53+ James Clerk Maxwell Quotes On God, Electricity And Magnetism

James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. He is best known for his work on electromagnetic theory, leading to the development of the theory of electromagnetism. His equations unified electricity, magnetism, and light into the single theory of electromagnetism. Following is our collection on famous quotes by James Clerk Maxwell on god, electricity, magnetism.

Top 10 James Clerk Maxwell Quotes

1. I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.
2. The true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability.
3. Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.
4. The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.
5. All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers.
6. Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.
7. Gin a body meet a body Flyin' through the air, Gin a body hit a body, Will it fly? and where?
8. Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.
9. We can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• Faraday is, and must always remain, the father of that enlarged science of electromagnetism.
• Ampere was the Newton of Electricity.
• I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me.
• What's the go of that? What's the particular go of that?

James Clerk Maxwell Quotes About Mind

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

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 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 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

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 Maxwell

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

James Clerk Maxwell Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — James Clerk Maxwell

In your letter you apply the word imponderable to a molecule. Don't do that again. It may also be worth knowing that the aether cannot be molecular. If it were, it would be a gas, and a pint of it would have the same properties as regards heat, etc., as a pint of air, except that it would not be so heavy. — James Clerk Maxwell

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

What, then, is light according to the electromagnetic theory? It consists of alternate and opposite rapidly recurring transverse magnetic disturbances, accompanied with electric displacements, the direction of the electric displacement being at the right angles to the magnetic disturbance, and both at right angles to the direction of the ray. — James Clerk Maxwell

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

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

The theory I propose may therefore be called a theory of the Electromagnetic Field because it has to do with the space in the neighbourhood of the electric or magnetic bodies, and it may be called a Dynamical Theory, because it assumes that in the space there is matter in motion, by which the observed electromagnetic phenomena are produced. — 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

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. — 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

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

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

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

But when we face the great questions about gravitation Does it require time? Is it polar to the 'outside of the universe' or to anything? Has it any reference to electricity? or does it stand on the very foundation of matter-mass or inertia? then we feel the need of tests, whether they be comets or nebulae or laboratory experiments or bold questions as to the truth of received opinions. — James Clerk Maxwell

Francis Galton, whose mission it seems to be to ride other men's hobbies to death, has invented the felicitous expression 'structureless germs'. — James Clerk Maxwell

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

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, but 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 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

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

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

If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of widespread causes, though very different in each individual, will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a study of which we may estimate the character and propensities of an imaginary being called the Mean Man. — 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

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... The rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretations, so that if an interpretation is founded on such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten. — James Clerk Maxwell

The popularisation of scientific doctrines is producing as great an alteration in the mental state of society as the material applications of science are effecting in its outward life. Such indeed is the respect paid to science, that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recals [sic] some well-known scientific phrase. — James Clerk Maxwell

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. — James Clerk Maxwell

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

Gases are distinguished from other forms of matter, not only by their power of indefinite expansion so as to fill any vessel, however large, and by the great effect heat has in dilating them, but by the uniformity and simplicity of the laws which regulate these changes. — 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

Whether this vast homogeneous expanse of isotropic matter is fitted not only to be a medium of physical interaction between distant bodies, and to fulfil other physical functions of which perhaps we have as yet no conception, but also to constitute the material organism of beings exercising functions of life and mind as high or higher than ours are at present is a question far transcending the limits of physical speculation. — 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

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

It was a great step in science when men became convinced that, in order to understand the nature of things, they must begin by asking, not whether a thing is good or bad, noxious or beneficial, but of what kind it is? And how much is there of it? Quality and Quantity were then first recognised as the primary features to be observed in scientific inquiry. — James Clerk Maxwell

Thus science strips off, one after the other, the more or less gross materialisations by which we endeavour to form an objective image of the soul, till men of science, speculating, in their non-scientific intervals, like other men on what science may possibly lead to, have prophesied that we shall soon have to confess that the soul is nothing else than a function of certain complex material systems. — James Clerk Maxwell

Life Lessons by James Clerk Maxwell

1. James Clerk Maxwell was a great example of how hard work and dedication can lead to success, as he was able to make groundbreaking contributions to the field of physics despite facing many obstacles.
2. He also showed us how to be humble and generous, as he was always willing to share his knowledge and help others in need.
3. Finally, he taught us to never give up, as he persevered through difficult times and kept pushing forward until he achieved his goals.