James Clerk Maxwell Quotes

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At any rate the atoms are a very tough lot, and can stand a great deal of knocking about...

James Clerk Maxwell
Some years ago I encountered a gentleman whose main object was to discover the musical relations of the number eleven. I hear on good authority that the question is not only more perplexed but more interesting than ever.

James Clerk Maxwell
March on, symbolic host! with step sublime, Up to the flaming bounds of Space and Time! There pause, until by Dickenson depicted, In two dimensions, we the form may trace Of him whose soul, too large for vulgar space, In n dimensions flourished unrestricted.

James Clerk Maxwell
It is a universal condition of the enjoyable that the mind must believe in the existence of a law, and yet have a mystery to move about in.

James Clerk Maxwell
How freely he scatters his atoms before the beginning of years; How he clothes them with force as a garment, those small incompressible spheres!

James Clerk Maxwell
But though the professed aim of all scientific work is to unravel the secrets of nature, it has another effect, not less valuable, on the mind of the worker. It leaves him in possession of methods which nothing but scientific work could have led him to invent.

James Clerk Maxwell
If we are to ever discover the laws of nature, we must do so by obtaining the most accurate acquaintance with the facts of nature, and not by dressing up in philosophical language the loose opinions of men who had no knowledge of the facts which throw most light on these laws.

James Clerk Maxwell
The education of man is so well provided for in the world around him, and so hopeless in any of the worlds which he makes for himself, that it becomes of the utmost importance to distinguish natural truth from artificial system, the development of a science from the envelopment of a craft.

James Clerk Maxwell
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
The aim of the space-crumplers is to make its curvature uniform everywhere, that is over the whole of space whether that whole is more or less than N. The direction of the curvature is not related to one of the x y z more than another or to —x -y —z so that as far as I understand we are once more on a pathless sea, starless, windless and poleless.

James Clerk Maxwell
If we wish to form a mental representation of what is going on among the molecules in calm air, we cannot do better than observe a swarm of bees, when every individual bee is flying furiously, first in one direction, and then in another, while the swarm, as a whole, either remains at rest, or sails slowly through the air.

James Clerk Maxwell
The first process therefore in the effectual study of science must be one of simplification and reduction of results of previous investigation to a form in which the mind can grasp them. The results of this simplification may take the form of a purely mathematical formula or of a physical hypothesis.

James Clerk Maxwell
An atom is a body which cannot be cut in two.

James Clerk Maxwell
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
There are some questions in Astronomy, to which we are attracted rather on account of their peculiarity, as the possible illustration of some unknown principle, than from any direct advantage which their solution would afford to mankind.

James Clerk Maxwell
Absolute space is conceived as remaining always similar to itself and immovable. The arrangement of the parts of space can no more be altered than the order of the portions of time. To conceive them to move from their places is to conceive a place to move away from itself.

James Clerk Maxwell
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
Scientific truth should be presented in different forms, and should be regarded as equally scientific whether it appears in the robust form and the vivid colouring of a physical illustration, or in the tenuity and paleness of a symbolic expression.

James Clerk Maxwell
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
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
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
Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing. We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent it must have been created.

James Clerk Maxwell
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
The world may be utterly crazy
And life may be labour in vain;
But I'd rather be silly than lazy,
And would not quit life for its pain.

James Clerk Maxwell
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
I hope you enjoy the absence of pupils...the total oblivion of them for definite intervals is a necessary condition for doing them justice at the proper time.

James Clerk Maxwell
But listen, what harmony holy
Is mingling its notes with our own!
The discord is vanishing slowly,
And melts in that dominant tone.
And they that have heard it can never
Return to confusion again,
Their voices are music for ever,
And join in the mystical strain.

James Clerk Maxwell
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
It was a great step in science when men became convinced that, in order to understand the nature of things, they must begin by asking, not whether a thing is good or bad, noxious or beneficial, but of what kind it is? And how much is there of it? Quality and Quantity were then first recognised as the primary features to be observed in scientific inquiry.

James Clerk Maxwell
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