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Descartes... fell back on his original confusion of matter with space—space being, according to him, the only form of substance, and all existing things but affections of space. This error... forms one of the ultimate foundations of the system of Spinoza.

— James Clerk Maxwell Matter and Motion (1876)

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More quotes by James Clerk Maxwell

I hope that you will not tell me you have little fault to find with me, without finding that little and communicating it.

The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)

In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.

The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)

Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.

Theory of Heat (1871)

But we have no right to think thus of the unsearchable riches of creation, or of the untried fertility of those fresh minds into which these riches will continue to be poured.

To prove the laws of motion by the law of gravitation would be an inversion of scientific order. We might as well prove the law of addition of numbers by the differential calculus.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Clerk Maxwell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.