Re: The first postulate is a truism.

On 2025-06-27 05:17:14 +0000, Thomas Heger said:

Am Montag000023, 23.06.2025 um 23:09 schrieb LaurenceClarkCrossen:
...

Jan

The laws of electromagnetism apply to all IRFs.
Maxwell's equations do not.
Therefore, Maxwell's equations are not laws of physics.
 "AI Overview
Maxwell's Equations in Electromagnetism - GeeksforGeeks
Yes, Maxwell's equations are considered laws of physics. They are a set
of four fundamental equations that describe the behavior of electric and
magnetic fields, and how they are generated and influenced by charges
and currents. These equations are foundational to classical
electromagnetism and are used in various technologies like power
generation, electric motors, and wireless communication."

 Actually this isn't true, because those four equations didn't stem from Maxwell, but from Oliver Heaviside.

It is true. Regardless of the origin, "Maxwell's equations" is the
Common Language name of that set of equations.
Heaviside got the equations from Maxwell. Heaviside just identified the
most important equations among all that Maxwell had presented. In addition
Heaviside invented vectors and demonstrated that using vectors those (and
other) equations could be written in a simpler form.

It is really important, that Maxwell himself was an 'aetherist' and wanted to use quaternions.

Hamilton's quaternions had a vector part and a scalar part. But Haviside
found that the vector part alone is useful, and that vectors and scalars
can be used together without combining them into quaternions.

Maxwell himself wrote 20 quaternion equations, which were crippled to the current four equations by Gibbs and Heaviside.

Much of the rest of 20 quaternion equations are still used. They just
are written and organized differently, and are not considered as fundamental
as those known as Maxwell's equations.
--
Mikko