"I must ask you to go over very old ground, and to turn your attention to a question which has been raised again and again ever since man began to think. The question is that of the transmission of force. We see two bodies at a distance from each other exert a mutual influence on each other's motion. Does this mutual action depend on the existence of some third thing, some medium of communication, occupying the space between the bodies, or do the bodies act on each other immediately, without the intervention of anything else? The mode in which Faraday was accustomed to look at phenomena of this kind differs from that adapted by many modern inquirers, and my special aim will be to enable you to place yourselves at Faraday's point of view, and to point out the scientific value of that conception of lines of force which, in his hands, became the key to the science of electricity. ... Why... should we not admit that the familiar mode of communicating motion by pushing and pulling... is the type and exemplification of all action between bodies, even in case in which we can observe nothing between..."
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Original Language: English
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James Clerk Maxwell, "On Action at a Distance" (1873) from the Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Vol. VII (1890) p. 311.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality
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Principle of locality
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