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Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.

James Clerk Maxwell

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James Clerk Maxwell
Age: 48 †
Born: 1831
Born: June 13
Died: 1879
Died: November 5
Engineer
Inventor
Mathematician
Photographer
Physicist
Teacher
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
Edinburgh
Scotland
Maxwell
Advance
Ignorance
Conscious
Science
Real
Every
Prelude
Thoroughly

More quotes by James Clerk Maxwell

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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.
James Clerk Maxwell
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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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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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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
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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.
James Clerk Maxwell
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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?
James Clerk Maxwell
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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
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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.
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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.
James Clerk Maxwell
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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.
James Clerk Maxwell
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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
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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.
James Clerk Maxwell
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I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me.
James Clerk Maxwell
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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.
James Clerk Maxwell
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Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.
James Clerk Maxwell
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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
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I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.
James Clerk Maxwell
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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.
James Clerk Maxwell
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Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.
James Clerk Maxwell
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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