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"Maxwell, James Clerk"
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‘None Will Work Without a God’: The Faith-Based Physics of James Clerk Maxwell
This article outlines the life of James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) and presents some aspects of his philosophy of science. It describes the influence of the philosopher Sir William Hamilton on Maxwell’s general thinking. It considers Maxwell’s view that the boundary conditions of science (the ultimate origin of matter, the ultimate origin of the logic of the universe, and the initial characteristics of fundamental entities) appear to point to a Creator. It sets these issues within their historical context.
Journal Article
The Crystal Analogy: James Clerk Maxwell's Naturalist Idealism
James Clerk Maxwell's 1856 essay \"Are There Real Analogies in Nature?\" asks whether analogies can be said to exist in nature or whether they are a construction of the human mind. I argue that Maxwell's answer to this question is articulated compellingly through an analogy he sets up between the structure of crystals and the structure of the human mind: like crystals, Maxwell suggests, which attain form in response to their environment, the mind is shaped by the natural world it tries to know. Paying attention to Maxwell's educational history and building on more recent philosophy, I argue that his essay cultivates a \"naturalist idealism\" that seeks to mend the ontological gap between mind and matter instituted by an earlier generation of Cambridge scientists. As such, I stress the extent to which naturalism and idealism—although often thought of as opposing positions in the history of philosophy—could in fact be deeply complementary in Victorian scientific culture.
Journal Article
The Road to Maxwell's Demon
Time asymmetric phenomena are successfully predicted by statistical mechanics. Yet the foundations of this theory are surprisingly shaky. Its explanation for the ease of mixing milk with coffee is incomplete, and even implies that un-mixing them should be just as easy. In this book the authors develop a new conceptual foundation for statistical mechanics that addresses this difficulty. Explaining the notions of macrostates, probability, measurement, memory, and the arrow of time in statistical mechanics, they reach the startling conclusion that Maxwell's Demon, the famous perpetuum mobile, is consistent with the fundamental physical laws. Mathematical treatments are avoided where possible, and instead the authors use novel diagrams to illustrate the text. This is a fascinating book for graduate students and researchers interested in the foundations and philosophy of physics.
eBook
The Tartan Ribbon or Further Experiments of Maxwell’s Disappointment/Sutton’s Accident
On 17 May 1861, James Clerk Maxwell delivered a lecture at the Royal Society where he demonstrated, using a lantern slide projection, his theory for colour perception in the human eye via the additive colour process known today as RGB. Three images from three separate lantern slide projectors were projected onto a surface. The same colour filters with which the object had been photographed where then placed in front of each projection lens, carefully realigned, and what has been called “the first colour photograph” was supposed to have been created. It was a series of happy accidents, during capture and exposure, and a misinterpretation of the results—mostly long after the event itself—that has invented this commonly referred to fictional “First Ever” title. In the following retelling of the historical details in their chronological order and through a series of experiments with historically correct emulsions, we will clearly outline the errors and where they occurred.
Journal Article
Maxwell, Measurement, and the Modes of Electromagnetic Theory
In 1861–62, James Clerk Maxwell published “On Physical Lines of Force,” in which he laid out a detailed mechanical model of the ether and argued that it could account not only for electromagnetic phenomena but for light as well. In 1864, he followed with “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field,” in which he derived the electromagnetic equations from general dynamical considerations without invoking any mechanical model of the ether. Why the shift? Did Maxwell regard his mechanical model as mere scaffolding, to be cast aside once it had led him to the proper field equations? Or did he remain committed to the goal of a purely mechanical explanation, but find it useful to free his main results, particularly his electromagnetic theory of light, from dependence on the specifics of an admittedly speculative model? To understand the apparent shift Maxwell’s thinking underwent between 1862 and 1864, I propose that we look closely at what he was doing in 1863. He spent that year working hard for the British Association Committee on Electrical Standards, collaborating with telegraph engineers to establish the value of the ohm and laying the groundwork for measuring the ratio of electrostatic to electromagnetic units, a key quantity in his electromagnetic theory of light. This experience led Maxwell to adopt for a time an engineering approach that focused on establishing relationships between measureable quantities rather than devising hypothetical mechanisms. Maxwell’s electromagnetic work thus had closer ties to the technological context of the day than has generally been recognized.
Journal Article
The JCMT BISTRO-2 Survey: Magnetic Fields of the Massive DR21 Filament
We present 850 μm dust polarization observations of the massive DR21 filament from the B-fields In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey, using the POL-2 polarimeter and the SCUBA-2 camera on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. We detect ordered magnetic fields perpendicular to the parsec-scale ridge of the DR21 main filament. In the subfilaments, the magnetic fields are mainly parallel to the filamentary structures and smoothly connect to the magnetic fields of the main filament. We compare the POL-2 and Planck dust polarization observations to study the magnetic field structures of the DR21 filament on 0.1–10 pc scales. The magnetic fields revealed in the Planck data are well-aligned with those of the POL-2 data, indicating a smooth variation of magnetic fields from large to small scales. The plane-of-sky magnetic field strengths derived from angular dispersion functions of dust polarization are 0.6–1.0 mG in the DR21 filament and ∼0.1 mG in the surrounding ambient gas. The mass-to-flux ratios are found to be magnetically supercritical in the filament and slightly subcritical to nearly critical in the ambient gas. The alignment between column density structures and magnetic fields changes from random alignment in the low-density ambient gas probed by Planck to mostly perpendicular in the high-density main filament probed by James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. The magnetic field structures of the DR21 filament are in agreement with MHD simulations of a strongly magnetized medium, suggesting that magnetic fields play an important role in shaping the DR21 main filament and subfilaments.
Journal Article
Response
In her essay, Toril Moi responds to the contributions to the Victorian Idealisms forum and argues for the importance of distinguishing between aesthetic idealism and philosophical idealism. While the contributions mostly focus on idealism as a philosophical position, Moi argues for the importance of aesthetic idealism--various permutations of the belief that art should show us the true, the good, and the beautiful--in the Victorian period.
Journal Article