2. Electromagnetic field: an unobservable observable

2.1 Preamble

In the field of EMC, two communities have tended to form within conferences dedicated to this profession: the community of electronics engineers, who are not particularly inclined to manipulate Maxwell's equations but find engineering rules to solve EMC problems, and physicists or mathematicians who use Maxwell's equations in multiple ways to model or simulate electromagnetic interactions but know little about the world of electronics. This historical divide is another distinctive feature of the EMC community.

It is certain that it is the electronic components that are faulty, and not the cables, structures, or containers. Furthermore, it is certain that interactions between components occur via the electromagnetic field, for which Maxwell synthesized...