James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) is the textbook father of classical electrodynamics – author of the four equations named after him, founder of the kinetic theory of gases, inventor of colour photography, and from 1871 the first Cavendish Professor at Cambridge. Anyone who knows Maxwell from a physics textbook knows an unusually clean, almost ascetic figure: data, symmetries, equations. Anyone who knows Maxwell from his own letters, lectures, encyclopedia articles and poetry knows quite a different man: a deeply believing Presbyterian who never – in his personal or in his public natural philosophy – made a distinction between the Maxwell equations and an ordered Creation. It is precisely this second half that has been almost entirely deleted from today's standard picture.
Who was Maxwell?
Born 13 June 1831 in Edinburgh, raised on the family estate of Glenlair in Galloway, Scotland. He attended Edinburgh Academy from 1841 – a pale, shy child whose outfit of his father's inventions earned him mockery aged eleven and who published his first mathematical paper at fifteen (a method for drawing ovals with two pins and a string, presented at the Royal Society of Edinburgh by James Forbes, because Maxwell himself was still too young).
Edinburgh, Peterhouse, and Trinity College Cambridge; 1854 Second Wrangler after Edward Routh; 1856 Professor at Marischal College Aberdeen; 1860 King's College London; 1865 a six-year retreat to Glenlair during which the Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism took shape; 1871 a return to Cambridge as the first Cavendish Professor, charged with building up the laboratory of the same name. Maxwell died on 5 November 1879 in Cambridge of stomach cancer, aged only 48. He is buried at Parton, Galloway, beside his parents.
The "second conversion" of 1853
Maxwell had grown up religious in a Presbyterian family but, like many Cambridge students of his generation, had settled as a young man into a rather distanced, academic piety. In summer 1853 this broke. While he was staying with the Taylor family at Otley (Yorkshire) he fell severely ill with pneumonia – weeks of bedrest, intense reading, conversations with his hosts. From this crisis Maxwell returned with a changed religious posture that carried him for the rest of his life. He rarely spoke of it directly, but it is documented in a letter to his friend Lewis Campbell and in a personal confession of faith found among his papers after his death and reprinted in the 1882 Maxwell biography.
From 1853 on Maxwell reads the Bible daily, prays morning and evening, holds regular household devotions with his wife Katherine Mary (married 1858), and corresponds with clergymen on theological questions. His personal Bible is preserved at the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge – heavily annotated in pencil with cross-references and dates. This is not decoration; it is daily work.
Religious poetry and prose
Maxwell wrote poetry all his life. Much of it is humorous (he could versify mathematical-physical subjects with great wit – his Rigid Body Sings in Burns's manner is still known among physicists today as a drinking song). A non-trivial part of it, however, is decidedly religious. Lewis Campbell and William Garnett printed several of these poems in their 1882 posthumous Maxwell biography – including A Student's Evening Hymn, A Prayer, a poem on the death of his mother (1839, when Maxwell was eight), and several meditative texts from his Cavendish years. These pieces, where they appear at all, are usually in the appendix of today's Maxwell books, segregated from the "real work". They do not appear in standard physics textbooks.
Characteristic is the combination of scientific clarity and devotional self-examination. Maxwell did not separate; his religious language had the same precision as his physical language. From a now-famous letter to a young theological correspondent:
"I have looked into most philosophical systems, and I have seen that none will work without a God."
— James Clerk Maxwell, quoted in Campbell & Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, 1882.
Maxwell repeatedly sharpened this position in a form directly productive for his physics: the laws of nature, as we mathematically grasp them, are thoughts of God – the expression of a unified, ordering intelligence underlying the world. From this Maxwell drew the expectation that the world at its deepest level must be describable in a unified and symmetric way: if God is one, then the apparently separate forces of nature – electricity, magnetism, light – must be expressions of one common mathematical structure. The four equations named after him are, on this understanding, not an accidental unification of three previously separately treated phenomena but the experimental tracing of a divine harmony whose existence Maxwell had postulated in advance as a methodological precondition. Anyone who does not understand Maxwell's drive toward unification usually overlooks this theological premise. Faraday had worked toward the unity of the forces experimentally from the same premise; Maxwell formalised the result mathematically.
The atom as evidence of design (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1875)
In 1875 Maxwell wrote the article Atom for the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is a classic encyclopaedia article on atomic theory – with a point at the end that today's Maxwell reception almost never mentions. Maxwell observes that the atoms of a chemical element – such as hydrogen – are exactly identical across the whole observable universe. They have the same spectral lines, the same mass, the same behaviour. From this empirical finding Maxwell draws an unmissable conclusion:
"No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural. (…) They continue this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight."
