Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.
James Clerk MaxwellIn 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 MaxwellEvery 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 MaxwellThe true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability.
James Clerk MaxwellThe experimental investigation by which Ampere established the law of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, full grown and full armed, from the brain of the 'Newton of Electricity'. It is perfect in form, and unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the cardinal formula of electro-dynamics.
James Clerk MaxwellIn fact, whenever energy is transmitted from one body to another in time, there must be a medium or substance in which the energy exists after it leaves one body and before it reaches the other ... and if we admit this medium as an hypothesis, I think it ought to occupy a prominent place in our investigations, and that we ought to endeavour to construct a mental representation of all the details of its action, and this has been my constant aim in this treatise.
James Clerk Maxwell