James Clerk Maxwell Quotes About Language

• Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.

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  James Clerk Maxwell

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.328, Courier Corporation

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• The popularisation of scientific doctrines is producing as great an alteration in the mental state of society as the material applications of science are effecting in its outward life. Such indeed is the respect paid to science, that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recals [sic] some well-known scientific phrase.

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  James Clerk Maxwell

  James Clerk Maxwell, Elizabeth Garber, Stephen G. Brush, C. W. Francis Everitt (1986). “Maxwell on Molecules and Gases”, p.112, MIT Press

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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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  James Clerk Maxwell

  James Clerk Maxwell, W. D. Niven (2003). “The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell”, p.328, Courier Corporation

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