— J. C. Maxwell, Atom, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed. 1875.
This is not a passing theological aside. Maxwell argues formally: if all hydrogen atoms throughout the cosmos are identical, their identity cannot be the result of an evolutionary process – evolution produces variation. Therefore the atoms must be created. This argument is the precise forerunner of what in the 20th century returns as the "fine-tuning argument", with the difference that Maxwell unselfconsciously writes it down in a Royal-Society-tradition encyclopaedia article. Today an equivalent passage would cost a physics professor his career.
Maxwell's Demon and the limit of mechanism
In 1867 Maxwell wrote a letter to Peter Guthrie Tait sketching a thought experiment that became famous as Maxwell's Demon: a hypothetical being capable of sorting individual molecules of a gas and thereby – apparently – violating the second law of thermodynamics. The demon was published in 1871 in Theory of Heat. What is the point? Maxwell wanted to show that the second law is statistical, not mechanistic-deterministic: it holds for many molecules, but in principle a single intelligent being able to perceive and influence single molecules could give the process a different direction.
This is physical mathematics – but it is also a subtle philosophical claim: the laws of nature, as we know them, are not as inescapably deterministic as the Laplacean demon of the early 19th century suggested. There are degrees of freedom in which a "being that perceives at single-particle level" could intervene differently. Maxwell did not hide this philosophical consequence.
The real reach of Maxwell's demon only became visible in the 20th century: the being sorts the molecules not by muscle power but by perception and information. It must observe each individual molecule, register its velocity and store it in memory in order to sort it correctly. Leó Szilard showed in 1929 that this acquisition of information itself has a thermodynamic price; Léon Brillouin (1956) and Rolf Landauer (1961) worked out the line until Charles Bennett (1982) gave today's standard solution: erasing information in the demon's memory costs exactly the entropy it apparently saved. With this Maxwell was the first to show, without calling it that, that information is a physically real quantity and that mind (perception, storage, decision) has a direct thermodynamic effect. This line – the question of how consciousness acts at the interface to the physical world – leads straight to Wigner's "Remarks on the Mind-Body Question" (1961), to Beck and Eccles' mind-brain quantum model (1992) and to Penrose and Hameroff's Orch-OR (from 1996). Maxwell explicitly opened the question in 1867.
The Cambridge address of 1873: against mechanistic determinism
In 1873 Maxwell delivered to the "Eranus Club", a Cambridge discussion society, a lecture under the unwieldy title Does the progress of Physical Science tend to give any advantage to the opinion of Necessity (or Determinism) over that of the Contingency of Events and the Freedom of the Will?. His answer is plain: No, the progress of physics does not favour determinism. On the contrary – physics itself suggests that at certain critical points ("singularities" in Maxwell's sense) even a vanishingly small cause can produce a large effect. From this observation Maxwell concludes that the argument "mechanics everywhere, therefore determinism everywhere, therefore no free will" does not hold. The lecture was first printed posthumously (Campbell & Garnett 1882) and is today again a subject of serious philosophical discussion in Maxwell scholarship – but it does not appear in physics teaching.
In the lecture Maxwell writes:
"It is manifest that the existence of unstable conditions renders impossible the prediction of future events, if our knowledge of the present state is only approximate, and not accurate."
— Maxwell, Eranus address 1873.
In other words: Maxwell in 1873 had already put forward what a hundred years later would be formulated as "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" and "deterministic chaos" – and used it as an argument against a physicalist hard determinism. And he explicitly framed it in theological-anthropological terms: free will and divine providence are compatible with physics.
The Cambridge inaugural lecture of 1871
Already his inaugural address as Cavendish Professor (October 1871) Maxwell opened with reflections on the place of physics in the wider horizon of human knowledge. He warns against mistaking the physical picture of the world for the whole picture; physical quantities are abstractions, and the living human being is no mere construction of atoms. This was not a religious address in the narrower sense – but it was a deliberate, public braking of the rising positivist confidence. The passage where Maxwell addresses the relation between physics, consciousness and faith is today missing from practically all standard excerpts of the speech; it is printed in full in Niven (ed.), The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, Cambridge 1890, vol. II.
The deathbed of 1879
Maxwell died on 5 November 1879 after weeks of illness from stomach cancer – the same disease his mother had died of in 1839. His Cambridge physician, George Edward Paget, later reported in detail on the final weeks. Maxwell's last words and prayers are partly recorded and reproduced in the Campbell biography. His last preserved prayer ends:
"I have been thinking how very gently I have always been dealt with. I have never had a violent shove all my life. The only desire which I can have is, like David, to serve my own generation by the will of God, and then fall asleep."
