His electromagnetic theory embodied the notion that things we can measure directly, like mechanical force, are merely the outward manifestations of deeper processes, involving entities like electric f...
First, electric charges attract or repel one another with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them: unlike charges attract, like ones repel. Second, magnetic poles att...
He wrote up the mathematics and everything fitted together. James had shown how the electrical and magnetic forces which we experience could have their seat not in physical objects like magnets and wi...
Goodness knows what Maxwell would make of our current relish for watching people indulging in histrionic self-exposure on television. He would certainly have a wry smile at the irony of the fact that...
Leo Szilard, in 1929, showed that the very act of acquiring information about a system increases its entropy in proportion to the amount of information gathered. As the entropy increases, less of the...
In fact, confusion over units was not confined to electricity and magnetism. When two people spoke of a quantity like 'force' or 'power' you could not be sure that they meant the same thing. James saw...
One of the things Maxwell learned from his reading was the fallibility of men's efforts to understand the world. All of the great scientists had made mistakes. He was acutely aware of his own tendency...
Maxwell's greatest work shows two unique characteristics which stem from his philosophical insight. The first is the way he could return to a subject, often after a gap of several years and take it to...
It sometimes happens that mathematical methods conceived in the abstract turn out later to be so well suited to a particular application that they might have been written especially for it. When he wa...
David Hume, the great eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, had put the cat among the pigeons with his notion of scepticism: that nothing can be proved, except in mathematics, and that much of what...
The new law that he predicted seemed to defy common sense. It was that the viscosity of a gas-the internal frictional that causes drag on a body moved through it-is independent of its pressure. One mi...
I know the tendency of the human mind is to do anything rather than think. But mental labour is not thought, and those who have with labour acquired the habit of application, often find it much easier...
James was generous with his time to any friend who needed it—as well as to some, like Lawson, who did not! When one friend had eye trouble and could not read, James spent an hour each evening reading...
His faith was the guiding principle of his life but it was an intensely reflective personal faith which could not be contained within the rules of a sect. Institutional politics, whether of the church...
In the Treatise James made an important new prediction from his electromagnetic theory-that electromagnetic waves exert a radiation pressure. Bright sunlight, he calculated, presses on the earth's sur...
His system of equations worked with jewelled precision. Its construction had been an immense feat of sustained creative effort in three stages spread over 9 years. The whole route was paved with inspi...
Most creative scientists, even the most prolific and versatile, produce one theory per subject. When that theory has run its course they move on to another topic, or stop inventing. Maxwell was unique...
Maxwell was not only one of the most brilliant and influential scientists who ever lived but an altogether fine and engaging man. And
The E and H waves always travel together: neither can exist alone. They vibrate at right angles to each other and are always in phase.
Happy is the man who can recognise in the work of Today a connected portion of the work of life, and an embodiment of the work of Eternity ...
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