A field describes something that varies continuously through space and time, like a wave, and creates a "condition in space" whereby a particle will "feel" a force (Feynman, 1963). Field theories describe how forces interact with matter.A field that permeates space was introduced to physics in the 18th century in order to describe Newtonian gravity. This field described the gravitational force felt by a mass at any point in space. Field theory was next applied in the 19th century to electromagnetism. British physicist Michael Faraday coined the term 'field' in order to describe these interactions in 1849. Maxwell discovered that waves in these fields travel at a finite speed. At first, Maxwell did not think of a field as a fundamental entity and suggested that the electromagnetic field propagated through the aether.
