Robert Stauffer first gave prominence to the circumstance that Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism was intimately connected, at least in Ørsted’s own mind, with his rather deep philosophical engagement with both Kant’s philosophy of science, as presented in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science of 1786, and the further development of this philosophy within post-Kantian German Naturphilosophie, especially as represented by Schelling. Building on Stauffer’s contribution, L. Pearce Williams developed a more general picture of the development of electromagnetic theory—especially in the work of Faraday but also placing particular emphasis on Ørsted—as resting on a profound deviation from the Newtonian tradition due to Naturphilosophie and ultimately to Kant.
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Friedman, M. (2007). Kant—Naturphilosophie—Electromagnetism. In: Brain, R.M., Cohen, R.S., Knudsen, O. (eds) Hans Christian Ørsted And The Romantic Legacy In Science. Boston Studies In The Philosophy Of Science, vol 241. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2987-5_8
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