion.  The first two postulates, as I understand, involve the inclosures of charges of electricity and magnetism.  These do not intrigue me as much as the latter two,  which involve the whirling of the various fields electric and magnetistic.

 Heaviside postulates that a magnetic field will whirl about a changing current.  This is merely Faraday's law of induction, you may recall.  In a proportionate sense, an electric field will be generated to whirl about a changing magnetic field.  This is only Ampére's circuity law; but with a change that incldues Maxwell's stipulations."

"Holmes, I fear that you have lost me in the whirl of these things.  What is  interesting about this fellow who reformulates what is known?"

"Merely this.   Let us purport that we have a cannon which fires an electrically charged object.  It can be easily designed by the coiling of wires in a clever manner, to fire off the object at a very great velocity."

"Clever, that.  What of it?"

"Well, as any inventor of an impressive and clever invention might have it, our inventor replicates the device, and now has two of them."

"Good show for him.  And now what?"

"He has interconnected each, to fire off two identical charged particles at an extremely great velocity, comparable to the speed of light. Relative to each other, of course, the two have no difference in velocity; therefore, they seem to each other to be at rest.

From the perspective of the objects, being similarly and equally charged, they repel each other with great force.  However, from the perspective of the inventor, the burst of velocity imports a terrific magnetismal whirl around each object.  the whirl acts upon the other to restrain its flight from the other, so much so as they nearly fail to move apart whatsoever!  That's the paradox.  Do they act on each other electrically, or not?"

 I fear, Holmes, that I question the substance of reality itself.  How can one thing happen to one observer, but to another might be absent?

"Here's the interesting part, Watson.  A Dutchman Lorentz, and a certain Swiss physicist have postulated that things that are in motion and things that are at rest, have a different perception of time itself.  Their postulate would claim that the difference in perception can solely be attributed to different time-pieces, as it were, on the observer that is moving, and the inventor's timepiece."

"Clever, then.  A continental explanation, and a good British explanation.  But mutually exclusive.  Good for inquiry, that - keeps the mind sharp."

The man with the pipe jumped out of his chair, energetically.

"Don't you see, Watson - don't you see?  The deuce is, each theory - each explanation is absolutely and incontrovertibly correct!  Both must be occurring - at the same time!  The only credible way to wed the two is that magnetism - that simple movement of the compass, the pull of the magnetite against iron - magnetism  itself is completely and utterly fictional - unreal!" 

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