Figures of Thought

Thomas K. Simpson examines Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism with the tools of literary criticism, exploring questions of meaning, structure, and style.  Maxwell was very concerned with the relation of meaning to form of presentation, as Simpson brought out in his guide to three Maxwell papers, Maxwell on the Electromagnetic Field: A Guided Study, published by Rutgers University Press. Figures of Thought is the definitive argument against Hertz's claim that "Maxwell's theory is Maxwell's system of equations.

This exciting new book carries out a project seldom undertaken in our time, that of recognizing a classic of mathematical physics as a work of literature.

James Clerk Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873) established the scope and the shape of classical electromagnetic science—from field theory (epitomized in “Maxwell’s equations”) to the electromagnetic theory of light. Maxwell, however, wrote as a natural philosopher, with purposes reaching far beyond the equations of electromagnetism. We get closer to Maxwell’s underlying thought when we read the Treatise with an eye to its literary form and to what Simpson identifies as Maxwell’s rhetoric of mathematical physics.