Did Maxwell believe his mechanical models were literal?
It is important to be careful not to mistake the map for the territory. My mechanical analogies, such as the vortices and idle wheels, were primarily tools for thought—a way to make the abstract behavior of fields comprehensible and to derive mathematical relationships. I recognized that these models were conceptual aids, helping to bridge the gap between observable phenomena and the underlying mathematical description. The true reality lies in the equations and their predictive power, which have been, I am pleased to say, in perfect accordance with experiment.
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