— Maxwell's final weeks, Cambridge 1879.
The missing half
Open an average physics textbook today and look up Maxwell, and you find the four equations, the kinetic theory of gases, the spectral argument for the speed of light, perhaps a half-sentence on colour photography. What is missing: the religious daily practice, the 800-page correspondence with clergymen, the poems, the Atom argument of 1875, the 1873 lecture against determinism, the deathbed prayer. That is not an ideological conspiracy – it is editorial selection, in which from the late 19th century onwards the theological-philosophical portions of major scientists are systematically retouched out. With Kepler the astrology disappears, with Newton the alchemy and anti-Trinitarianism, with Maxwell the Christian daily practice and the theologically grounded atom argument.
The source situation in Maxwell's case is even particularly easy. There has been a complete biography since 1882 (Campbell & Garnett) that prints all the religious texts. There are the Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, edited by Peter Harman in three volumes (Cambridge University Press, 1990–2002). There are the Scientific Papers in Niven's 1890 edition. Anyone who wants to read "the whole Maxwell" does not have to dig in hidden archives – they only have to read the openly available sources that have been omitted from physics textbooks for over a hundred years.
What remains
- Maxwell is not an "esotericist". Unlike Newton, he was not part of the Hermetic tradition; unlike Kepler, he had no astrological commitment. He was a conservative, Bible-believing Presbyterian of Victorian stamp – that is, exactly the type of scientist who in the late 19th century could still speak openly and religiously without reputational loss. Precisely this disappears afterwards.
- The 1875 atom argument is physics, not preaching. Maxwell argues from the observable identity of atomic spectra across cosmic distances to a hypothesis of creation. This argument has returned in the 21st century in the form of the fine-tuning argument and is now squarely in the philosophy-of-science discourse – but in today's schoolbook biography of Maxwell it has no place.
- The drive behind the Maxwell equations. Maxwell himself anchored his search for a unified theory of electricity, magnetism and light in the theological assumption that nature must be unified, because it was made by a unified mind. This is not the result of his physics but its motivating background.
- Free will in Maxwell. His 1873 Eranus address is one of the earliest clear statements that physics itself does not support the hard-determinist position. Maxwell, probably the most precise mathematical mind of the second half of the 19th century, publicly argued against determinism – in the name of physics, not against it.
- The pattern line. Maxwell is the third classical case in our story of history-tidying: Kepler (astrology), Newton (alchemy and anti-Trinitarianism), Maxwell (theology). Three cases, three mechanisms, the same institutional result: a cleaned, secular schoolbook image that does not match the historical original. For the institutional background see our article on Mediumship and Power.
Maxwell lived in 1879 almost exactly at the beginning of the phase in which speaking publicly about the religious or philosophical substance of physical work became a career risk for an academic. Oliver Lodge, Lord Rayleigh, J. J. Thomson – Maxwell's successors in the Cavendish – were still able for a generation to be openly SPR members. A generation later that would have been a different story. Maxwell himself did not live to see the phase change. But his work was, as soon as he was dead, fitted into the new frame.
Sources
- Lewis Campbell & William Garnett: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell. With Selections from his Correspondence and Occasional Writings. Macmillan, London 1882 – the definitive contemporary biography, with extensive printing of religious letters, poems and lectures.
- W. D. Niven (ed.): The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell. 2 vols., Cambridge University Press 1890 – including the full Cavendish inaugural address.
- James Clerk Maxwell: Atom, in: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. III, Edinburgh 1875.
- James Clerk Maxwell: Theory of Heat. Longmans, London 1871 – containing the first printed version of the "demon" thought experiment.
- James Clerk Maxwell: A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. 2 vols., Clarendon Press, Oxford 1873.
- Peter M. Harman (ed.): The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell. 3 vols., Cambridge University Press 1990–2002 – critical complete edition of the correspondence.
- Peter M. Harman: The Natural Philosophy of James Clerk Maxwell. Cambridge University Press 1998 – today's most important monograph, which takes Maxwell's theological assumptions seriously.
- Basil Mahon: The Man Who Changed Everything. The Life of James Clerk Maxwell. Wiley, Chichester 2003 – modern biography, with extensive treatment of the religious dimension.
- Ian Hutchinson: James Clerk Maxwell and the Christian Proposition. MIT IAP Lecture Series, 1998 (also available online).
- Robert Kargon & Peter Achinstein (eds.): Kelvin's Baltimore Lectures and Modern Theoretical Physics. MIT Press 1987 – context for Victorian physics-theology.