James Clerk Maxwell Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• In Science, it is when we take some interest in the great discoverers and their lives that it becomes endurable, and only when we begin to trace the development of ideas that it becomes fascinating.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Discovery, Ideas

• It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Students, Physics

  James Clerk Maxwell (1954). “A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism”, p.11, Courier Corporation

• The true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, World, Logic

  "The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell: 1846-1862".

• In fact, whenever energy is transmitted from one body to another in time, there must be a medium or substance in which the energy exists after it leaves one body and before it reaches the other ... and if we admit this medium as an hypothesis, I think it ought to occupy a prominent place in our investigations, and that we ought to endeavour to construct a mental representation of all the details of its action, and this has been my constant aim in this treatise.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Thinking, Details

• The University of Cambridge, in accordance with that law of its evolution, by which, while maintaining the strictest continuity between the successive phases of its history, it adapts itself with more or less promptness to the requirements of the times, has lately instituted a course of Experimental Physics.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Discovery, Law

  James Clerk Maxwell, Elizabeth Garber, Stephen G. Brush, C. W. Francis Everitt (1986). “Maxwell on Molecules and Gases”, p.111, MIT Press

• I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Gun, Light

  James Clerk Maxwell (1995). “The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell:”, p.203, CUP Archive

• What's the go of that? What's the particular go of that?

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Particular

• 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)

• That small word "Force," they make a barber's block, Ready to put on Meanings most strange and various, fit to shock Pupils of Newton.... The phrases of last century in this Linger to play tricks- Vis viva and Vis Mortua and Vis Acceleratrix:- Those long-nebbed words that to our text books still Cling by their titles, And from them creep, as entozoa will, Into our vitals. But see! Tait writes in lucid symbols clear One small equation; And Force becomes of Energy a mere Space-variation.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Block, Book, Writing

• What, then, is light according to the electromagnetic theory? It consists of alternate and opposite rapidly recurring transverse magnetic disturbances, accompanied with electric displacements, the direction of the electric displacement being at the right angles to the magnetic disturbance, and both at right angles to the direction of the ray.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Light, Opposites

  James Clerk Maxwell (1995). “The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell:”, p.195, CUP Archive

• 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

• But when we face the great questions about gravitation Does it require time? Is it polar to the 'outside of the universe' or to anything? Has it any reference to electricity? or does it stand on the very foundation of matter-mass or inertia? then we feel the need of tests, whether they be comets or nebulae or laboratory experiments or bold questions as to the truth of received opinions.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Doe, Needs

• Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules [i.e. atoms] out of which these systems are built-the foundation stones of the material universe-remain unbroken and unworn.‎ They continue to this day as they were created-perfect in number and measure and weight.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Numbers, Perfect

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.377, Courier Corporation

• 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

• 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

• In your letter you apply the word imponderable to a molecule. Don't do that again. It may also be worth knowing that the aether cannot be molecular. If it were, it would be a gas, and a pint of it would have the same properties as regards heat, etc., as a pint of air, except that it would not be so heavy.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Knowing, Air

  James Clerk Maxwell, Elizabeth Garber, Stephen G. Brush, C. W. Francis Everitt (1986). “Maxwell on Molecules and Gases”, p.132, MIT Press

• 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

• At quite uncertain times and places,
  The atoms left their heavenly path,
  And by fortuitous embraces,
  Engendered all that being hath.
  And though they seem to cling together,
  And form 'associations' here,
  Yet, soon or late, they burst their tether,
  And through the depths of space career.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Careers, Space

  James Clerk Maxwell, “Molecular Evolution”

• 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

• But I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to the text in Genesis... The rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretations, so that if an interpretation is founded on such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Change, Sorry, Biblical

  James Clerk Maxwell (2002). “The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell:”, p.418, Cambridge University Press

• 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

• 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

• Thus science strips off, one after the other, the more or less gross materialisations by which we endeavour to form an objective image of the soul, till men of science, speculating, in their non-scientific intervals, like other men on what science may possibly lead to, have prophesied that we shall soon have to confess that the soul is nothing else than a function of certain complex material systems.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Men, Soul

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.760, Courier Corporation

• 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

• 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".

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