Modern physics has lost alot of Maxwell's original work. The four most important things that have been lost are,
(1) His theory of molecular vortices. Maxwell himself is largely to blame for this particular loss, as he himself abandoned this theory in his later works.
(2) The fact that the Lorentz force was one of Maxwell's original equations.
(3) The identification of the Lorentz force with the Coriolis force, which was made manifestly clear in equation (5) of Maxwell's 1861 paper.
(4) The dielectric origins of displacement current.
For more information including a discussion on Maxwell's original eight equations, see this web link,
http://www.wbabin.net/science/tombe4.pdfIn
the web link above you can read how Maxwell's molecular vortices are
absolutely essential for the purpose of physically explaining why the
Lorentz force is a kind of Coriolis force. Equation (5) of his 1861
paper establishes the link between the Lorentz force and the Coriolis
force, but Maxwell himself failed to notice it. The article above
discusses the fact that this was a serious oversight on Maxwell's part.
In
today's textbooks, the Lorentz force sits outside the group known as
Maxwell's equations as if it had never been one of Maxwell's equations,
even though it was equation (D) in the original 1864 set of eight. This
distortion has a very significant effect when it comes to the
controversy of whether or not Maxwell's equations confirm the postulate
of the constancy of the speed of light.
Displacement current
first formally appeared as equation (111) in the 1861 paper in
conjunction with dielectric elasticity. See this web link of the 1861
paper,
http://www.zpenergy.com/downloads/maxwell_oplf.pdfThis fact is never mentioned in modern textbooks. The alternative derivation of displacement current is perhaps the biggest of all the distortions of Maxwell's original work. Most modern textbooks present Maxwell's displacement current in the context of conservation of electric charge, and as an amendment necessary to maintain the solenoidal nature of electric current in a capacitor circuit. In doing so they conceal the dielectric origins of displacement current and simultaneously conceal the need to have a dielectric medium as the carrier of electromagnetic waves. The modern texbook derivation when carefully scrutinized can easily be shown to be false. It involves adding an extra term to one side of an equation which has already been derived, whereas in Maxwell's original thinking, the displacement current is already included in this equation in the total current term. The equation in question is Ampère’s circuital law which is equation (C) of the original set of eight Maxwell's equations in his 1864 paper 'A Dynamical theory of the Electromagnetic Field'. There can be absolutely no question of adding an additional term to one side of an already derived equation, yet this is exactly what the textbooks are doing, and in doing so, they are introducing displacement current as an extra term which is not actually a real current. Maxwell did not introduce displacement current in connection with maintaining the solenoidal nature of a capacitor circuit, yet many texbooks claim that he did. Maxwell's equation (A) in the original set of eight is the equation for total currents and it never appears in modern textbooks.
Yours sincerely
David Tombe
