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The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

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

Accordance Continuity Country Evolution Law Maintain People Person Phase Strictest Successive University
Gin a body meet a body Flyin’ through the air, Gin a body hit a body, Will it fly? and where?
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Body Flyin Gin Met Through
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

Avenue Country Destroy Fancy Infinite Long People Person Think Unbound Universe
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 MAXWELL

Body Constitution Deduct Define Entirely First Investigation Law Molecular Property Second Speculation Thermal Thermodynamics
The vast interplanetary and vast interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Interplanetary Place Regard Region Universe Vast
Very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Before Condition Day Descarte Few Great Involve Mental Newton Now Ourselves Philosopher Place Such Very
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

Arrange Circumstance Early Experience Like Nature Phenomena Place Relation Scientific Take
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

Energy Field Files However Literally Speak Understood
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

Endurable Great Interest Live Science Siccovery Some Take
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

Creation Incomplete Itself Matter Nothing Reason Science Upon
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…
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Change Conjectural Expanse Fastened Found Hypothesis Interception Mist Rate Scientific Sorry Text
… 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.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Approximately Constant Estimate Few Great Left Men Occupation Only Physical Science Will Work Year
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.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Appear Aspect Different Electric Found Lecture Light Mean Project Science Woom
The student who uses home made apparatus, which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt to trust and which he dares not take to pieces.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Always Apparatus Going Home Made Student Use Wrong
Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL

Advance Conscious Every Ignorance Prelude Rawal Science
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

Complete Equipment Four Mathematician Number Quality Regard Rule Said Whole World

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

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The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

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