Historical background to the advent of electromagnetism

Abstract

In the late eighteenth century, there was not a consensus among philosophers of nature regarding the possibility of physical interaction between electricity and magnetism. The followers of the so-called Laplacian Research Program believed that electrical phenomena were distinct nature of magnetic phenomena and therefore an electromagnetic interaction would be impossible to be observed. However, members of the philosophical movement known as Naturphilosophie defended the possibility of interrelation between the different phenomena observed in nature, including electrical with magnetic. In this paper, we will analyze the main features of these two philosophical currents and how Naturphilosophie, in particular, ended up influencing the research of the Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851) that led to the emergence of electromagnetism.

Keywords

• Eletromagnetismo
• Naturphilosophie
• Programa de Pesquisa Laplaciano
• Experimento de Ørsted