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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.

James Clerk Maxwell

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James Clerk Maxwell
Age: 48 †
Born: 1831
Born: June 13
Died: 1879
Died: November 5
Engineer
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Mathematician
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Physicist
Teacher
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
Edinburgh
Scotland
Maxwell
Avoid
Magnetic
Cause
Scarcely
Causes
Phenomena
Science
Electric
Light
Consists
Medium
Mediums
Electromagnetism
Phenomenon
Inference

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I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.
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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.
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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.
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Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.
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Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Gin a body meet a body Flyin' through the air, Gin a body hit a body, Will it fly? and where?
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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.
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Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.
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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.
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