“Faraday, Maxwell, Larmor and a great number of others tried to explain electromagnetic action on these lines, but all attempts failed, and it began to seem impossible that any properties of ether could explain the observed pattern of events.”

—  James Jeans

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Faraday, Maxwell, Larmor and a great number of others tried to explain electromagnetic action on these lines, but all a…" by James Jeans?
James Jeans photo
James Jeans 54
British mathematician and astronomer 1877–1946

Related quotes

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“...the impossible must be supposed in order to explain the superdetermination of the event”

Source: Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952), p. 301

James Jeans photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.

Margaret MacMillan photo
Gerald James Whitrow photo
Willem de Sitter photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Max Tegmark photo
James Jeans photo
Novalis photo

“Moral Action is that great and only Experiment, in which all riddles of the most manifold appearances explain themselves.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Pupils at Sais (1799)
Context: The waking man looks without fear at this offspring of his lawless Imagination; for he knows that they are but vain Spectres of his weakness. He feels himself lord of the world: his me hovers victorious over the Abyss; and will through Eternities hover aloft above that endless Vicissitude. Harmony is what his spirit strives to promulgate, to extend. He will even to infinitude grow more and more harmonious with himself and with his Creation; and at every step behold the all-efficiency of a high moral Order in the Universe, and what is purest of his Me come forth into brighter and brighter clearness. This significance of the World is Reason; for her sake is the World here; and when it is grown to be the arena of a childlike, expanding Reason, it will one day become the divine Image of her Activity, the scene of a genuine Church. Till then let man honour Nature as the Emblem of his own Spirit; the Emblem ennobling itself, along with him, to unlimited degrees. Let him, therefore, who would arrive at knowledge of Nature, train his moral sense, let him act and conceive in accordance with the noble Essence of his Soul; and as if of herself Nature will become open to him. Moral Action is that great and only Experiment, in which all riddles of the most manifold appearances explain themselves. Whoso understands it, and in rigid sequence of Thought can lay it open, is forever master of Nature.

Related topics