Exactly the same is true of Maxwell's equations. The four we use today are different than the 20 he originally came up with; most of that reduction comes from v

Exactly the same is true of Maxwell's equations. The four we use today are different than the 20 he originally came up with; most of that reduction comes from vectorizing them, and they gain a lot of clarity by using vector-calculus operations such as gradient and curl. Together these changes brush the computational complexities under the rug, and leave only the descriptive power of the laws: * "the gradient of the electric field is proportional to the amount of electric charge" * "the curl of an electric field is always zero" * "the gradient of a magnetic field is always zero" * "the curl of a magnetic field is proportional to the size of the electric current plus the amount of change in the electric field with respect to time".