Quotes from Basil Mahon

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 in the way he could return to a topic and imbue it with new life by taking an entirely fresh approach.

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 to make errors in calculation.

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 we take to be fact is merely conjecture.

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.

He had made a discovery of the first magnitude. It opened up an entirely new approach to physics, which led to statistical mechanics, to a proper understanding of thermodynamics and to the use of probability distributions in quantum mechanics. If he had done nothing else, this breakthrough would have been enough to put him among the world's great scientists.

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 ...

Maxwell was not only one of the most brilliant and influential scientists who ever lived but an altogether fine and engaging man. And

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 field strength, which are beyond our powers of visualisation. This

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, the state or the university, was a topic that never engaged his interest.

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 attract or repel one another in a similar way but always come in pairs: every north pole is yoked to a south pole7. Third

little of the work of Faraday and others on electricity and magnetism had yet fed through to practical application. In short, science was a splendid hobby for a gentleman but a poor profession.

I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonise his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society. For it is in the nature of science, especially those branches of science which are spreading into unknown regions, to be continually changing e.

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 his own electromagnetic theory provides the means of bringing such unwholesome displays into our homes.

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 to get up a formula than to master a principle.