This book provides an introductory yet comprehensive account of James Clerk Maxwell's (1831-79) physics and world view. The argument is structured by a focus on the fundamental themes that shaped Maxwell's science: analogy and geometry, models and mechanical explanation, statistical representation and the limitations of dynamical reasoning, and the relation between physical theory and its mathematical description. This approach, which considers his physics as a whole, bridges the disjunction between Maxwell's greatest contributions: the concept of the electromagnetic field and the kinetic...

By focusing on the conceptual issues faced by nineteenth century physicists, this book clarifies the status of field theory, the ether, and thermodynamics in the work of the period. A remarkably synthetic account of a difficult and fragmentary period in scientific development.

This book is a collection of twenty original essays on the history of science and mathematics, written in honor of D.T. Whiteside. The topics covered embrace the main themes of Whiteside's scholarly work, emphasizing Newtonian topics including: mathematics and astronomy, Newton's manuscripts, Newton's Principia, Newton and eighteenth-century mathematics and physics, and optics and dynamics after Newton. The focus of these themes gives the volume considerable coherence, and these essays make available important original work on Newton and the history of the exact sciences.