We define thermodynamics … as the investigation of the dynamical and thermal properties of bodies, deduced entirely from the first and second law of thermodynamics, without speculation as to the molecular constitution.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLThe 2nd law of thermodynamics has the same degree of truth as the statement that if you throw a tumblerful of water into the sea, you cannot get the same tumblerful of water out again.
More James Clerk Maxwell Quotes
-
-
Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.
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.
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 -
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 -
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 -
All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
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 -
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 -
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’.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
Thus number may be said to rule the whole world of quantity, and the four rules of arithmetic may be regarded as the complete equipment of the mathematician.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
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 -
Ampere was the Newton of Electricity.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
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,
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
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 -
In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL