In 1620, Francis Bacon described four common patterns in inductive thought — patterns which lead to errors.
Michael Faraday, whose discoveries in electromagnetism have made possible much of the technology which has shaped the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, based his understanding of experimental error on his engagement with Sandemanian or Glasite thought. Faraday, throughout his scientific career in the 1800s, preached on Wednesday evenings at his Sandemanian church, as historian Alan Hirschfeld notes:
The philosophical and behavioral strictures of the Sandemanians served to channel Faraday’s abundant energy toward his scientific pursuits. In particular, the Sandemanian belief in human fallibility permitted him to fearlessly explore frontiers of science, with full knowledge that some of his conjectures would be overturned. There was no purpose in hitching his ego to the correctness of his conclusions. Faraday noted Job’s admonition in his personal Bible: “If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse” (Job 9:20).
Among Faraday’s achievements was the framing of various electromagnetic phenomena in the concept of fields. Seeing magnetism as a field, not as a substance, was revolutionary, as Ian Hutchinson writes:
In this abbreviated summary of Faraday’s scientific achievements, one cannot omit his extremely influential, and initially highly unconventional championing of the significance of fields. Physics today sees the field of force rather than the material substance as the underlying reality. Faraday’s theoretical and philosophical intuition, growing over twenty years or more throughout his experimental research, and culminating in his paper “On the physical character of lines of force” (1852), was, in the opinion of many, his most influential legacy. A young James Clerk Maxwell certainly took him seriously. His mathematization of Faraday’s ideas led directly to what we now call Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism.
Maxwell was Faraday’s intellectual heir. The two complemented each other. Faraday’s work was intuitive or conceptual: his laboratory notebooks contain sketches and drawings, and written descriptions, but not equations. Faraday’s image-oriented way of doing physics was fertile ground for his innovation of seeing electromagnetic forces as fields. Maxwell can be seen as mathematizing Faraday’s work.
Faraday’s work formed a basis for Maxwell’s. But Maxwell was not a Sandemanian. Maxwell was ordained as an Elder in the Church of Scotland, i.e., in the Presbyterian Church.
Faraday was an Englishman; Maxwell a Scotsman. The Sandemanian Church began in Scotland.
Combining, on the one hand, a conceptual and intuitive approach, with, on the other hand, a bold humility which allowed him to question established scientific dogmas which viewing his own hypotheses as equally liable to be overturned, Faraday presented a new way of thinking about electromagnetic forces. Maxwell capitalized on Faraday’s insights, formulating them into mathematically rigorous statements.
