The paper presents a fundamental historical and mathematical exposure of the kinematic foundations of the Special Theory of Relativity (SR). Based on a rigorous analysis of the original text of J. C. Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873, paragraphs 600—601), it is proved that the original equations of the electromagnetic field initially contained total (material) time derivatives and convective field drift operators (v · ∇). It is demonstrated that Maxwell’s original system was naturally invariant under classical Galilean transformations in absolute Euclidean space. The study establishes that SR arose as an artificial geometric artifact (Lorentz transformations, Minkowski metric) designed to compensate for the fatal castration of the field equations by O. Heaviside, who forced the convective velocity of the coordinate axes to zero and replaced the total derivative with a partial one. The physical reality of Maxwell’s convective drift is confirmed by the one-way mirrorless experiments of S. Marinov and R. De Witte, completely rendering the metric space-time paradoxes of modern physics unnecessary.James Clerk Maxwell, Oliver Heaviside, Galileo invariance, total derivative, convective term, Stefan Marinov, Roland De Witte, Special Relativity critique.