James Clerk Maxwell - Science Quotes

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The opinion seems to have got abroad, that in a few years all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry on these measurements to another place of decimals.

James Clerk Maxwell
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
I maintain that all the evil influences that I can trace have been internal and not external, you know what I mean—that I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me, and that if I escape, it is only by God's grace helping me to get rid of myself, partially in science, more completely in society, — but not perfectly except by committing myself to God as the instrument of His will, not doubtfully, but in the certain hope that that Will will be plain enough at the proper time. Nevertheless, you see things from the outside directly, and I only by reflexion, so I hope that you will not tell me you have little fault to find with me, without finding that little and communicating it.

James Clerk Maxwell
I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonize his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society.

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
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
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 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 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
It has been asserted that metaphysical speculation is a thing of the past and that physical science has extirpated it. The discussion of the categories of existence, however, does not appear to be in danger of coming to an end in our time, and the exercise of speculation continues as fascinating to every fresh mind as it was in the days of Thales.

James Clerk Maxwell
[Molecular science is] one of those branches of study which deal with things invisible and imperceptible by our senses, and which cannot be subjected to direct experiment.

James Clerk Maxwell
Nature is a journal of science, and one of the several tests of a scientific mind is to discern the limits of the legitimate application of scientific methods.

James Clerk Maxwell
Faraday is, and must always remain, the father of that enlarged science of electromagnetism.

James Clerk Maxwell
In the very beginning of science, the parsons, who managed things then, Being handy with hammer and chisel, made gods in the likeness o' men; Till Commerce arose and at length some men of exceptional power Supplanted both demons and gods by the atoms, which last to this hour.

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
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