Conclusion of a review paper:
Reference:
Beyer, Robert T. ‘Radiation Pressure—the History of a Mislabeled Tensor’. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 63, no. 4 (1978): 1025–30. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.381833.
One of the underappreciated facts is the amount of work that people did to bring Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism to the form that we use today. Among many enthusiastic researchers, five names often come into the picture, and they are Poynting, Heaviside, Fitzgerald, Lodge, and Hertz. Without their contribution, we would have been seeing a very different form of Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory and the equations named after Maxwell. As Loudon and Baxter describe: “The main influence on all of the activity in electromagnetic theory during the later years of the nineteenth century came from Maxwell’s famous treatise (Maxwell 1873). Poynting was a member of the group of young physicists led by Heaviside, Fitzgerald, Lodge and Hertz who developed Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory in the years following his death in 1879. They transformed his 1873 presentation into the formalism recognizable today as Maxwell’s equations.” (Loudon and Baxter, 2012, p. 1826)
Interestingly, all five Maxwellians were not only interested in electromagnetic field theory but also applied it to a variety of practical problems. Poynting wrote an elaborate paper in which he describes the transfer of energy and momentum of electromagnetic waves titled “On the Transfer of Energy in the Electromagnetic Field” (Poynting, 1884, p. 343), and connected them to a series of interesting observations in electromagnetism. Among the seven applications Poynting discussed in his paper, the last one was on the theory of electromagnetic waves, and it is there that he computed the maximum value of the velocity of light. More on this in a future blog.
References:
Loudon, R., and C. Baxter. ‘Contributions of John Henry Poynting to the Understanding of Radiation Pressure’. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 468, no. 2143 (2012): 1825–38. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2011.0573.
Poynting, J. H. ‘XV. On the Transfer of Energy in the Electromagnetic Field’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, no. 175 (December 1884): 343–61. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1884.0016.
Thinking comes in various ways:
– Reading
– Talking
– Writing
– Doing
Obviously, reading gives you a lot of input in all forms and fosters ideas. When it comes to talking, one of the most effective ways to think is to understand your thoughts by externalizing them through your speech. This speech-based interaction can also be done with others. It adds crucial feedback in the form of listening to what others have to say about your thoughts. Writing is effective when you want to think slowly and deeply. It is also a powerful way to symbolize your thoughts and can add mathematical and diagrammatic aspects to your thinking. Finally, doing gives feedback via observation and physical interaction. By building things, we immediately see how our thoughts get realized, and that feedback can further lead to new thoughts.
Inherent to all these four ways of thinking is questioning. In each of these four ways of thinking, asking questions drives your thoughts. Of course, there may be other forms of thinking, but generally, it connects to the four things written above.
An interesting paper on arxiv today, which charts the “disciplinary evolution of 130 years of physics”
Nguyen, Khoa, Pragyan Pandey, Sophie Li, and Eric Y. Ma. ‘A Unified Subject Map for 130 Years of Physics’. arXiv:2606.14043. Preprint, arXiv, 12 June 2026. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.14043.
In Sanskrit, the word Satyagraha (सत्याग्रह) is made of two parts: ‘Satya’ (सत्या) means truth. ‘Āgraha‘ (आग्रह) means insistence. In this blog, my aim is to connect the scientific thought process to the concept of Satyagraha.
At the beginning of this year, I posted a doodle on three ways to make India more scientific. It drew quite a bit of attention across various platforms, including the one you are reading this message on.
In that doodle, I mentioned three points on how to inculcate a scientific viewpoint among us:
It is the third point that is central to our discussion. So, what do we mean by projecting scientific thinking as a lifestyle? It means we should be able to incorporate scientific thought processes into our everyday lives. For example, utilizing simple mathematical and statistical thinking to understand the affairs of the world. Adopting it as a lifestyle also means making it a part of ourselves, such that it becomes an automatic way of looking at the world. This means it should become second nature for us to use a scientific viewpoint when observing our external world, especially when we have to make decisions. We have to actively seek scientific information and try to understand how it connects to our lives. The source of scientific information becomes important, and we should critically evaluate the source before we adopt it into our lives.
This also brings us to the point of how to utilize scientific thinking without compromising our humility and compassion. Just because we are equipped with scientific thinking, it does not mean that we should be condescending. This is where patience, humility and compassion have a role to play. The ability to understand others’ viewpoints and then respond scientifically is one of the most important aspects of our scientific education. Even when we criticize someone’s viewpoint, our critique will hold value only if we try to refute it from a scientific perspective. Many complex issues do not have straightforward solutions. This does not mean that there is no solution at all, but to arrive at a solution, we need to understand the problem in detail. This understanding is essentially how we develop an appreciation for somebody else’s viewpoint. We should be patient enough to hear others’ perspectives and then evaluate them with as much information as is available. This is a gradually learned process.
Another hallmark of scientific thinking is the willingness to change our viewpoints in light of new data that proves our old data wrong. This ability to self-correct is probably one of the greatest strengths of scientific thinking, and it is this trait that we must cultivate in our lives.
What is important for fostering scientific thinking is knowing how to utilize it in our everyday lives and trying to explore what the actual truth is. Indian philosophical roots have a word for the pursuit and/or insistence of truth. It is called Satyagraha. Although people in India associate Satyagraha with the anti-colonial movement, its deeper philosophical meaning connects well to the pursuit of science and scientific thinking. Like all tools and thought processes, it is vital for us to ensure scientific thinking is utilized in the proper context and in a humane way. Rational thought from an Indian philosophy has a lesson for us: pursue the truth with intent. Science, after all, is Satyagraha (सत्याग्रह).
audio-visual form:
Ashna is an associate professor of physics at IISER, Pune, with research interests in experimental low-temperature physics that include magnetic oxides, carbon nanotubes, and spintronics.
In this episode, we explored her explorations in condensed matter and nanophysics. Also, we converse about Prof. R. Srinivasan, a remarkable experimental physicist who pioneered cryogenics and teaches it to college students and researchers across India.
Explore her work here:
I heard that some (dummy) schools across India skip the lab component of school education. If this is true, it is a major disservice to the intellectual development of a student and should be curtailed.
Note: a class demo/YouTube video cannot compensate for a lab.
At the heart of becoming good at building things is to experiment. A lab is a place to do such experiments, and in there, a student can think and learn by using their mind and hands. A lab is not just about equipment, but a form of thinking, which develops a(p)ttitude.
This form of thinking is important not only for scientific pedagogy but also for the development of skills complementary to what one learns in a classroom.
There is no serious education in STEM without exposure to a laboratory (including maths/computer science)
Downstream in a society, a culture of lab is closely connected to thinking, questioning, tinkering, building, testing and manufacturing. And eventually economics.
A culture of experimental thinking is fostered in a lab.
A lab is a place where questions are asked, experiments are conducted, and theories are tested…& sometimes.. in this pursuit, the world is changed.
A case in point is the connection between CERN and the origins of www :
https://home.cern/science/computing/the-birth-of-the-web
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