The 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 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.
More James Clerk Maxwell Quotes
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One of the chief peculiarities of this treatise is the doctrine that the true electric current, on which the electromagnetic phenomena depend, is not the same thing as the current of conduction, but that the time-variation of the electric displacement must [also] be taken into account.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
What’s the go of that? What’s the particular go of that?
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
… 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 -
Colour 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 -
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 -
The dimmed outlines of phenomenal things all merge into one another unless we put on the focusing-glass of theory, and screw it up sometimes to one pitch of definition and sometimes to another, so as to see down into different depths through the great millstone of the world.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
The true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
The 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 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 -
Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.
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 -
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 -
Every existence above a certain rank has its singular points; the higher the rank the more of them. At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being may produce results of the greatest importance.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL






