The Price of Removing the Scaffolding: Maxwell wrote something about Amp`ere that years later would be done to him

Abstract

In the history of physics, the name scaffolding has been given to whatever served to raise a theory and is afterwards removed because, it is said, it is no longer needed. This article documents, from the originals, what it cost Maxwell's theory when that method was applied to it: what was removed from it, who did it, with what argument, and how over the years it had to be recovered because it was understood that it was needed after all. It also records what Maxwell himself missed in Amp`ere, what he calls the traces of the scaffolding: the template with which Amp`ere himself had given shape to his work.