Very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the profound impact of Newton's discoveries on human thought, contrasting past and present understanding of motion.
James Clerk Maxwell highlights how the revolutionary principles established by Newton transformed not only the science of motion but also the very way philosophers and thinkers approached the world. Before Newton's revelations, even the great philosophers like Descartes operated under a different paradigm, illustrating the extent to which scientific advancements shape our intellectual framework and understanding of reality.
In practice
Using this quote in a lecture on the history of science to illustrate the shift in thinking brought about by Newton's laws.
Science appears to us with a very different aspect after we have found out that it is not in lecture rooms only, and by means of the electric light projected on a screen, that we may witness physical phenomena, but that we may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.
... that, in a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.
What's the go of that? What's the particular go of that?
I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.
If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of widespread causes, though very different in each individual, will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a study of which we may estimate the character and propensities of an imaginary being called the Mean Man.
The student who uses home made apparatus, which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt to trust and which he dares not take to pieces.
The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.
Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
Dear me, I believe I am becoming a god. An emperor ought at least to die on his feet.
A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be.
Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.
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