James Clerk Maxwell Professions : Physicist Born : June 13, 1831 Died : November 5, 1879 Browse All Authors Top 66 quotes by James Clerk Maxwell That small word "Force," they make a barber's block, Ready to put on Meanings most strange and various, fit to shock Pupils of Newton.... The phrases of last century in this Linger to play tricks- Vis viva and Vis Mortua and Vis Acceleratrix:- Those long-nebbed words that to our text books still Cling by their titles, And from them creep, as entozoa will, Into our vitals. But see! Tait writes in lucid symbols clear One small equation; And Force becomes of Energy a mere Space-variation. James Clerk Maxwell block writing book 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 body law firsts So many of the properties of matter, especially when in the gaseous form, can be deduced from the hypothesis that their minute parts are in rapid motion, the velocity increasing with the temperature, that the precise nature of this motion becomes a subject of rational curiosity. Daniel Bernoulli, Herapath, Joule, Kronig, Clausius, &c., have shewn that the relations between pressure, temperature and density in a perfect gas can be explained by supposing the particles move with uniform velocity in straight lines, striking against the sides of the containing vessel and thus producing pressure. James Clerk Maxwell curiosity perfect moving 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 soul men science 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 glasses depth science 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 influence taken may Similar Authors Gabriel Lippmann physicist Burton Richter physicist Bruno Rossi physicist Bruce Maccabee physicist Brian Cox physicist Allan McLeod Cormack physicist All Authors