Scotland’s Einstein
James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh in 1831 and lived for only 48 years, yet he made the profoundest contributions to nineteenth century science. Through his work on colour perception he created the first colour photograph; he determined the structure of Saturn’s rings 150 years before the space-probe Cassini visited the planet; he made ground-breaking advances in the theory of gases; and his crowning achievement was to show how electricity, magnetism and light are intimately related. The theory of electromagnetism, now summarised in four elegant equations bearing his name, underpins all modern information and communications technologies from radio to radar, television to mobile phones. The physicist and Nobel laureate, Richard Feynman, remarked: ‘From a long view of the history of mankind, seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electromagnetism.’
Just why Maxwell is so little known today is a bit of a mystery. A partial answer lies in the highly mathematical nature of his work, making it difficult for the general public to understand. Another is that he didn’t live in an age of celebrity, unlike today, when figures such as Stephen Hawking (another mathematical physicist) can come to such prominence. What makes Maxwell of interest to me are the ways in which he found a harmony between his science and his deeply held Christian faith, something that the new atheists of our time, like Richard Dawkins, vehemently reject as being possible.
Maxwell was confident that the pursuit of science was God’s call on his life; he believed that the coherence and interconnections he found between electricity and magnetism were glimpses of a deeper reality. Indeed, if St Paul is right and ‘all things have been created through Christ and for Christ, and in him all things hold together’ (Colossians 1.16,17 NRSV), then interrelatedness between fundamental physical forces is to be expected. And so, from a Christian point of view ‘a theory of everything’ - the holy grail for today’s physicists - far from being the final nail in God’s coffin, would actually be the most compelling indication of coherence and intelligibility at the heart of the universe: the ultimate sign of a rational creator.
For more see: Science and Religion, The Spirituality of James Clerk Maxwell, by Andy Colebrooke, Grove Books Ltd 2020, S152
