The document discusses Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism and their implications. It covers Maxwell's four equations describing electric and magnetic fields and predicting electromagnetic waves. It describes Hertz's 1887 experiment that experimentally confirmed the existence of electromagnetic waves, using an apparatus to generate oscillations and a receiver to detect the waves. It discusses how Maxwell's laws and the discovery of electromagnetic waves led to a crisis of the Cartesian mechanical worldview and the acceptance of action at a distance and field concepts in physics.