Electrodynamic research in the 19th century was surprisingly heterogeneous. Quite varied theoretical frameworks were developed and adopted by different researchers, and specific kinds of day-to-day research practices were associated with each of these frameworks. One question that arises for the explanatorily-oriented historian looking at this period is “why were their day-to-day laboratory practices so different?” One answer, drawn from Buchwald’s account (1993, 1994), is that the differences in laboratory practice resulted from the differences in theoretical frameworks, as the theory “came to life” in daily practice (1994, 19). While the theoretical differences between 19th century electrodynamics researchers do help explain the differences in their daily scientific practice, one would also like to account for the theoretical differences themselves. I argue that the theoretical differences between the three main research programs of the late 1870s—Helmholtz’s in Berlin, Weber’s in Göttingen, and Maxwell’s in Cambridge—are best explained as the result of differences in the philosophical conceptions of science held by their main progenitors; in a manner analogous to the way that Helmholtz’s representational practices “came to life” in his electrodynamics laboratory, for example, his distinctly empiricist conception of science “came to life” in his representational practices.