James Clerk Maxwell Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The equations at which we arrive must be such that a person of any nation, by substituting the numerical values of the quantities as measured by his own national units, would obtain a true result.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Results, Units, Equations

  James Clerk Maxwell (2002). “The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell:”, p.518, Cambridge University Press

  5 Copy quote

• An Experiment, like every other event which takes place, is a natural phenomenon; but in a Scientific Experiment the circumstances are so arranged that the relations between a particular set of phenomena may be studied to the best advantage.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Events, May

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.505, Courier Corporation

  13 Copy quote

• Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Ideas, Effort

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.328, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

• My soul is an entangled knot,
  Upon a liquid vortex wrought
  By Intellect in the Unseen residing,
  And thine doth like a convict sit,
  With marline-spike untwisting it,
  Only to find its knottiness abiding;
  Since all the tools for its untying
  In four-dimensional space are lying,
  Wherein they fancy intersperses
  Long avenues of universes,
  While Klein and Clifford fill the void
  With one finite, unbounded homoloid,
  And think the Infinite is now at last destroyed.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Lying, Thinking, Space

  12 Copy quote

• All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers, so that the aim of exact science is to reduce the problems of nature to the determination of quantities by operations with numbers.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Determination, Science, Law

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.156, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

• We can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Light, Causes

  "On Physical Lines of Force" (1862)

  17 Copy quote

• Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Substance, May, Heat

  25 Copy quote

• In speaking of the Energy of the field, however, I wish to be understood literally. All energy is the same as mechanical energy, whether it exists in the form of motion or in that of elasticity, or in any other form. The energy in electromagnetic phenomena is mechanical energy.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Words Of Wisdom, Wish, Energy

  James Clerk Maxwell (2013). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.564, Courier Corporation

  25 Copy quote

• Colour as perceived by us is a function of three independent variables at least three are I think sufficient, but time will show if I thrive.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Independent, Thinking, Three

  James Clerk Maxwell (1990). “The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell: 1846-1862”, p.245, CUP Archive

  20 Copy quote

• We shall see that the mathematical treatment of the subject [of electricity] has been greatly developed by writers who express themselves in terms of the 'Two Fluids' theory. Their results, however, have been deduced entirely from data which can be proved by experiment, and which must therefore be true, whether we adopt the theory of two fluids or not. The experimental verification of the mathematical results therefore is no evidence for or against the peculiar doctrines of this theory.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Data, Two, Doctrine

  James Clerk Maxwell (1873). “A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism”, p.38

  7 Copy quote

• In the heavens we discover [stars] by their light, and by their light alone ... the sole evidence of the existence of these distant worlds ... that each of them is built up of molecules of the same kinds we find on earth. A molecule of hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time. Each molecule therefore throughout the universe bears impressed upon it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the metre of the Archives at Paris, or the royal cubit of the Temple of Karnac.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Stars, Science, Light

  53 Copy quote

• The theory I propose may therefore be called a theory of the Electromagnetic Field because it has to do with the space in the neighbourhood of the electric or magnetic bodies, and it may be called a Dynamical Theory, because it assumes that in the space there is matter in motion, by which the observed electromagnetic phenomena are produced.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Space, Body

  James Clerk Maxwell (2013). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, Vol. I”, p.527, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

• The mathematical difficulties of the theory of rotation arise chiefly from the want of geometrical illustrations and sensible images, by which we might fix the results of analysis in our minds.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Illustration, Mind, Analysis

  James Clerk Maxwell (2013). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, Vol. I”, p.250, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

• Every existence above a certain rank has its singular points; the higher the rank the more of them. At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being may produce results of the greatest importance.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Taken, May, Influence

  4 Copy quote

• The popularisation of scientific doctrines is producing as great an alteration in the mental state of society as the material applications of science are effecting in its outward life. Such indeed is the respect paid to science, that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recals [sic] some well-known scientific phrase.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Mind, Sound

  James Clerk Maxwell, Elizabeth Garber, Stephen G. Brush, C. W. Francis Everitt (1986). “Maxwell on Molecules and Gases”, p.112, MIT Press

  19 Copy quote

• Francis Galton, whose mission it seems to be to ride other men's hobbies to death, has invented the felicitous expression 'structureless germs'.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Men, Expression, Germs

  James Clerk Maxwell (2002). “The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell:”, p.127, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

• The vast interplanetary and vast interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Space, Waste, Flaws

  James Clerk Maxwell (1998). “Escritos científicos”, p.79, Editorial CSIC - CSIC Press

  15 Copy quote

• If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of widespread causes, though very different in each individual, will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a study of which we may estimate the character and propensities of an imaginary being called the Mean Man.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Character, Mean, Science

  7 Copy quote

• The experimental investigation by which Ampere established the law of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, full grown and full armed, from the brain of the 'Newton of Electricity'. It is perfect in form, and unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the cardinal formula of electro-dynamics.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Law, Perfect

  "A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism".

  8 Copy quote

• Accordingly, we find Euler and D'Alembert devoting their talent and their patience to the establishment of the laws of rotation of the solid bodies. Lagrange has incorporated his own analysis of the problem with his general treatment of mechanics, and since his time M. Poinsôt has brought the subject under the power of a more searching analysis than that of the calculus, in which ideas take the place of symbols, and intelligent propositions supersede equations.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Intelligent, Ideas

  30 Copy quote

• I have been battering away at Saturn, returning to the charge every now and then. I have effected several breaches in the solid ring, and now I am splash into the fluid one, amid a clash of symbols truly astounding. When I reappear it will be in the dusky ring, which is something like the state of the air supposing the siege of Sebastopol conducted from a forest of guns 100 miles one way, and 30,000 miles the other, and the shot never to stop, but go spinning away round a circle, radius 170,000 miles.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Gun, Circles, Air

  James Clerk Maxwell (1990). “The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell: 1846-1862”, p.538, CUP Archive

  32 Copy quote

• The mind of man has perplexed itself with many hard questions. Is space infinite, and in what sense? Is the material world infinite in extent, and are all places within that extent equally full of matter? Do atoms exist or is matter infinitely divisible?

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Men, Space

  James Clerk Maxwell, Elizabeth Garber, Stephen G. Brush, C. W. Francis Everitt (1986). “Maxwell on Molecules and Gases”, p.138, MIT Press

  12 Copy quote

• Science appears to us with a very different aspect after we have found out that it is not in lecture rooms only, and by means of the electric light projected on a screen, that we may witness physical phenomena, but that we may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Mean, Gymnastics, Science

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.243, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

• The dimmed outlines of phenomenal things all merge into one another unless we put on the focusing-glass of theory, and screw it up sometimes to one pitch of definition and sometimes to another, so as to see down into different depths through the great millstone of the world.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Glasses, Depth

  7 Copy quote

• One of the chief peculiarities of this treatise is the doctrine that the true electric current, on which the electromagnetic phenomena depend, is not the same thing as the current of conduction, but that the time-variation of the electric displacement must [also] be taken into account.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Taken, Science, Doctrine

  James Clerk Maxwell (1954). “A treatise on electricity and magnetism”, Dover Pubns

  4 Copy quote

Page 2 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin