But, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLBut, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLAll 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 MAXWELLFaraday is, and must always remain, the father of that enlarged science of electromagnetism.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLThe chief philosophical value of physics is that it gives the mind something distinct to lay hold of, which, if you don’t, Nature at once tells you you are wrong.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLThe true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLAmpere was the Newton of Electricity.
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.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLBut 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 MAXWELLIn 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 MAXWELLBut that 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 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.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLIn 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 MAXWELLVery 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 MAXWELLWhen I reappear it will be in the dusky ring, which is something like the state of the air supposing the siege of Sebastopol conducted from a forest of guns 100 miles one way, and 30,000 miles the other, and the shot never to stop, but go spinning away round a circle, radius 170,000 miles.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLAn 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 MAXWELLColour as perceived by us is a function of three independent variables at least three are I think sufficient, but time will show if I thrive.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL