James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory famously unified many of the Victorian laws of physics. This essay argues that Maxwell saw a deep theological significance in the unification of physical laws. He postulated a variation on the design argument that focused on the unity of phenomena rather than Paley's emphasis on complexity. This argument of Maxwell's is shown to be connected to his particular evangelical religious views. His evangelical perspective provided encouragement for him to pursue a (...) unified physics that supplemented his other philosophical, technical and social influences. Maxwell's version of the argument from design is also contrasted with modern ‘intelligent-design’ theory. (shrink)

Early Victorian analogical arguments were used to order the natural and the social world by maintaining a coherent collective experience across cultural oppositions such as the ideal and material, the sacred and profane, theory and fact. Maxwell's use of analogical argument in ‘On Faraday's lines of force’ was a contribution to that broad nineteenth-century discussion which overlapped theology and natural philosophy. I argue here that Maxwell understood his theoretical work as both a technical and a socially meaningful practice (...) and that embedding his use of analogy in the social and intellectual context of Victorian Britain provides a means of telling a sociocultural history of Maxwell's development of a new cognitive tool: a way of thinking on paper analogous to thinking with objects in the laboratory. (shrink)

In this book, Peter Achinstein proposes and defends several objective concepts of evidence. He then explores the question of whether a scientific method, such as that represented in the four "Rules for the Study of Natural Philosophy" that Isaac Newton invoked in proving his law of gravity, can be employed in demonstrating how the proposed definitions of evidence are to be applied to real scientific cases.

This paper distinguishes in Maxwell’s thought between “atomic molecules” and “ultimate atoms,” and arrives at a set of properties that characterize each type of atom. It concludes that Maxwell is a mathematical atomist, an approach that entails the notion that although it is impossible to observe the ultimate atoms as free particles, we can nevertheless study them as mathematical observables, on the caveat that mathematical formalism remains tied to phenomenalism and to theoretical interpretations of such phenomena as, for (...) example, mass and force variations, gravitational pull, gas diffusion and viscosity, and heat conduction. (shrink)

Cet article vise à éclairer le contexte universitaire et éditorial qui favorisa la publication du Treatise on electricity and magnetism de James Clerk Maxwell afin de mieux cerner la nature de cette entreprise scientifique. Le projet fut formé en 1867 à l'occasion d'une réforme introduisant l'étude de l'électricité et du magnétisme dans l'enseignement délivré à Cambridge et s'inscrivait dans un mouvement plus vaste qui développait l'enseignement de ces disciplines dans les universités britanniques. L'étude des relations entre le (...) projet de Maxwell et d'autres ouvrages contemporains indique que le Treatise était en situation de devenir un ouvrage de référence en Grande-Bretagne. Ainsi, le livre de Maxwell était-il l'instrument d'une très ambitieuse tentative de transformation de l'électromagnétisme, indissociable de son contexte et conforme à sa fonction pédagogique. (shrink)

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This monograph examines James Clerk Maxwell's contributions to electromagnetism to gain insight into the practice of science by focusing on scientific methodology as applied by scientists. First and foremost, this study is concerned with practices that are reflected in scientific texts and the ways scientists frame their research. The book is therefore about means and not ends.