I recently read a great bedtime story called
Classical Electrodynamics by the very famous author J. D. Jackson. (I'm sure you can find copies at your local library.) It was a book full of adventure (and math). As you can imagine, this was a very thought-provoking book and is one of the reasons I have not been able to sleep well over the past week. An active mind, after all, never rests, and this book did get me thinking...
Though the title only explicitly mentions electricity and dynamism, the book actually covered electricity and magnetism in both their dynamic and static states. (It also covered relativity but that for another time.) What indeed, I thought, accounts for this lack of full disclosure in the title?
As I pondered this omission, I considered how magnetism--even when mentioned--always plays second fiddle to electricity. Consider the title electromagnetics. Why is it not rather magnetoelectrics. In fact, it is never magnetoelectrics, which seems a tad unfair. To add insult to injury, the title Classical Electrodynamics doesn't even mention magnetics! Oh the inhumanity. I mean, anyone who has been around these two for even one semester would know that electricity and magnetism go together like bread and butter, guns and ammo, government and inefficiency. And yet, from the title the reader can only assume that the book discusses dynamic magnetics as well as dynamic electrics.
Which brings us to the other inequity. Why is there mention of dynamics and no mention of statics in the title? Statics takes up a full three chapters and yet you would never know it by the title. No, it is completely shunted into the shadow cast by the ever impressive dynamics.
Well, I need hardly say that this inequity bothered me. I thought, what can be done to rectify this wrong? What steps can be taken? What laws can be passed? What politicians can be lobbied?
Perhaps justice could be served once and for all if statics and magnetics combined forces in protest against their under-representation. They could join together right there on capitol hill and demand justice!
But would it be enough to overcome the establishment that is so clearly biased toward electricity and dynamism? Alas no, for statics prefers things to stay the same and would never push for change no matter how advantageous the outcome. Dynamics, on the other hand, is radical by nature and much more likely to protest and induce change. Furthermore, magnetics would only show up for an instant and then zip right back home. Such is its circuitous nature. Only electricity has the audacity and tenacity to show up some place new and stay there until its mission is accomplished.
And so, my friends, perhaps that is what really happened. Electricity and dynamism banded together to gain superior representation, and the other two stayed home. Then again, perhaps the Illuminati had something to do with it. Then again, maybe a book entitled Magnetostatics wouldn't sell as well as one entitled Electrodynamics. Ah yes, herein lies the answer. Capitalism, the arch-nemesis of statism (as so brilliantly laid out in Liberty and Tyranny), strikes again! Capitalism is what induces such a title.
