Maxwell's equations "seem" overdetermined, in that they involve six unknowns (the three components of and ) but eight equations (one for each of the two Gauss's laws, three vector components each for Faraday's and Ampere's laws). (The currents and charges are not unknowns, being freely specifiable subject to charge conservation.) This is related to a certain limited kind of redundancy in Maxwell's equations: It can be proven that any system satisfying Faraday's law and Ampere's law "automatically" also satisfies the two Gauss's laws, as long as the system's initial condition does, and assuming conservation of charge and the nonexistence of magnetic monopoles.