The study of the historical evolution of a theory or explanation in physics can help to improve the present understanding of it. Superseded theories sometimes linger on in modern physics literature. Technical terms devised more than a century ago, perhaps, may now be misleading or inappropriate. Well established conventional explanations or auxiliary constructions may become so familiar that they may occasionally be mistaken for correct physical explanations. Students who fail to recognise the historical origins and present status of such concepts may find themselves unable to fit them into a coherent picture, and may become perplexed or even discouraged as a result. History can often help to clarify such problems and it may even suggest a solution. As a case history illustrating this approach, the author briefly examines the more qualitative aspects of some of the explanations which leading physicists have offered for electromagnetic induction during the past one hundred and fifty years or so. He uses the term 'correct' physical explanation to mean an explanation which is in close agreement with experimental evidence and with modern fundamental theory and also one which is logically sound and accurately worded.
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Julia Roche (1987) studied this question.
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