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 MAXWELLIn 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.
More James Clerk Maxwell Quotes
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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.
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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…
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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.
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… that, in a few years, all 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 these measurements to another place of decimals.
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The experimental verification of the mathematical results therefore is no evidence for or against the peculiar doctrines of this theory.
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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.
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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?
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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,
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Ampere was the Newton of Electricity.
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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.
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Francis Galton, whose mission it seems to be to ride other men’s hobbies to death, has invented the felicitous expression ‘structureless germs’.
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What’s the go of that? What’s the particular go of that?
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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.
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The true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability.
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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.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL